Marxism

CLIMATE CHANGE IS THE MAIN SUBJECT OF THE DAY, AND RIGHTLY SO. WHAT DO MARXISTS HAVE TO SAY THAT MAY BE HELPFUL IN UNDERSTANDING IT AND HOPEFULLY (AND IT'S ONLY A POSSIBILITY) STOPPING IT?.... OR - WHAT IS THE RELATION BETWEEN CLIMATE CHANGE AND CLASS STRUGGLE?

Escalating fascist and racist violence grows out of the bipartisan capitalist offensive against immigrants: not only Trump’s border wall with Mexico and anti-Muslim ban, but Obama’s record deportations and Democrats’ policy of border militarization. Key to fighting anti-immigrant hysteria is mobilizing the power of the multiethnic working class. The Internationalist Group calls for workers action to stop deportations and crush the fascists. In the Pacific Northwest, Class Struggle Workers – Portland sparked union motions to mobilize against racist/fascist provocations, and initiated Portland Labor Against the Fascists that brought out some 300 unionists and supporters in 2017. It calls to form workers defense guards to defeat the fascist threat. In the 2016 elections Painters Local 10 called to break with all bosses’ parties, and for a class-struggle workers party. In Los Angeles, transit workers have marched with Teamsters defending Salvadoran immigrants. In New York, Trabajadores Internacionales Clasistas has joined in unionizing immigrant workers, demanding full citizenship rights for all immigrants.

My Mis-Education in 3 Graphics documents the filmmaker’s darkly humorous journey through the mind-boggling constructs of mainstream economics. Critics offer some clear-sighted alternatives to the dominating economists' beliefs and models. The film is a visually fun satire deconstructing the current orthodox version of "the dismal science". Filmed introductory economics course lectures and interviews with economists reveal the enormous rift between the economic textbook models and the filmmaker’s and other critics’ understandings of economic reality. The first part of the film explores how mainstream economics (mis)represents markets, the next is a presentation of their befuddling model of the firm, and the final section, on macroeconomics, points to some of the major issues hidden by the models: financial debt’s contribution to inequality, and the unaccounted for destruction of the natural world. Mainstream economists such as N.Gregory Mankiw, George Borts, Timothy Taylor, and Lawrence Summers are critiqued by Herman Daly, Michael Hudson, Randall Wray, Richard McIntyre, Richard and Max Wolff, Robert Pollin, Nancy Holmstrom, Richard Smith, Costas Panayotakis, Doug Henwood, John Foster, Susan Feiner, and Stephen Marglin.

The New Deal is widely associated with socialism. This association holds true not only within the popular imagination shared across many sections of American society, but also within the historical imagination of the contemporary Left. This panel will consider the New Deal as it appeared to organized political tendencies that struggled for socialism during and after the 1930s. It will ask whether and how the New Deal -- its life, its legacy, its crisis, its memory, and its potential revival -- has advanced the struggle for socialism in America and beyond. We ask the panelists to consider the following questions: How did socialists of various tendencies-- the Communist Party USA, the Socialist Party of America, Trotskyists, and anarchists-- relate to the New Deal during the 1930s? How, in their respective views, did the New Deal (considered both as policy and as politics) present obstacles to and/or opportunities for advancing the struggle for socialism? The liberal political coalition forged in part through New Deal policies subsequently prosecuted first the anti-fascist Second World War and then the anti-Communist Cold War; it also administered the American-led reconstitution of global capitalism beginning in 1945 that oversaw the creation of the European welfare state. Considering how the New Deal helped usher in a new era of global capitalism: What is the New Deal's relationship to socialism? What is its relationship to capitalism?

In his 1973 essay, "Anatomy of the Micro-Sect," Hal Draper gives a definition of a party as opposed to a ‘movement’ or the ‘sects’ that seemed to dominate the Left of his time: “A sect presents itself as the embodiment of the socialist movement, though it is a membership organization whose boundary is set more or less rigidly by the points in its political program rather than by its relation to the social struggle. In contrast, a working-class party is not simply an electoral organization but rather, whether electorally engaged or not, an organization which really is the political arm of decisive sectors of the working class, which politically reflects (or refracts) the working class in motion as it is. A “socialist movement” sums up the mass manifestations of a socialist working class in various fields, not only the political, usually around a mass socialist party.” Against both the “sect” and merely building a “movement,” Draper argues for the formation of a “political center,” which would be different from a unification of sects, as a first step towards the goal of building a socialist party. How is our present moment similar to or different from that of Draper? What is a socialist party and what are the greatest obstacles today to its realization and how can those obstacles be met? Hal Draper was deeply influenced by his study of Marx and Marxism when he wrote this essay. What can we learn from Hal Draper’s Marxism today?

A proper material analysis of the world requires constant engagement with developments in science and philosophy. This panel hopes to explore the ideas how complexity science, evolution, computation, sync, and similar scientific and philosophical insights might inform today's left politics. The presentation will start with a discussion of basic principles of complexity theory such as linear vs non-linear systems, replication, feedback, emergent behavior, and sync. Within this framework we will look at some example phenomena in today's political discourse such as individual and systemic racism, third party politics, comparative revolutionary processes, and how complex systems inform debt unionization.

This panel brings together the works of Darren Byler (Washington), Gerald Roche (La Trobe), and Bilal "Zenab" Ahmed (SOAS) to rethink Xinjiang with a leftist perspective that discusses the historical evolution of Chinese state activity in the province, and how it will continue to evolve, and have wider impacts through new models of administration, and population management, in particular through Belt and Road projects. Byler will be discussing "Terror Capitalism," in Xinjiang, with an examination of trans-carceral politics and the use of data science. Roche will look at Chinese internal colonialism, with partial reference to projects in Tibet. Ahmed will look at the use of neoplatonist philosophy in paramilitary and data science projects, in the province. Following the three presentations, there will be time for moderated discussion, and audience participation.

This panel will examine the political economy of the weak recovery since the 2008 financial crisis. The panel will examine the weakness of this recovery in connection with the failure of the recession of 2008-9 to destroy or devalue sufficient unprofitable capital, or deleverage enough debt, to ensure a strong rebound in profitability. The fragility came, above all, from the bloated financial system, which threatened to generalise any new sign of crisis. The uncertainty was a product of state interventions that helped put a floor under the crisis without resolving the fundamental problems that caused it.

At the panel speakers will argue that the decline of neo-liberalism and the growth of a new conservative wave are objectively conditioned. The prevailing model of late capitalism that has led to the domination of the market of simulacra, financialization and stagnation, called the ‘new normality’, cannot ensure the progress of the productive forces that are on the verge of not just another technological revolution, but a qualitative change – the genesis of the economy in which a decisive role will be played not by reproductive, but by creative work. Not just re-industrialization – the coming creative revolution – necessitates at least a deep reform of the currently dominant social and economic system. The non-realization of these changes is fraught with conservative regress of both the economy and society. The main directions of reforming the system of economic relations that respond to the challenges of the progress of the productive forces will be discussed at the panel.

Within the panel, speakers from Russia and the United States - famous scientists and public figures will show that the basis of the ongoing 5-year conflict between Russia and the US is the contradiction of the corporate capitals of these countries, which are closely aligned with the top of their state apparatus.