Marx and Philosophy Society Annual Conference 2012

Karl Marx

MARX AND PHILOSOPHY SOCIETY ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2012

Marx and Philosophy Society Annual Conference
Marx and Hegel

Saturday 2 June 2012, 9.15am – 6.00pm
Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1

Plenary speakers: 

Andrew Chitty (Sussex)
Recognition and Property in Hegel and the Early Marx

Emmanuel Renault (Lyon)
The Early Marx and Hegel: The Young-Hegelian Mediation

Frederick Neuhouser (Columbia)
Marx and Hegel on the Value of ‘Bourgeois’ Ideals

Graduate panels:

Herbert De Vriese (Antwerp) Breaking the Idealistic Spell: Marx’s Farewell to the Hegelian Ideal of Presuppositionless Thinking
Bue Rubner Hansen (Queen Mary) Hegel, Marx, and Singular Times
Jacob Blumenfeld (New School for Social Research) The Method and Object of Capital

Christopher Joonho Ro (Princeton) Capital as Collective Product: Mutual Interaction in Marx’s Idea of Alienation
David Marjoribanks (Kent) Universality and Particularity in Hegel and Marx
Jan Kandiyali (Sheffield) Kantian and Hegelian Strands in Marx’s Account of Communism 

£20 waged, £10 unwaged (provides annual membership of the Society)
To reserve a place in advance please email David Marjoribanks at dm275@kent.ac.uk
Directions: http://www.ioe.ac.uk/sitehelp/1072.html

Marx and Philosophy Society: http://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/society

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

First International Conference on the Labor Theory of Value and the Social Sciences

Labour

FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE LABOR THEORY OF VALUE AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Call for Papers

1st INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ‘LABOR THEORY OF VALUE AND SOCIAL SCIENCES’

Thursday 18 – Friday 19 October 2012

Universidade de Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil

We invite submissions that raise (or answer) questions on Marxian Labor Theory of Value and its role in Social Sciences.

Papers are invited on the following topics:

- Labor Theory of Value and Crisis;

- Labor Theory of Value: actuality, problems, limits and outcomes.

Submission deadline of proposals: July 31, 2012.

Applicants will be informed about acceptance by August 30, 2012.

 

GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSIONS

Please email paper in English, Portuguese or Spanish, MS Word format, of no more than 3.000 words, to unb.gept@gmail.com. Speakers will be asked to make short 10-15 minute presentations addressing the main topics of their papers.

Papers should include the following elements: i) Paper’s title; ii) Author(s)’ name and affiliation; iii) Three key-words; iv) 150-word abstract; v) Contact information: mail address, country of residence, telephones and email.

Registration for accepted communications: US$ 50 to be paid at the registration desk.

For general questions and further information, please contact

Daniel Bin (Danielbin@unb.br)

http://unbgept.blogspot.com.br/

Please submit proposals via email to unb.gept@gmail.com

1st International Conference on the ‘Labor Theory of Value and Social Sciences’ is a two-day conference collectively organized by the Group for Study and Research on Labour (Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisa sobre o Trabalho – GEPT/UnB)

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Historical Materialism Toronto Conference Programme

Karl Marx

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM TORONTO CONFERENCE PROGRAMME

Historical Materialism Toronto
York University
11-13 May

The 2012 Historical Materialism Toronto Conference Programme is now available. Follow the link below for a PDF. 

No further changes to the dates and times of sessions will be possible. Please note that room numbers have not yet been assigned.

All sessions will happen in the Accolade West building atYork.

http://www.yorku.ca/hmyork/program/HMToronto2012Schedule.pdf
http://www.yorku.ca/hmyork/index.html

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Feminisms and Marxisms

Sara Carpenter and Shahrzad Mojab

FEMINISMS AND MARXISMS

Call for Papers: In the framework of the 9th Historical Materialism Conference, ‘Weighs like A Nightmare’, SOAS, Central London, 8-11 November 2012

Feminisms and Marxisms 

A new generation of anti-capitalist feminists has emerged in the last years across the world. Although not without tensions and disagreements, these new feminist currents have been in constant dialogue with different traditions of Marxism and the Marxist critique of political economy in areas ranging from social science, philosophy to art history. With the aim of providing a space for this dialogue, the 9th Historical Materialism conference inLondonwelcomes presentations exploring the synergies between the feminist and the Marxist critiques of capitalism in their various articulations. 

Paper proposals (between 200 and 300 words) should be submitted by registering at: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences BEFORE 10 May 2012. Submissions will be peer reviewed. Please be aware that the conference is self-funded therefore we are unable to help with travel and accommodation costs.

Themes of particular interest for the conference include:

      Marxist and Socialist feminism in the 21st century

      The critique of the political economy of sex work

      Autonomia and Feminism: A legacy?

      Intersectionality theory and Marxism

      Feminist and Marxist critiques of liberal feminism

      Queer studies, LGBTQ and Marxism

      Feminist and Marxist critiques of gendered labour exploitation

      Feminist and Marxist critiques of racism and Islamophobia

      The political economy of gender and carceral detention

      Feminism, Marxism and art theory

      Women’s collectives and the contemporary art world

      Feminist, Marxism and the visual cultures of globalisation

      Gendered international migrations

      Commodification of care

      Social reproduction

Please note that the following donations are requested in support of conference costs:

£50 waged/15 unwaged on pre-registration
£75 waged / 25 unwaged at the door

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

An Evening on Communisation

Communisation SIC

AN EVENING ON COMMUNISATION

An Evening on Communisation: Presentations and Release of Sic Volume 1: International Journal for Communisation

Friday April 20th – 7pm

16 Beaver Street
4th Floor
New York, NY10004

We invite you to join us for an evening of presentations and discussion on the theme of communisation with the release of Sic: International Journal for Communisation (http://communisation.net). Topics include:

-         The periodization of the capital-labor relation

-         The restructuring and crisis of the 1970s

-         The loss of the worker identity

-         The characterizing tendencies of contemporary struggles

-         The relation of communist theory to practice

-         The Sic project itself

Train: 4, 5 to Bowling Green / R to Whitehall / 1, 2 to Wall Street / J to Broad Street

Wine and beer to be served

From the Editorial:

The present journal aims to be the locus for an unfolding of the problematic of communisation. It comes from the encounter of individuals involved in various projects in different countries: among these are the journals Endnotes, published in the UK and in the US, Blaumachen in Greece, Théorie Communiste inFrance, Riff-Raff inSweden, and certain more or less informal theoretical groups in the US (New York and San Francisco). Each of these projects continues its own existence. Also participating are various individuals in France, Germany, and elsewhere, who are involved in other activities and who locate themselves broadly within the theoretical approach taken here.

Communisation

In the course of the revolutionary struggle, the abolition of the division of labour, of the State, of exchange, of any kind of property; the extension of a situation in which everything is freely available as the unification of human activity, that is to say the abolition of classes, of both public and private spheres – these are all ‘measures’ for the abolition of capital, imposed by the very needs of the struggle against the capitalist class. The revolution is communisation; communism is not its project or result.

One does not abolish capital for communism but by communism, or more specifically, by its production. Indeed communist measures must be differentiated from communism; they are not embryos of communism, rather they are its production. Communisation is not a period of transition, but rather, it is revolution itself which is the communist production of communism. The struggle against capital is what differentiates communist measures and communism. The content of the revolutionary activity is always the mediation of the abolition of capital by the proletariat in its relation to capital: this activity is not one branch of an alternative in competition with the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production, but its internal contradiction and its overcoming.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a whole historical period entered into crisis and came to an end – i.e. the period in which the revolution was conceived in different ways, both theoretically and practically, as the affirmation of the proletariat, its elevation to the position of ruling class, the liberation of labour, and the institution of a period of transition. The concept of communisation appeared in the midst of this crisis.

During the crisis, the critique of all the mediations of the existence of the proletariat within the capitalist mode of production (mass party, union, parliamentarism), of organisational forms such as the party-form or the vanguard, of ideologies such as Leninism, of practices such as militantism along with all its variations – all this appeared irrelevant if revolution was no longer to be affirmation of the class – whether it be the workers’ autonomy or the generalisation of workers’ councils. It is the proletariat’s struggle as a class which has become the problem within itself, i.e. which is its own limit. That is the way the class struggle signals and produces the revolution as communisation in the form of its overcoming.

Since then, within the contradictory course of the capitalist mode of production, the affirmation of the proletariat and the liberation of labour have lost all meaning and content. There is no longer a worker’s identity facing capital and confirmed by it. This is the revolutionary dynamic of the present struggles which display the active denial of the proletarian condition against capital, even within ephemeral, limited bursts of self-management or self-organisation. The proletariat’s struggle against capital contains its contradiction with its own nature as class of capital.

The abolition of capital, i.e. the revolution and the production of communism, is immediately the abolition of all classes and therefore of the proletariat. This occurs through the communisation of society, which is abolished as a community separated from its elements. Proletarians abolish capital by the production of a community immediate to its elements; they transform their relations into immediate relations between individuals. These are relations between singular individuals that are no longer the embodiment of a social category, including the supposedly natural categories of the social sexes of woman and man. Revolutionary practice is the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-transformation.

A Problematic

This minimal approach of communisation constitutes neither a definition, nor a platform, but exposes a problematic:

* The problematic of a theory – here the theory of revolution as communisation – does not limit itself to a list of themes or objects conceived by theory; neither is it the synthesis of all the elements which are thought. It is the content of theory, its way of thinking, with regards to all possible productions of this theory

* The analysis of the current crisis and of the class struggles intrinsic to it

* The historicity of revolution and communism

* The periodisation of the capitalist mode of production and the question of the restructuring of the mode of production after the crisis at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s

* The analysis of the gender relation within the problematic of the present class struggle and communisation

* The definition of communism as goal but also as movement abolishing the present state of things

* A theory of the abolition of capital as a theory of the production of communism

* The reworking of the theory of value-form (to the extent that the revolution is not the affirmation of the proletariat and the liberation of labour)

* The illegitimacy of wage-demands and others in the present class struggle

By definition no list of subjects coming under a problematic can be exhaustive.

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Marxism Matters

Marxism Against Postmodernism in Educational Theory

MARXISM MATTERS

One-Day Conference

Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies

University of Sunderland

Tuesday 17th April 2012

Confirmed keynote speakers: Martin Barker and Ros Brunt.

As the economy has become increasingly named in public debate as the capitalist economy and conventional explanations of the economic crisis and its various social and cultural manifestations seem less and less convincing, Marxism has once again become visible as a viable mode of critical analysis. The aim of the conference is to revive interest in Marxism in work in film, media and cultural studies.  The conference will include papers on ‘race’ and social class, ESPN, the journalism of Marx and Engels, Christianity, the cuts, the Black Panthers, rational optimism, Media and Cultural Studies, social class, hip hop, the current crisis, Batman, Jazz, Treasure Island, Godard, digital Marx.

£60 for full-time staff

£30 for students and part-time staff

To register, please visit: http://onlinestore.sunderland.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?modid=1&prodid=0&deptid=70&compid=1&prodvarid=59&searchresults=1

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Karl Marx and the Present Moment

Karl Marx

KARL MARX AND THE PRESENT MOMENT

Karl Marx and the Present Moment: Beyond ‘Resistance’ and Toward Human Emancipation

A talk and discussion: with Kevin B Anderson, author of Marx at the Margins

2 p.m. Saturday 14 April 2012 at The Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, King’s Cross, London, WC1 (5 minutes from Kings Cross Tube)

MEETING SPONSORED BY THE HOBGOBLIN ONLINE

The Arab revolutions and the Occupy movement have placed both revolution and anti-capitalism at the forefront of global social consciousness. While many are again evoking Marx, the legacy of decades of postmodernism and postmodernized postcolonial thought has left us, at best, with a politics of resistance rather than one of full human emancipation. This talk will explore Marx’s thought in light of this legacy. It will be argued that his multidimensional dialectical vision encompassed both ‘totalities’ like capitalism and the specificities of nation, ethnicity, gender, and anti-colonial resistance. Moreover, his philosophical dialectic, rooted in Hegel, theorized precisely this type of ‘concrete totality.’ And finally, his critique of capital was accompanied by an always implicit — and sometimes explicit — vision of a radically humanist future beyond the exploitative, alienating, and reified world of the capital relation.

Kevin Anderson’s most recent books are Foucault and the Iranian Revolution; Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (with Janet Afary, 2005), Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (2010), and The Dunayevskaya-Marcuse-Fromm Correspondence, 1954-1978: Dialogues on Hegel, Marx, and Critical Theory (coedited with Russell Rockwell, 2012). He is also the author of Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study (1995) and the coeditor (with Peter Hudis) of The Rosa Luxemburg Reader(2004).

The Hobgoblin: http://www.thehobgoblin.co.uk/

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Kevin B. Anderson

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Workers, Despite Themselves

Work

WORKERS, DESPITE THEMSELVES

Call for Oapers for an ephemera issue on: ‘Workers, Despite Themselves’
Issue Editors: Stevphen Shukaitis and Abe Walker

Deadline for submissions: November 30th, 2012.

Workers’ inquiry is an approach to and practice of knowledge production that seeks to understand the changing composition of labor and its potential for revolutionary social transformation. It is the practice of turning the tools of the social sciences into weapons of class struggle. Workers’ inquiry seeks to map the continuing imposition of the class relation, not as a disinterested investigation, but rather to deepen and intensify social and political antagonisms.

The autonomist political theorist Mario Tronti argues that weapons for working class revolt have always been taken from the bosses’ arsenal (1966: 18). But, has not it often been suggested, to use feminist writer Audre Lorde’s phrasing (1984), that it is not possible to take apart the master’s house with the master’s tools? While not forgetting Lorde’s question, it is clear that Tronti said this with good reason, for he was writing from a context where this is precisely what was taking place. Italian autonomous politics greatly benefited from borrowing from sociology and industrial relations – and by using these tools proceeded to build massive cycles of struggle transforming the grounds of politics (Wright, 2003; Berardi, 2009).

Of these adaptations the most important for autonomist politics and class composition analysis is workers’ inquiry. Workers’ inquiry developed in a context marked by rapid industrialization, mass migration, and the use industrial sociology to discipline the working class. Workers’ inquiry was formulated within autonomist movements as a sort of parallel sociology, one based on a radical re-reading of Marx (and Weber) against the politics of the communist party and the unions (Farris, 2011). While the practitioners of workers’ inquiry were often professionally-trained academics – especially sociologists – its proponents argued their research differs in important ways from ‘engaged’ social science, and all varieties of industrial sociology, even if it there are similarities. If bourgeois sociology sought to smooth over conflicts, and ‘critical’ sociology to expose these same conflicts, workers’ inquiry takes the contradictions of the labor process as a starting point and seeks to draw out these antagonisms into the formation of new radical subjectivities.

This is not to say that workers’ inquiry is an unproblematic endeavor. We remain skeptical that the weapons of managerial control can be cleanly re-appropriated without reproducing the very social world they were designed to take apart. For as Steve Wright argues, “the uncritical use of such tools has frequently produced a register of subjective perceptions which do no more than mirror the surface of capitalist social relations” (2003: 24). As the legacy of analytical Marxism reveals, imitation is never far removed from flattery, and at its worst moments, workers’ inquiry risks becoming its object of critique. To be fair there are disagreements among the proponents of workers’ inquiry over the limitations of drawing from the social sciences. But to continue the metaphor, like any potentially dangerous ‘weapon’, sociological techniques must be carefully examined, and when necessary, disabled.

Today we find ourselves at a moment when co-research, participatory action research, and other heterodox methods have been adopted by the academic mainstream, while managerial styles like TQM carry a faint echo of workers’ inquiry. In the contemporary firm workers are already engaged in self-monitoring, peer interviews, and the creation of quasi-autonomous ‘research’ units, all sanctioned by management (Boltankski and Chiapello, 2005). Workers’ inquiry is now part of the accepted social science repertoire: its techniques no longer seem dangerous, but familiar, at least at the methodological level. The bosses’ arsenal now includes weapons mimicking the style, if not the substance, of workers’ inquiry. And as George Steinmetz (2005) has suggested, while blatantly positivistic research styles have fallen out of favor, this obscures the ‘positivist unconscious’ that continues to interpellate even apparently anti-positivist methodologies.

The pioneers of workers’ inquiry argued researchers must work through/against the ambivalent relations of (social) science; now, there may be no other option. Wherever there are movements organizing and addressing the horrors of capitalist exploitation and oppression, the specter of recuperation is never far behind. The point is not to deny these risks, but to the degree such dynamics confront all social movements achieving any measure of success. It is by working against and through them that recomposing radical politics becomes possible (Shukaitis, 2009). Today workers’ inquiry remains, as Raniero Panzieri claimed (2006 [1959]), a permanent reference point for autonomist politics, one that informs continuing inquiries into class composition. With this issue we seek to rethink workers’ inquiry as a practice and perspective, and through that to understand and catalyze emergent moments of political composition.

Contributors
We invite papers that update the practices of workers’ inquiry for the present moment of class de-/recomposition. Can we develop, taking up Matteo Pasquinelli’s suggestion (2008: 138), a form of workers’ inquiry applied to cognitive and biopolitical production? The very possibility of a *workers* inquiry begs reconsideration when official unemployment figures drift toward 50% among sectors of the industrial working class.

This issue picks up themes that developed in previous issues of ephemera inquiring into affective and immaterial labor (2007), digital labor (2010), militant research (2005), and the politics of the multitude (2004). We encourage submissions that draw upon this previous work, particularly on the politics of social reproduction.

Recently, workers’ inquiry has proven its versatility through new applications and reconfigurations. Groups like Colectivo Situaciones (2011) and have used the practice of workers’ inquiry to analyze popular uprisings. Scholars have drawn from class composition analysis to explore areas such as cognitive labor (Brophy, 2011; Peters & Bulut, 2011), citizenship and migration (Papadopoulos et al, 2008; Barchiesi, 2011), and finance (Marazzi, 2008; Mezzadra and Fumagalli, 2010). Militant research collectives such as Kolinko (2002), Team Colors (2010), and the Precarious Workers Brigade (2011) have employed workers’ inquiry to intervene composition of social movements and labor politics.

We are particularly interested in research that expands and/or deconstructs the project of workers’ inquiry, or that transposes workers’ inquiry onto unconventional terrain such as archival research and cultural studies. Additionally, we encourage contributors to include a substantial reflection on method, possibly addressing some of the tensions outlined above and engaging with recent debates about method and measure.

Deadline for submissions: November 30th, 2012.

Please send your submissions to the editors. All contributions should follow ephemera guidelines – see http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/submit.htm. In addition to full papers, we also invite notes, reviews, and other kinds and media forms of contributions – please get in touch to discuss how you would like to contribute. We highly encourage authors to send us abstracts (of 500 words) outlining their plans. The ephemera conference in May 2013 will focus on a related theme, with contributors for this issue invited to present their work.

Contacts:
Stevphen Shukaitis: stevphen@autonomedia.org
Abe Walker: awalker@qc.cuny.edu
http://www.ephemeraweb.org/

We’re also interested in putting together a panel on this theme for the Historical Materialism conference in London in November (information here: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual9/call-for-papers), particularly with people who plan to submit a piece for this issue. If you are interested in this please contact Stevphen by April 20th.

References
Barchiesi, F. (2011) Precarious liberation: workers, the state, and contested social citizenship in postapartheid South Africa. Albany: SUNY Press.
Berardi, F. (2009) Precarious rhapsody: semiocapitalism and the pathologies of the post-alpha generation. London: Minor Compositions.
Boltanski, L. and E. Chiapello (2005) The new spirit of capitalism. London: Verso.
Brophy, E. (2011) “Language put to work: cognitive capitalism, call center labor, and workers inquiry,” Journal of Communication Inquiry. Volume 35 Number 4: 410-416.
Colectivo Situaciones (2011) 19&20: notes on a new social protagonism. Brooklyn / Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions.
Farris, S. (2011) “Workerism’s inimical incursions: on Mario Tronti’s Weberianism,” Historical Materialism Volume 19 Number 3: 29-62.
Kolinko (2002) Hotlines. Berlin: Kolinko. Available at www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/kolinko/lebuk/e_lebuk.htm
Lorde, A. (1984) “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” Sister outsider: essays and speeches. Berkeley: The Crossing Press: 110-114.
Marazzi, C. (2008) Capital & language: from new economy to war economy. New York: Semiotexte.
Mezzadra, S. and A. Fumagalli (Eds.) (2010) Crisis in the global economy: financial markets, social struggles, and new political scenarios. Los Angeles: Semiotexte.
Panzieri, R. (2006 [1959]) “Socialist uses of workers’ inquiry.” Available at http://www.generation-online.org/t/tpanzieri.htm.
Papadopoulos, D., N. Stephenson, and V. Tsianos (2008) Escape routes: control and subversion in the 21st century. London: Pluto Press.
Pasquinelli, M. (2008) Animal spirits: a bestiary of the commons. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers.
Peters, M. & E. Bulut, Eds. (2011) Cognitive capitalism, education and digital labor. New York: Peter Lang.
Precarious Workers Brigade (2011) Surviving internships: a counter guide to free labor in the arts. London: Hato Press.
Shukaitis, S. (2009) Imaginal machines: autonomy & self-organization in the revolutions of everyday life. Brooklyn: Autonomedia.
Steinmetz, G. (2005) “The genealogy of a positivist haunting: comparing pre-war and post-war U.S. sociology” boundary 2 Volume 32 Number 2: 109-135
Team Colors (Eds.) (2010) Uses of a whirlwind: movement, movements, and contemporary radical currents in the United States. Oakland: AK Press.
Tronti, M. (1966) Operai e capitale. Torino: Einaud.
Wright, S. (2003) Storming heaven: class composition and struggle in Italian autonomist marxism.London: Pluto Press.

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

New Articles and Features from U.S. Marxist-Humanists

Raya Dunayevskaya

NEW ARTICLES AND FEATURES FROM U.S. MARXIST-HUMANISTS

http://www.usmarxisthumanists.org/

FEBRUARY 2012

Richard Greeman, “Russia: the Return of the Revolution”

D. Beltaigne, “Why John Brown? Why Now?”

Richard Abernethy, “David Cameron’s Attack on Health and Safety”

Peter Hudis and Sasha Lilley, “Rosa Luxemburg’s Legacy” (audio)

Paulo Morel, “Discussion Article: Is Newt Gingrich an ‘Invented’ Idiot?”

David Black, “The Elusive ‘Threads of Historical Progress’: The Early Chartists and the Young Marx and Engels”

George Karavas, Dave Eden, Sandra Rein, and Kevin Anderson, “Review Symposium on Marx at the Margins”

Ayob Rahmani, “Interview with Kevin Anderson”

The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg, edited by Annelies Laschitza, George Adler, and Peter Hudis – Links to reviews in International Socialist Review and Rain Taxi Review of Books

Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies, by Kevin Anderson – Links to reviews in Radical Philosophy Review and Workers’ Liberty

U.S. MARXIST-HUMANISTS IS PART OF THE INTERNATIONAL MARXIST-HUMANIST ORGANIZATION. The IMHO seeks to work out a unity of theory and practice, worker and intellectual, and philosophy and organization. We aim to develop and project a viable vision of a truly new, human society that can give direction to today’s many freedom struggles. We ground our ideas in the totality of Marx’s Marxism and Raya Dunayevskaya’s body of ideas and upon the unique philosophic contributions that have guided Marxist-Humanism since its founding in the 1950s.

AFFILIATES
U.S. Marxist-Humanists – www.usmarxisthumanists.org – arise@usmarxisthumanists.org
The Hobgoblin Collective, UK – www.thehobgoblin.co.uk  – hobgoblinlondon@aol.com

EVENTS IN YOUR AREA:
Please let us know if you would be interested in receiving information about Marxist-Humanist events in your city, region, or country.

 

**END**

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Elgar Companion to Marxist Economics

Global Economy

THE ELGAR COMPANION TO MARXIST ECONOMICS

http://www.e-elgar.com/bookentry_main.lasso?id=13550

The Elgar Companion To Marxist Economics
Edited by Ben Fine, Professor of Economics and Alfredo Saad-Filho, Professor of Political Economy, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK with Marco Boffo, PhD candidate,  School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK

January 2012
432 pp
Hardback 978 1 84844 537 6
Hardback £135.00 on-line price £121.50

Series: Elgar original reference

Description

This Companion takes stock of the trajectory, achievements, shortcomings and prospects of Marxist political economy. It reflects the contributors’ shared commitment to bringing the methods, theories and concepts of Marx himself to bear across a wide range of topics and perspectives, and it provides a testimony to the continuing purpose and vitality of Marxist political economy.

Contents

Contributors include: G. Albo, R. Albritton, D. Ankarloo, S.J. Ashman, A.J. Ayers, R. Balakrishnan, J. Banaji, S. Bisnath, M. Boffo, T.J. Byres, A. Campbell, P. Cerni, P. Chattopadhyay, S. Clarke, A. Colás, G.C. Comninel, M. Di Meglio, P.L. dos Santos, G. Duménil, B. Fine, J. Ghosh, G. Hoe-Gimm, H. Goodacre, B. Gruffydd-Jones, B. Harriss-White, K. Hart, M. Itoh, H. Jeon, B. Jessop, D. Johnston, R. Kiely, S. Knafo, D. Laibman, D. Lévy, D. Lo, T. Marois, P. Masina, S.D. Mavroudeas, D. Milonakis, S. Mohun, S. Newman, P. Patnaik, U. Patnaik, L. Pradella, H. Radice, A. Saad-Filho, S. Savran, G. Slater, T. Smith, E. Swyngedouw, B. Tinel, A. Toscano, J. Weeks, E. Wood, A. Zack-Williams, P. Zarembka, Y. Zhang

Further information

This Companion takes stock of the trajectory, achievements, shortcomings and prospects of Marxist political economy. It reflects the contributors’ shared commitment to bringing the methods, theories and concepts of Marx himself to bear across a wide range of topics and perspectives, and it provides a testimony to the continuing purpose and vitality of Marxist political economy.

As a whole, this volume analyzes Marxist political economy in three areas: the critique of mainstream economics in all of its versions; the critical presence of Marxist political economy within, and its influence upon, each of the social science disciplines; and, cutting across these, the analysis of specific topics that straddle disciplinary boundaries. Some of the contributions offer an exposition  of basic concepts, accessible to the general reader, laying out Marx’s own contribution, its significance, and subsequent positions and debates with and within Marxist political economy. The authors offer assessments of historical developments to and within capitalism, and of its current character and prospects. Other chapters adopt a mirror-image approach of pinpointing the conditions of contemporary capitalism as a way of interrogating the continuing salience of Marxist analysis.

This volume will inform and inspire a new generation of students and scholars to become familiar with Marxist political economy from an enlightened and unprejudiced position, and to use their knowledge as both a resource and gateway to future study.

Full table of contents
Contents:

Introduction
Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho

1. Accumulation of Capital
Paul Zarembka

2. The Agrarian Question and the Peasantry
Terence J. Byres

3. Analytical Marxism
Marco Boffo

4. Anthropology
Keith Hart

5. Capital
Jayati Ghosh

6. Capitalism
Ellen Wood

7. Centrally Planned Economy
Dic Lo and Yu Zhang

8. Class and Class Struggle
Utsa Patnaik

9. Classical Political Economy
Hugh Goodacre

10. Combined and Uneven Development
Samantha J. Ashman

11. Commodification and Commodity Fetishism
Robert Albritton

12. Competition
Paresh Chattopadhyay

13. Consumerism
Paula Cerni

14. Contemporary Capitalism
Greg Albo

15. Crisis Theory
Simon Clarke

16. Dependency Theory
John Weeks

17. Ecology and the Environment
Barbara Harriss-White

18. Economic Reproduction and the Circuits of Capital
Ben Fine

19. Exploitation and Surplus Value
Ben Fine

20. Feminist Economics
Radhika Balakrishnan and Savitri Bisnath

21. Feudalism
George C. Comninel

22. Finance, Finance Capital, and Financialisation
Thomas Marois

23. Friedrich Engels
Paresh Chattopadhyay

24. Geography
Erik Swyngedouw

25. Global Commodity Chains and Global Value Chains
Susan Newman

26. Globalisation and Imperialism
Ray Kiely

27. International Political Economy
Alejandro Colás

28. Karl Marx
Lucia Pradella

29. Knowledge Economy
Heesang Jeon

30. Labour, Labour Power, and the Division of Labour
Bruno Tinel

31. Labour Theory of Value
Ben Fine

32. Market Socialism
Makoto Itoh

33. Marx and Underdevelopment
Mauro di Meglio and Pietro Masina

34. Marxism and History
George C. Comninel

35. Method of Political Economy
Branwen Gruffydd-Jones

36. Mode of Production
Jairus Banaji

37. Money
Paulo L. dos Santos

38. Neoliberalism
Gérard Duménil and Dominique Lévy

39. Neoclassical Economics
Dimitris Milonakis

40. Neo-Ricardianism
Sungur Savran

41. New Technology and the ‘New Economy’
Tony Smith

42. Political Science
Alison J. Ayers

43. Population and Migration
Deborah Johnston

44. Productive and Unproductive Labour
Simon Mohun

45. Race
Alfred Zack-Williams

46. Radical Political Economy in the United States
Al Campbell

47. The Rate of Profit
Simon Mohun

48. The Regulation Approach
Stavros D. Mavroudeas

49. Rent and Landed Property
Erik Swyngedouw

50. The Social Structures of Accumulation Approach
Stavros D. Mavroudeas

51. Socialism, Communism and Revolution
Al Campbell

52. Sociology
Alberto Toscano

53. The State
Bob Jessop

54. ‘Transformation Problem’
Alfredo Saad-Filho

55. The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism
David Laibman

56. Transnational Corporations
Hugo Radice

57. Unemployment
Gary Slater

58. Value Form Approach
Samuel Knafo

59. Vladimir I Lenin
Prabhat Patnaik

60. The Welfare State
Daniel Ankarloo

61. World Economy
Gong Hoe-Gimm

References

Index

 

**END**

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

Historical Materialism Conference 2012 – Ninth Annual Conference

Karl Marx

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM CONFERENCE 2012 – NINTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE

The Ninth Annual HM Conference will take place in Central London from 8-11 November 2012

Weighs Like a Nightmare

Historical Materialism Ninth Annual Conference

Has Marx been reanimated once again? From mainstream media to academia, this question hangs in the air. The old ghosts of revolution appear to be shaking off their shackles and getting agitated. What is this spirit? Who are the militants haunting this ramshackle capitalism? Are these new spectres – stalking the streets of Syria, Tunisia and Egypt, Athens, Spain and Wall Street and beyond – or direct descendants of socialist and communist ones? How does the past haunt the present? How might the present haunt the future?

As new conflicts and struggles emerge, the old questions refuse to go away: What type of organisation is needed to sharpen the conflicts, if any? Who are the agents of history and change? Is the scope of political action national or international? What is the political value of alliances and fronts? Does history cunningly work a progressive path through and around the contingencies of struggle? Are the same mistakes to be made, the same failures repeated?

The ninth HM annual conference focuses on the returns and the persistence of political forms and theoretical problems, on the uses and abuses of the history of Marxism in this turbulent present and on the ways and forms in which an inheritance of various Marxist traditions can help us to organise and to act in contemporary struggles.

We invite proposals for presentations or panels (with two or three suggested participants) on topics such as: the echoes of the past in the present; learning or not learning from the past; the reanimation of revolution; history as farce, history as tragedy; historiography and Marxism; cycles; circulation; anti-memory as a political stance; new histories of capital and the labour movement; Marxism and ‘deep history’; theory as history; the role of archival sources in history and the place of theory; rhythms of historical development, combined, uneven or otherwise; concepts of pre-capitalism; the question of successive modes of production; historical or other materialisms; the return of radical politics in Eastern Europe and elsewhere; post-communism; the endless afterlives of ‘Classical’ Marxists and ‘Western’ Marxist theorists and others who refuse to go away; the reruns of crisis; the role of memory and the revisioning of history; forgotten figures suddenly blasted into contemporary relevance; perma-war; imperial ghosts and their legacies, racism’s haunting returns; old and new world orders; old and new cultures; avant-gardes and rearguards; the re-reading of classic texts; the question of Marxism’s relation to tradition; ideas of inheritance and ‘selective tradition’; recovery; recuperation; periodisation; continuities and discontinuities; narratives of new and old beginnings (of history, of culture, of the Left, of Marxism).

HM will also consider proposals on themes and topics of interest to critical Marxist theory not directly linked to the call for papers (we particularly welcome contributions on non-Western Marxism, history and politics, and on empirical inquiries employing Marxist methods and on Marxism and gender). While Historical Materialism is happy to receive proposals for panels, the editorial board reserves the right to change the composition of panels or to reject individual papers from panel proposals.

Please submit a title and abstract of between 200 and 300 words (or a fully worked through panel proposal) by registering at http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences BEFORE 26 April 2012

Deadline for registration of abstracts: 26 April 2012

http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual9/submit

Preference will be given to subscribers to the journal and participants are expected to be present during the whole of the event – no tailor-made timetabling for individuals will be possible, nor will cameo-appearances be tolerated.

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

Crisis, Austerity & Resistance: A Conference Organised by the Limerick Marxism Reading Group

Capitalist Crisis

CRISIS, AUSTERITY & RESISTANCE – A CONFERENCE ORGANISED BY THE LIMERICK MARXISM READING GROUP

Call for Papers

The Limerick Marxism Reading Group holds its second conference on April 25-26 2012 at the University of Limerick.

 The event aims to facilitate the open development of left perspectives on the ongoing economic crisis. The transfer of public funds to banks, bondholders, speculators and developers has generated anger and protest, but as yet there has been little in the way of mass resistance. This years’ conference has been organised with the view to encouraging the development and dissemination of coherent left perspectives on all related issues, and a comradely environment for considering the possibilities for the development of a broad-based resistance in the coming years.

Speakers will include: Kathleen Lynch, Andy Storey, Conor McCabe, Lee F. Monaghan, Kieran Allen, Helena Sheehan, Tom Turner, Terrence McDonough, Michael Taft, Marnie Holborow, Henry Silke and Tom O’Connor

Additional papers/talks relating to the following themes are particularly welcome:

• Ongoing campaigns and current forms of resistance

• The role of the media in the current crisis

• The gendered impact of austerity

• Historical perspectives

• The role of trade unions

• Prospects for left unity

 

Deadline for abstracts: March 30, 2012.

All proposals to be sent to limerickmarxistreadinggroup@live.ie

Papers/talks from activists are particularly welcome.

Proposals should include: Title, presenter’s name and contact information, institution or other affiliation (if any), research interests, a short 50 word biography and a brief abstract (no more than 500 words)

The conference is kindly sponsored by the Irish Social Sciences Platform (ISSP), the Institute for the Study of Knowledge in Society (ISKS), the Department of Sociology, Department of History, and the Department of Personnel and Employment Relations,UniversityofLimerick.

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog