Marxist Transhumanism or Transhumanist Marxism?

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

For a Special Issue of: New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry

Guest editors: James Steinhoff and Atle Mikkola Kjøsen

In this special issue call, New Proposals asks authors to explore how Marxism and Transhumanism might be brought into conjunction. Could there be a transhumanist Marxism or a Marxist transhumanism?

Transhumanism is defined by its proponents as an “intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities” (Humanity+ n.d.). While this description says nothing about politics, transhumanism has been deeply pro-capital due to its popularization in the 1990s via techno-libertarian “extropianism” (More 1990). Because of this, the promethean project of improving the human condition by technological means tends to be joined with, and confused for, capital accumulation. Some of the most radical transhumanist thinkers have tended to assume to continued functioning of capital amid cataclysmic socio-technological change. For example, although transhumanist luminary Ray Kurzweil argues that the coming technological singularity (the moment when machines exceed human capacities in all respects) will irreversibly transform every aspect of human life, and even “death itself,” he still expects there to be a need for “business models” (2005, 7). Today, transhumanism is tacitly represented in the operations of venture capitalists and the giant tech capitals. DeepMind, acquired by Google in 2014, seeks to “solve intelligence” by creating AI with generalized learning abilities and Elon Musk’s Neuralink aims to provide a seamless machine connection to the human brain.

However, transhumanism is not inherently incompatible with Marxist thought and communism. While transhumanism today appears to be a capitalist project, its historical lineage can be traced back to early twentieth century socialist thinkers such as Alexander Bogdanov, J. B. S Haldane, and J. D. Bernal (Bostrom 2005; Stambler 2010; Hughes 2012). Marx himself has many, what we might call “high modernist” moments in which he argues for overcoming human and natural limits, and advocates the socialized use of technology to achieve freedom from necessity for all humans. This high modernist Marx can be read as expressing a transhumanist impulse toward technologically augmenting the human condition (Steinhoff 2014). With a few exceptions (Armesilla Conde 2018), Marxists have shown little interest in transhumanism, other than as an object of critique (Rechtenwald 2013; Noonan 2016). One exception to this are the left accelerationists/postcapitalism theorists, who draw on transhumanist motifs, such as cyborg augmentation, terraforming and full automation (Srnicek and Williams 2015; Mason 2016; Bastani 2019). Left accelerationism has, however, picked up transhumanist motifs while dropping the capital/labour antagonism central to Marxist thought, glossing over much of the difficult question of how exactly capital is supposed to come to an end. We suggest that left accelerationism forgets its Marxist roots as it is blinded by transhumanist futures.

We argue that the issues central to transhumanism should not be the purview solely of representatives of capital like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, nor of the left accelerationists. Instead, Marxist thought should seriously engage with transhumanism in order to “decouple it from its blindly capitalist trajectory, reflect on Marx’s own high modernist tendencies, and delineate a social project to embrace or escape” (Dyer-Witheford, Kjosen & Steinhoff, 2019, 161). Therefore we ask how a Marxist transhumanism or a transhumanist Marxism might be possible.

For this special issue of New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry we are interested in contributions that engage transhumanism and Marxism with one another. We are not interested in Marxist dismissals of transhumanism. That is not to say that we do not welcome Marxist critiques of transhumanism. We are, however, seeking critiques which take at least some elements of the theory and/or practice of transhumanism seriously from within a Marxist framework.

Possible topics include:

• Syntheses of transhumanism and Marxism
• Transhumanism and value theory (e.g. engagement with core concepts like social form, labour-power, the working day, surplus-value etc.)
• Critically engaging with and/or embracing the high modernist moments in Marx’s thought
• Staking out a communist approach to transhumanism and/or the singularity (e.g. a communist version of Kurzweil’s intelligence explosion)
• Engaging with the transhumanist kernel in left-accelerationist thought from a Marxist perspective
• Engaging with transhumanist projects or technologies from a Marxist perspective (e.g. radical life extension, terraforming, morphological freedom, space exploration, genetic modification, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, intelligence augmentation, brain emulation)
• Connecting transhumanism to the history of Marxist thought and socialist societies (e.g. Soviet space endeavours, central planning)

 

Please send abstracts of no more than 500 words in length, plus a short biography, to Dr. James Steinhoff (jsteinh@uw.edu) and Dr. Atle Mikkola Kjøsen (atlemk@gmail.com) by February 29th, 2020. Please put “New Proposals special issue” in the subject line. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out by March 31st, 2020. Full-length papers are 5,000 – 10,000 words.

Timeline:

29 February – deadline for submitting abstract and biography.

31 March – notifications of acceptance

1 August – deadline for submission of full-length (5,000 to 10,000 words) paper for peer review

15 November – submission of final revised paper

Early 2021 – papers published.

Please note that acceptance of an abstract does not guarantee publication. All submissions will be peer reviewed once papers are submitted.

 

References

Armesilla Conde, Santiago Javier. 2018. Is a Marxist Transhumanism possible? Eikasía – Revista de Filosofía 82, 47-86.

Bastani, Aaron. 2019. Fully automated luxury communism. Verso Books.

Bostrom, Nick. 2005. “A history of transhumanist thought”. Journal of Evolution & Technology 14:1.

Dyer-Witheford, Nick, Kjosen, Atle Mikkola and Steinhoff, James. 2019. Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism. London: Pluto Press.

Hughes, James J. 2012. “The Politics of Transhumanism and the Techno‐Millennial Imagination, 1626–2030”. Zygon 47:4, 757-776.

Humanity+. n.d.. “What is transhumanism?” https://whatistranshumanism.org/

Kurzweil, Ray. 2005. The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Penguin.

Mason, Paul. 2016. Postcapitalism: A guide to our future. Macmillan.

More, Max. 1990. “Transhumanism: Towards a futurist philosophy.” Extropy 6:6, 11.

Noonan, Jeff. 2016. “The Debate on Immortality: Posthumanist Science vs. Critical Philosophy”. The European Legacy 21:1, 38-51.

Rechtanwald, Michael. 2013. “The Singularity and Socialism.” Insurgent Notes. http://insurgentnotes.com/2013/10/the-singularity-and-socialism/

Srnicek, Nick, and Alex Williams. 2015. Inventing the future: Postcapitalism and a world without work. Verso Books.

Stambler, Ilia. 2010. “Life extension – a conservative enterprise? Some fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century precursors of transhumanism. ” Journal of Evolution & Technology 21:1, 13-26.

Steinhoff, James. 2014. “Transhumanism and Marxism: Philosophical Connections”. Journal of Evolution & Technology 24:2, 1-16.

New Proposals : Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry represents an attempt to explore issues, ideas, and problems that lie at the intersection between the academic disciplines of social science and the body of thought and political practice that has constituted Marxism over the last 150 years. New Proposals is a journal of Marxism and interdisciplinary Inquiry that is dedicated to the radical transformation of the contemporary world order. We see our role as providing a platform for research, commentary, and debate of the highest scholarly quality that contributes to the struggle to create a more just and humane world, in which the systematic and continuous exploitation, oppression, and fratricidal struggles that characterize the contemporary sociopolitical order no longer exist.

New Proposals is a fully open access journal. We do not charge publication or user fees as a condition of publication. However, if your institution provides funding to support open access publications we ask authors of accepted papers to apply for open access funding support from their institution. For authors at open access funded institutions the production fee is $350 for articles. There are no production fees for student feature articles, or for book reviews, commentaries or reflections of 5,000 words or less. If you have any questions please contact us. We fundamentally support the principles of full open access in academic publishing. It does cost money to do this, even as we rely upon a lot of good will, volunteer labour, and self-exploitation to get the publication out the door. Any support or assistance is always appreciated!

Special issue editors:

Dr. James Steinhoff is a UW Data Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington. He researches the artificial intelligence industry, data science labour, Marxist theory and automation. He is author of the forthcoming book Automation and Autonomy: Labour, Capital and Machines in the Artificial Intelligence Industry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) and co-author of Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism (Pluto Press 2019). .

Dr. Atle Mikkola Kjøsen is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. He researches Marxist value theory, media theory, logistics, artificial intelligence, androids, and post-singularity capitalism. With Nick Dyer-Witheford and James Steinhoff, he is co-author of Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism (Pluto Press 2019).

 

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Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

 

Open Marxism 4: Against a Closing World

Living Fire

OPEN MARXISM 4: AGAINST A CLOSING WORLD

FORTHCOMING LATE 2019

 

Foreword Open Marxism vol. 4

Open Marxism. Volume 4, 2019

Werner Bonefeld-York

https://www.academia.edu/38682137/Foreword_Open_Marxism_vol._4?campaign=upload_emailGo

(Draft) Foreword to the forthcoming edition of Open Marxism vol. 4, edited by Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, Alfonso García Vela, Edith González & John Holloway, Pluto Press, late 2019

 

Publication Date: 2019

Publication Name: Open Marxism. vol.4

FORTHCOMING NOVEMBER 2019

Ana Cecilia DINERSTEIN, Alfonso GARCIA VELA, Edith GONZALEZ and JOHN HOLLOWAY (Eds.)(2019) Open Marxism 4. Against a closing world, Pluto Press, London – NY. 

 

Foreword by Werner Bonefeld 

More than twenty years have passed since the publication of the first three volumes of Open Marxism. Since then, the approach has had a transformative impact on how we think about Marxism in the twenty-first century. 

‘Open Marxism’ aims to think of Marxism as a theory of struggle, not as an objective analysis of capitalist domination, arguing that money, capital and the state are forms of struggle from above and therefore open to resistance and rebellion. As critical thought is squeezed out of universities and geographical shifts shape the terrain of theoretical discussion, the editors argue now is the time for a new volume. 

Emphasising the contemporary relevance of ‘Open Marxism’ in our moment of political uncertainty, the collection shines a light on its significance for activists and academics today. 

 

See in PLUTO PRESS Catalogue pp. 14-15

http://plutopressmarketing.co.uk/public/PLUTO PRESS_LBF19 Rights Catalogue.pdf

 

Foreword

Werner Bonefeld

The previous three volumes of Open Marxism were published between 1992 and 1995. What a time that was! The Soviet Empire had collapsed, and capitalism was duly celebrated with great fanfare as not only victorious but also as the epitome of civilisation that had now been confirmed as history’s end – as if history maintains in the service of vast wealth a class of dispossessed producers of surplus value. History does not use pursue its own ends and it does not assert itself in the interests of bourgeois civilisation, morality and profitability. History does not make society. Nor does it take sides. It is rather that society makes history. And society is nothing other than the social individuals pursuing their own ends in their class divided social relations. History was truly made in the late 1980s and early 1990s. About this there is no doubt.

Amidst the fanfare, the debtor crisis of the 1980s had started to move from the global South to the global North, from the crash of 1987 via the third global recession in less than 20 years in the early 1990s to the various currency crises, including those of the British Pound and the Mexican Peso in 1992 and 1994 respectively. The Peso crisis coincided with the uprising of the Zapatistas in 1994. Then there was the emergence of China as a world power, founded on a labour economy that combines authoritarian government with the provision of cheap labour and disciplined labour relations. And it was the time also of the first Gulf war, mere posturing of might in search for a global enemy that was needed to secure the domestic containment of the querulous rabble, as Hegel put it when remarking on how a successful war can check the domestic unrest and consolidate the power of the state at home.

Since the early 1990s, with the passing into oblivion of the Soviet Empire, the entire edifice of Marxism-Leninism has tumbled also. It had served as the official doctrine and source for legitimation of state socialism and its various derivative ideologies that found expression in either Gramscian or Althusserian Eurocommunism or in the manifold sectarian organisations that proclaimed their allegiance to Trotsky, Lenin’s military commander and suppressor of the Kronstadt uprising of 1921. Although these traditions continue to force themselves onto the critique of political economy, their history has come to an end. They no longer provide the ideological foundation to what is now yesterday’s idea of the forward march of socialism. To be sure, some still believe in the revolutionary party as an end in itself. Yet, in reality the party is no more – it had in fact been gone a long time before. It died in Spain during the civil war and during the show-trails in Stalinist Russia and its morbid foundation perished finally in either 1953 or 1956, or indeed 1968. Like Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, Jean-Luc Mélenchon in France is just a ghost of yesterday. Neither is a Chavez or a Maduro, or indeed an Ortega – and that is a relief. In fact, both, Corbyn and Mélenchon, seek political power for the sake of justice in an unjust world. Instead of the critique of political economy, the endeavour now is to moralise and lament by way of political philosophy conceptions of well-being.

In distinction, the Open Marxism volumes did not argue for justice in an unjust world by means of state socialist planning of labour economy, and progressive schemes of taxation and just ideas for redistribution. Nor did they argue in favour of hegemonic strategies for the achievement of political power on behalf of the many. They did not endorse the state as the institution of institutions. Rather, they understood that profit is the purpose of capital and that the state is the political form of that purpose.They understood also that world market competition compels each nation state to achieve competitive labour markets, which are the condition for achieving a measure of social integration. The politics of competitiveness, sound money, fiscal prudence, enhanced labour productivity, belong to a system of wealth that sustains the welfare of workers on the condition that their labour yields a profit. In this system of wealth, the profitability of labour is a means not only of avoiding bankruptcy; it is also a means of sustaining the employment of labour. Protectionism is a measure of defence within free trade – and in relationship to labour markets, it amounts also to an anti-immigrant policy of exclusion and racialization, of the national us and the ‘othered’ them, citizens from nowhere.

The profitable exploitation of labour is the condition for the sustained employment of workers. It allows workers to maintain access to the means of subsistence through wage income. It is the case also that there is a fate far worth than being an exploited worker and that is, to be an unexploitable worker.  If labour power cannot be traded, what else can be sold to make a living and achieve a connection to the means of subsistence? That is, first of all, the producers of surplus value, dispossessed sellers of labour power, are free to struggle to make ends meet. Their struggle belongs to the conceptuality of capitalist wealth – that is, money that yields more money. In this conception of wealth the satisfaction of human needs is a mere sideshow. What counts is the time of money. What counts therefore is the valorisation of value through the extraction of surplus value. There is no time to spare. Time is money. And then suddenly society finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence to the class that works for its supper. And second, the understanding of the mysterious character of an equivalence exchange between unequal values, of money that yields more money, lies in the concept of surplus value. There is trade in labour power, and then there is the consumption of labour that produces a total value that is greater then the value of labour power. The equivalence exchange relations are thus founded on the class relationship between the buyers of labour power and the producers of surplus value. This social relationship, which entails a history of suffering, vanishes in its economic appearance as an exchange between one quantity of money and another.

Contrary to a whole history of Marxist thought, class struggle is not something positive. Rather, it belongs to the capitalist social relations, and drives them forward. Class struggle does not follow some abstract idea. Nor does it express some ontologically privileged position of the working class, according to which it is the driving force of historical progress as the traditions of state socialism saw it. Rather it is struggle for access to the means of subsistence. It is a struggle to make ends meet. The notion that this struggle manifests a socialist commitment because of itself, is really just an abstract idea. There is no doubt also that the demand for a politics of justice recognises the suffering of the dispossessed. Political commitment towards the betterment of the conditions of the working class is absolutely necessary – it civilises society’s treatment of its workers. Nevertheless, the critique of class society does not find its positive resolution in the achievement of fair and just exchange relations between the sellers of labour power and the consumers of labour. What is a fair wage?  Is it not the old dodge of the charitable alternative to the employer from hell, who nevertheless also pays his labourers with the monetised surplus value he previously extracted from them? The critique of class society finds its positive resolution only in a society in which the progress of the ‘muck of ages’ has come to an end.

The Open Marxism volumes of the 1990s saw themselves as a contribution to the attempt at freeing the critique of capitalist labour economy from the dogmatic embrace of the bright side view that capitalist economy is an irrationally organised labour economy. In this view socialism is superior to capitalism because it is a rationally organised labour economy through conscious planning by public authority. The anti-capitalism of central economic planning, or, in today’s flat enunciation of Negri’s and Hardt’s term of the multitude, the politics for the many is entirely abstract in its critique of labour economy. In fact, it presents the theology of anti-capitalism – one that looks on the bright side in the belief that progress will be made upon the taking of government by the party of labour. What is capitalist wealth, what belongs to its concept, and what is its dynamic, and what therefore holds sway in its concept?  Only a reified consciousness can declare that it is in possession of the requisite knowledge and technical expertise and know-how for regulating capitalism in the interests of the class that works for both, the expansion of social wealth in the form of capital and for its supper. The Open Marxism volumes sought to reassert the critique of the capitalist social relations as a critique of political economy, of both labour economy and the principle of political power, at least that was the critical intension.

The critical purpose of the Open Marxism volumes was to free Marx from the ‘perverters of historical materialism’, as Adorno had characterised the doctrinal Marxists in Negative Dialectics. For this to happen, looking on the bright side is not an option. Rather, it entails an attempt at thinking in and through the logic social wealth, its production and circulation, that holds sway in capitalist political economy. In the absence of such an attempt, the sheer unrest of life that belongs to the concept of capital and sustains its progress will not be understood. Instead, it will either be romanticised as alienated species being or viewed, with moralising righteousness, as an electoral resource.

The said purpose of the attempt at freeing Marx from orthodox ritualization was not in any case novel. In fact, it could look back onto a distinguished history that included the council communism of for example Pannekoek, Gorter and Mattick, the work of Karl Korsch, the critical theory of Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, the Yugoslav Praxis Group, Axelos’s open marxism, the Situationist International, the critical Marxist tradition in Latin America associated with Echeverría, Sánchez Vázquez, Schwarz, and Arantes, the state derivation debate of amongst others Gerstenberger, Blanke, Neußüss, and von Braunmühl, the neue Marx Lektüre of amongst others Backhaus, Reichelt and Schmidt, the autonomous Marxism of amongst others Dalla Costa, Federici, Tronti, Negri, Cleaver, and Bologna, and in the context of the British-based Conference of Socialist Economists from which it emerged, the works of especially Simon Clarke and John Holloway about value, class, and state. Simon Clarke’s critique of structuralist Marxism, especially the works of Levi-Strauss, Althusser and Poulantzas, and his contributions to state theory and value form analysis were fundamental in the immediate context of the early 1990s.

The title Open Marxism derived from the work of Johannes Agnoli, a Professor of the Critique of Politics at the Free University of Berlin. His contribution to the heterodox Marxist tradition focused the critique of political economy as a subversive critique of the economic categories, the philosophical concepts, the moral values and the political institutions, including the form of the state, of bourgeois society. The direct link between the title of the Open Marxism volumes and Agnoli is the title of a book that he published with Ernest Mandel in 1980: Offener Marxismus: Ein Gespräch über Dogmen, Orthodoxie & die Häresie der Realität (Open Marxism: A Discussion about Doctrines, Orthodoxy & the Heresy of Reality). The choice of the Open Marxism title was not about paying homage to Johannes Agnoli as the foremost subversive thinker of his time. It was programmatic.

The much too long delayed publication of this forth volume of Open Marxism does not require contextualisation. Nothing is as it was and everything is just the same. We live in a time of terror and we live in a time of war. The so-called elite has become a racket. Antisemitism is back en vogue as both the socialism of fools and as the expression of thoughtless resentment and nationalist paranoia. Racism is as pervasive as it always was – as enemy within and without. The so-called clash of civilisation is unrelenting in its inexorable attack on the promise of freedom. Even the talk about socialism in one country has made a comeback without sense of purpose – first because there can be none, and second because there is none. The political blow back of the crisis of 2008 has been intense and relentless Austerity. Precariat. Profitability. Rate of growth. Price competitiveness. What is so different however from the early 1990s is that capitalism as a term of critical inquiry has vanished; it is has disappeared from contemporary analysis. The Zeitgeist recognises neoliberalism as the object of critique. As a consequence, the past no longer comes alive in the critique of contemporary conditions. Instead, it appears as a counterfoil of imagined civility to today’s much-criticised neoliberal world. The critique of neoliberalism conjures up a time in which money did not yield more money but was rather put to work for growth and jobs. Illusion dominates reality. The spectre of society without memory is truly frightening.

While the first three volumes sought to free Marx from the dogmatic perverters of historical materialism, it seems to me that the purpose of the forth volume is to bring back centre stage the critique of capitalism, in parts to re-establish in a (self-) critical and open manner what the neoliberal Zeitgeist disavows, and in parts also to think afresh of what it means to say no.  On the one hand there is the preponderance of the object – society as a real abstraction that manifests itself behind the backs of the acting subjects – and on the other hand there is the spontaneity of the subject. Hope dies last.

York

March 26, 2019

 

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Pedagogy in the Post-Truth Era: An Anti-Trump Pro-test!

Derek Ford

 

 

 

 

 

A Seminar by Derek R. Ford (Assistant Professor of Education Studies, DePauw University, USA)

 

University of East London

Stratford Campus

Cass School of Education & Communities

17^th October 2018

12.30 – 2.00pm

Room: ED201

 

Abstract: Those who are in shock that truth doesn’t seem to matter in politics today miss the mark, for politics has never corresponded with truth. Instead, political struggle is about the formulation and materialization of new truths. In this sense, the “post-truth” era offers a new opportunity to articulate and fight for a new political reality. Yet rather than embrace this opportunity, the mainstream anti-Trump “resistance” aims to suture this opening and re-stabilize the political superstructure. This paper focuses instead on the left-wing resistance that’s organizing and mobilizing to force a new world into being. After articulating the coordinates of our “post-truth” moment, it investigates the educational logic of the protest. Specifically, I propose that the protest is when movements test their political line, their organizational capacity, and the existing order of things.

Biographical details: Derek R. Ford is Assistant Professor of Education studies at DePauw University, USA. His research emerges from the nexus of subjectivity, pedagogy, and revolutionary struggles. He has written and edited seven books, including Communist Study and Politics and Pedagogy in the “Post-Truth” Era: Insurgent Philosophy and Praxis. He is education chair at The Hampton Institute (a working-class think tank), an organizer with the Answer Coalition, and co-editor of LiberationSchool.org.

 

Seminar details: This seminar is organised by Dr Alpesh Maisuria, Senior Lecturer Education Studies, part of the International Centre for Public Pedagogy (ICuP) and the Marxism and Education and Education: Renewing Dialogues Series (MERD Co-Convenors Alpesh Maisuria and Tony Green).

 

Links:

Derek Ford’s book: Politics and Pedagogy in the “Post-Truth” Era: https://www.bloomsbury.com/…/politics-and-pedagogy-in-the-…/

Dr. Alpesh Maisuria: https://alpeshmaisuria.academia.edu/

ICPuP: https://www.uel.ac.uk/…/the-international-centre-for-public…

MERD facebook:https://www.facebook.com/groups/202497469816639/?fb_dtsg_ag=AdyC300tngNeUAmV0YiduaY9LBrsFhpfgYWjBZ2UgPpmVQ%3AAdxyQFjUkbZvsBPJUuFuTTHZ2ccCxx-oTjFqw4SAjWZD1g

Tony Green’s Marxism and Education Palgrave book series https://www.palgrave.com/gb/series/14811

 

All welcome. No registration required.

Please share widely.

Communist Study

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Subversive Magic: Libraries, Education and Capitalist Functionality

Ruth Rikowski

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ruth Rikowski

London South Bank University & Series Editor for the Chandos Information Professional Series

 

Thisd is Ruth Rikowski’s paper that she will be presenting at the Internatioanl Conference on Critical Education VIII, at the University of East London, Stratford Campus, on Saturday 28th July 2018.

Ruth’s paper can be down loade at Academia, at:  http://www.academia.edu/37112556/Subversive_Magic_Libraries_Education_and_Capitalist_Functionality

 

ABSTRACT

A Magical Marxism – as writers such as Andy Merrifield and Derek Ford have noted – can illuminate the future whilst helping to shatter the shackles of the past. Shining this light on libraries and education in contemporary capitalism allows us to glimpse the subversive magic which, on the one hand is dreaded by representatives of capital, and on the other generates hope for humankind. A brief autobiographical account of how libraries hold a certain kind of personal magic is included. Then the notion of ‘subversive magic’ is outlined, with reference to ideas drawn from Giordano Bruno and his ‘Essays on Magic’ (1588). This is contrasted with Abstract Magic: a form of magic ground in the capitalist impulse. From these preliminary points and in the context of libraries in England, the first stop in the analysis is the Mechanics Institutes. This is followed by examining the capitalist state’s attempts to curtail, or at least control, their subversive magic through establishing constraining cultural spaces; that is, a public library system. The strange cases of John Passmore Edwards and Andrew Carnegie libraries are considered at this juncture: specifically, their effects in terms of possibilities for enchanting the public library system. The falling apart of the capitalist state’s paradigm for libraries is then taken up, with an examination of Thatcherism and neoliberalism from the 1980s. During the 1980s, and 1990s, but especially after the capitalist crisis of 2007-09, together with Tory austerity policies and related cuts, public libraries have faced a resulting atmosphere of disenchantment. Today, the state library system has given way to capitalist functionality, together with desperate local attempts to re-enchant them. This point is illustrated through developments in libraries in the London Borough of Newham. The paper ends by discussing prospects for a new subversive magic in libraries. It also explores whether it is possible for state-financed libraries to ever let the subversive magic that is required to flourish, and whether they can nourish the dangerous imaginative qualities required for nurturing the communist impulse.

 

***END***

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Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

 

 

Karl Marx Reading Group – London – Capital Volume 2

Critique of Political Economy

 

As many scholars, critical thinkers, activists and interested parties as possible are invited to a new Reading Group in London UK beginning mid-October 2017 which will read Volume 2 of Capital by Karl Marx.

There are 3 founder members of the group: Dr. Pritam Singh – Professor of Political Economy at Oxford Brooks University Business School; Dr. Jon Hackett – Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at St. Mary’s University; and Biswadip Dasgupta, a lay student of Marx with extensive experience of Marx reading groups over the last few years.

Clearly the most suitable readers would be those who have already read Capital Volume 1 at least but others who have read other parts of Marx’s oeuvre or those who simply want a greater critical understanding of the capitalist economy are also welcome.

Looking forward to a great journey through Volume 2 of Marx’s great critique of political economy!

Please email farout.left@gmail.com for an invitation to join the Google group and discuss further details about the reading group.

Please circulate widely

Karl Marx

***END***

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Marx & Philosophy Society Annual Conference 2017

Critique of Political Economy

MARX & PHILOSOPHY SOCIETY ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2017

Marx and the Concept of Labour
24th June 2017
Room 822, University College London Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL
Conference poster (pdf)
Conference abstracts

 

Main speakers:
Mike Neary (Lincoln)
Critical theory as a critique of labour, featuring academic work; or, how do revolutionary teachers teach?
Sara Farris (Goldsmiths)
A Marxist-feminist approach to the theory of the reserve army of labour

Anselm Jappe (Sassari)
Marx and the ‘two-fold nature’ of labour: the ‘pivot’ of his critique of capitalism

Graduate panel:
Alastair Hemmens (Cardiff)
Labour, a ‘rational abstraction’? Robert Kurz’s substance of capital and resolving the labour aporia in Marx
Sean Winkler (Leuven)
The Hessen-Grossmann-Lukács Thesis: A Marxist Study of the emotions in early modern philosophy’
Michael Lazurus (Monash)
The standpoint of labour and Marx’s method

Directions: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/maps/ioe
Admission is free but please reserve a place in advance by emailing Eric John Russell at johndavid.correspondence@gmail.com

 

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

 

***END***

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Marx’s Grave

6th International Conference on Critical Education – 2016: Extended Call for Papers

ICCE 6

6^th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRITICAL EDUCATION – 2016

10 – 13 August 2016

Middlesex University

London

 

Extended Call for Papers: 31^st May 2016

The Deadline for Abstracts for the upcoming 6^th ICCE Conference has been extended to the end of May.

 

Plenary  Speakers include:
Peter McLaren (Chapman University, Orange, California, USA)
Hasan Hüseyin Aksoy (Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey)
Grant Banfield (Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia)
Joyce Canaan (Birmingham City University, Birmingham, UK)
Hana Cervinkova (University of Lower Silesia, Wroclaw, Poland)
Polina Chrysochou (Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, UK)
Agnieszka Dziemianowicz-Bąk (University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland)
Cassie Earl (Manchester Metropolitan Univesity, Manchester, UK)
Gail Edwards (Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK)
Ramin Farahmandpur (Portland State University, Portland, USA)
Derek Ford (Syracuse University, New York, USA)
Panayota Gounari (University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA)
Tom Griffiths (Newcastle University, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia)
George Grollios (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki,Thessaloniki, Greece)
Dave Hill (Institute for Education Policy Studies & National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece)
Gianna Katsampoura (National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens, Greece)
Leszek Koczanowicz (University of Sosial Sciences and Humanities, Wroclaw, Poland)
Vicky Makris (University of Alberta, Alberta, Canada)
Curry Malott (West Chester University of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, USA)
Alpesh Maisuria (University of East London, London, UK)
Lilia Monzo (Chapman University, California, USA)
Jayne Osgood (Middlesex University, London, UK)
Periklis Pavlidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece)
Leena Helavaara Robertson (Middlesex University, London, UK)
Fevziye Sayilan (Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey)
Kostas Skordoulis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece)
Juha Suoranta (University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland)
Spyros Themelis (University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK)
Meral Uysal (Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey)
Paolo Vittoria (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
Ahmet Yildiz (Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey)
The conference website is http://icce-2016.weebly.com/

Speakers are listed at http://icce-2016.weebly.com/program-speakers.html

Abstract Submission Form is at: http://icce-2016.weebly.com/abstract-submission.html

 

***END***

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Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Where Are We? The Revolutionary Left and the Class Struggle in the World Today

Class Struggle

WHERE ARE WE? THE REVOLUTIONARY LEFT AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN THE WORLD TODAY

XI Congress of Historical and Social Research of CEICS – Center for Study and Research in Social Sciences
International Meeting of the Revolutionary Left
– Call for Papers –
Where are we? The Revolutionary Left and the class struggle in the world today
Buenos Aires, from September 1 to 3 of 2016

The world burns: Africa is affected by the violence product of a growing social decay that deepens from the crisis of the Arab Spring to Boko Haram.  In the extremely pauperized Asia new conflicts arise from the economic slowdown; Europe moves from recession to mass mobilizations and struggles against the capitalist adjustment. USA swings between post-Obama political apathy and the radicalization of the Republican right; Middle East is, today, a seething cauldron; Latin America undergoes the crisis of the Bonapartist regimes that formerly appeased the almost revolutionary crisis of the end of last century.
Everywhere are to be seen these multifaceted expressions of a general crisis of global political relations. However, nowhere are to be seen the formation and development of revolutionary parties, let alone international coordination. Why doesn’t the crisis beget its own gravedigger? Furthermore, how is the class struggle today? What’s the role of the revolutionary vanguard? Is it carrying out the political task of building a revolutionary party? Those are the questions that we want to pose on the eve of the anniversary of the Russian Revolution:
For this purpose, we call, in the frame of the XI Congress of Historical and Social Research, the International Meeting of the Revolutionary Left. Its aim is to foster the scientific study of reality to further advance in the construction of the strategy and development of the organizations necessary to change that reality.  As in previous editions we invite researchers and activists of all tendencies to forge the necessary unity between reason and revolution.

The conference will be organized around four themes:

1. The global crisis
a. The economy
b. The society
c. The politics

2. The political alternatives
a. The religious fundamentalism
b. The nationalist movements
c. The crisis of Latin American populism
d. The emergence of alternatives in Europe
e. The anti-systemic movements

3. The current situation of the revolutionary left
a. What remains of Maoism and Guevarism?
b. Trotskyism today
c. The non-marxist left
d. Many strategies or no strategies?
e. Do we need a new international?

4. Marxism in the XXI century
a. Is the crisis of Marxism gone?
b. Marxism and modern science
c. Balance and prospects

Closure meeting:  Debate and discussion with revolutionary organizations

The themes are suggested as a guide for participants. However, this list is not exhaustive. Proposals are expected to be focused on these issues, either in current or historical perspective; empirical analysis and theoretical reflections are both welcome.

Timetable and format:
1. Deadline proposals for symposiums, Panel discussions and book presentations:  30th April 2016 proposals.
2. Deadline Abstracts: 30th, June 30 abstracts.
3. Deadline for presentations: 20th August.
4. Papers should not exceed 20,000 characters with spaces.

For more information please contact   <mailto:jornadas@razonyrevolucion.org> jornadas@razonyrevolucion.org
Website: http://jornadasceics.com.ar

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/xi-congress-of-historical-and-social-research-of-ceics-.-i-international-meeting-of-the-revolutionary-left

***END***

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Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Crises? What Crises?

Crisis

CRISES? WHAT CRISES?

Call for Papers for a Session on:

Crises? What Crises?

Society for Socialist Studies (SSS)

Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 2016

University of Calgary

May 31 – June 3, 2016

 

 

Economists aren’t sure the world economy ever got over the 2008/9 crisis but already warn of new financial and sovereign debt crises. Secular stagnation has become common parlance in economic circles.

Only environmentalists, pointing at climate change, the decline of biodiversity, water shortages and concomitant desertification, paint an even gloomier picture of the state and future of the world.

Not surprisingly, political scientists register a crisis of legitimation but also various crises of representation making it difficult for the discontented to articulate their concerns and mount movements for social and ecological change.

For the most parts, the left with its tradition of seeing itself as socialist heir of capitalist crises can’t capitalize on the overabundance of such crises. The crisis of the left, one might think, is even deeper than the various crises of capitalism.

• The session “Crises? What Crises?” invites papers discussing any of the following questions:
• Which kinds of crises is capitalism facing these days? Crises of the economy, ecology, legitimation, representation and/or hegemony?
• Do these crises affect only subsystems of capitalism or do they add up to an organic or general crisis of capitalism?
• Are these crises structural or conjunctural?
• What role could the left play in overcoming capitalist crises?
• Is the left in crisis, too? If so, what kind of crisis is that and how might it be overcome?

Session organizer:

Ingo Schmidt, ingos@athabascau.ca

Paper titles and abstracts (maximum of 100 words) should be submitted by Friday, January 29, 2016.

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/cfp-crises-what-crises-socialist-studies-session-calgary-may-31-june-3-2016

 

Work on Crisis (and Education) by Glenn Rikowski:

Rikowski, G. (2014) Crises in Education, Crises of Education, A paper prepared for the Philosophy of Education Seminars at the University of London Institute of Education 2014-15 Programme, 22^nd October 2014. Available at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8953489/Crises_in_Education_Crises_of_Education

Rikowski, G. (2015) Crises, Commodities and Education: Disruptions, Eruptions, Interruptions and Ruptions, a paper prepared for the Research in Critical Education Studies (RiCES) Seminar, School of Education, University of Lincoln, 19^th November 2105 (Revised 2^nd December, 2015). Available at Academia: http://www.academia.edu/18511424/Crises_Commodities_and_Education_Disruptions_Eruptions_Interruptions_and_Ruptions

***END***

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Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

CRISIS

Stuart Hood – Centenary Day Conference

Stuart Hood

STUART HOOD (1915-2011)

CENTENARY DAY CONFERENCE

Open University in London and the South-East

1-11 Hawley Crescent

London NW1 8NP

(Near Camden Town tube on the Northern Line)

Saturday November 28

10.30 a.m. – 5.30 p.m.

We hope to provide coffee and tea and there will be a social space for discussion over lunch (not provided). There are takeway catering facilities nearby.

There is no conference fee.  But please register your attendance with Hilary Horrocks at: hilaryhorrocks@btinternet.com as the venue has a limited capacity.

*

Stuart Hood, born in small-town NE Scotland in 1915, volunteered for army service in 1940 and was captured in the North African desert while stationed in Cairo with British Intelligence. He was released from an Italian prisoner of war camp at the time of the Armistice in September 1943 and, during an almost-year-long journey to meet the Allied advance, fought with Tuscan partisans, participating in the now semi-mythologised Battle of Valibona (January 1944). His memoir Pebbles from My Skull (1963), often republished, mainly as Carlino, is a classic reflection on his time in war-torn Italy. He worked for 17 years at the BBC, resigning in frustration from the position of Controller of Programmes, Television, in 1963, having been responsible for programmes such as Z-Cars and That Was the Week That Was. He made important documentaries including The Trial of [Soviet dissidents] Daniel and Sinyavsky; and was briefly Professor of Media Studies at the Royal College until asked to resign following his support for student protests. He latterly taught at the University of Sussex. He was a distinguished translator, particularly from German (including the poems of his great friend, Erich Fried) and Italian (including work by Dario Fo and Pier Paolo Pasolini). Returning to an earlier career as a fiction writer, he published a series of novels – A Storm from Paradise (1985), The Upper Hand (1987), The Brutal Heart (1989), A Den of Foxes (1991), and The Book of Judith (1995) – which draw on his Scottish childhood, his wartime experiences and his encounters with, amongst others, members of the Baader-Meinhof group. He joined the Communist Party as a student in Edinburgh but after the war was an anti-Stalinist socialist and briefly, in the 1970s, a member of the Workers Revolutionary Party. Influenced by the class-conscious trade unionists he had met in his university days, he was, also in the 1970s, an active Vice-President of the film and TV technicians’ union, ACTT.

Provisional conference programme follows …

 

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME (subject to amendment)

10.30 Arrival and Registration

10.45 Welcome, Terry Brotherstone and David Johnson

 

10.50-11.50 Session One

10.50 Showing of extracts from Stuart Hood’s documentary return to his childhood home, A View from Caterthun, with commentary by filmmakers Don Coutts and Christeen Winford.

11.20 Hilary Horrocks (freelance editor and independent researcher), ‘Stuart Hood, Partigiano – finding traces today in Emilio-Romagna and Tuscany’.

 

11.55-12.45 Session Two

11.55 Phil Cooke (University of Strathclyde), ‘The Italian Resistance: recent work on the historical context of Carlino’.

12.20 Karla Benske (Glasgow Caledonian University), ‘Showcasing the “compexity of human reactions”: an appreciation of Stuart Hood’s novels’.

 

12.45 Lunch

 

2.00-3.15 Session Three

2.00 Robert Lumley (University College, London), ‘Keeping Faith: revisiting interviews with Stuart Hood’.

2.25 Brian Winston (University of Lincoln) and Tony Garnett (film and TV director and producer), ‘Stuart Hood and the Media’.

3.15-3.30 Break

 

3.30-4.45 Session Four

3.30 David Johnson (Open University), ‘Stuart Hood, Scottish Literature and Scottish Nationalism’.

3.55 Haim Bresheeth (London School of Economics), ‘Working with Stuart on the Holocaust’.

4.20 Terry Brotherstone (University of Aberdeen) will lead a discussion on Stuart Hood’s politics, including his involvement in the 1970s with the Workers Revolutionary Party.

 

4.45-5.30 Session Five

4.45 Final reflections and future proposals.

5.15 Close.

5.30 Social gathering nearby.

 

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/stuart-hood-1915-2011-centenary-day-conference-28-november

 

***END***

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Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Recapturing Marx on Gender, Race and Colonialism: Beyond Post-Modernism and Orthodox Marxism

Kevin Andersdon

RECAPTURING MARX ON GENDER, RACE AND COLONIALISM: BEYOND POST-MODERNISM AND ORTHODOX MARXISM

London Public Meeting

7.30 pm, Thursday, 5 November 2015
Cock Tavern, 23 Phoenix Road, Euston, London, NW1 1HB
(5 minute walk from Euston or Kings Cross Undergrounds)

 

Speakers:

– Heather Brown, author of Marx on Gender and the Family: A Critical Study
– Kevin Anderson, author of Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity and Non-Western Societies
– Gilbert Achcar, author of Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism
Chairperson:
– Peter Hudis, author of Frantz Fanon: Philosopher of the Barricades

 

Sponsored by the International Marxist-Humanist Organization
Further information: http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/

Karl Marx

***END***

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Marx’s Grave

12th Working Class Bookfair

12th WORKING CLASS BOOKFAIR

31st October 2015
Saturday at 11:00–17:00

Museum Vaults
Silksworth Row, SR1 3QJ City of Sunderland, UK
Directions: About 11 minutes walk from Sunderland rail station

Sunderland Working Class Bookfair 2015

Books, magazines and pamphlets will cover at least: local and general history, Marxism, environment, football and other sport, culture, railways, mining, fiction, social science, co-operatives, economics, Anarchism, international relations, Socialism, trade unions, sex, drugs & rock n’ roll… smile emoticon
Stalls confirmed so far include Unite Community, Clothing Bank, Active Distribution, PM Press and Mayday Books

What is going on?

Despite the accidental way Jeremy Corbyn has become Labour leader this has opened up new spaces for politics, and we aim to welcome all progressive people.

Immediately, the Tories are in crisis with the defeat in the Lords, but this doesn’t mean we are happy with things as they are, no – we want lots more!

REMEMBER Remember the 5th of November is coming up soon and we hope everybody’s making their Tory dummies to burn. Andrew Lloyd Webber is the latest candidate to add to our list of dummies.

On a wider level the Liberals have collapsed because they’re career opportunists; its class against class now and you have to take sides. Recent media scare stories have proven that the spectre that haunts Europe is no longer that of communism but of anarchism, and on this Halloween we can note the importance of this haunting.

Our side are the poor, workers, unemployed, the NEETS, disabled, the pensioners and those trying to get a decent pension, migrants and the otherwise oppressed such as the trainee workers – THE STUDENTS. We want to spread great literature that is useful for our people.
Words are not enough though and we have to put ideas into practice on a large scale.

Come and plan for the day out in London when the massed ranks of education workers, students and the otherwise pissed off at the TORY government will be making their voices heard for once on the large STUDENT protest on November 4th in London.

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of anarchism

In London a large Anonymous march on November 5th will see Class War dragging an effigy of Zac Goldsmith, the posh Tory boy Mayoral candidate, down Downing Street where it’s going to be burnt.

Hopefully we will be hearing from those who went to the Manchester Tory conference about what a great time they had too.

This is an open invite to all fellow travellers to come on down to the 31st October Bookfair and have a great time; Teesside Solidarity Movement, Steelworkers, Sunderland Welfare Action group, the Industrial Workers of the World, SPGB, Class War, NUM, Mayday books, North East Anarchists, the Black Bloc (if we can find them), UKUNCUT, syndicalists, students, teachers and lecturers, and many more are invited as well.

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/12th-working-class-bookfair.-31st-october-2015.-sunderland

***END***

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

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/