MARX 2019//climate change and

the end of capitalism//

25.10 - 27.10

SCHEDULE AND INFORMATION

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

//climate change and the end of capitalism//

Marx2019 will provide a meeting place for activists and researchers who take Marx and the Marxist tradition as points of departures in their organizing, writing, struggles and research. Following on the previous conferences of 2013 and 2016, this year’s conference focuses on the topic of Climate Change and the End of Capitalism. The program will involve dozens of panels, talks and presentations, mainly (but not exclusively) centered on the question of eco-socialism and the intersections of climate activism and Marxist thought.

Warm greetings from the organizers:Centrum för Marxistiska Samhällsstudier, ABF Stockholm, Svenska Clartéförbundet, Fronesis, Transform! Europe

WHERE? ABF-huset, Sveavägen 41 in central Stockholm

HOW DO I GET THERE? Subway station (T) Rådmansgatan

WHEN? Friday 25th 17:30-20:00, Saturday 26th 10:00-17:30

and Sunday 27th 11:00-16:45

DO I NEED TO REGISTER? No, but you are required to pay the 100 SEK fee beforehand or upon arriving at the conference any time during the three days.

WHAT LANGUAGE WILL THE SESSIONS BE IN? Mostly English, the sessions held in Swedish are highlighted in the schedule

Please follow this link to purchase tickets online.

Click here to find the Facebook-event where we will post updates.

Do not hesistate to CONTACT US at info@marxconf.org

SôNIA GUAJAJARA [BRA] / ANDREAS MALM [SWE]

AARON BASTANI [UK] / COSTAS LAPAVITSAS [GRC]

STEFANIA BARCA [PRT] / CHRISTOPHER SELLERS [USA]

GÖRAN THERBORN [SWE] / KATE SOPER [UK]

We ask for donations to make the conference better, stronger and for it’s work to make a difference. Swish: 1233720018

SCHEDULE: SATURDAY 26th

ZÄTA PALME SANDLER

Opening

Andreas Malm Reformismens andra chans

Communist spirits - the afterlives of Chinese communism

Sônia Guajajara I: Whiteness, fascism, fossil fuel

The Specters of an Impasse

Costas Lapavitsas II: Whiteness, fascism, fossil fuel

Reclaiming ideological and programmatic hegemony

The enemy of nature is not the worker but capitalism

Conversation:Costas Lapavitsas & Kajsa Ekis Ekman

Klimatomställning och revolution

10:00-10:30

10:45-12:15

12:30-14:00

14:15-15:45

16:00-17:30

SCHEDULE: SUNDAY 27th

ZÄTA PALME SANDLER

Aaron Bastani Egendom och makt

Vem blir fascist?

Kate Soper Vad kämpar klimatrörelsen för?

Till ideologi-kritikens försvar

Göran Therborn Rätten - kritiskt motstånd eller kapitalismens smörjmedel?

Rebellious agency

Final words

11:00-12:30

12:45-14:15

14:30-16:00

16:15-16:45

//the party saturday evening////friday pre conference talks//

Join us at RESTAURANT CIRKELN 17:30-20:00 on Friday 25th where we will arrange interviews, shorter talks and present samples from the program together with some of the participants in the sessions, organizers and the climate movement.

Between 19:00 and 00:00 on Saturday 26th we celebrate with music, drinks, poetry and DJs. More details to be announced a few weeks before the conference. Are you an artist, DJ or do you know someone who should perform? Send us suggestions on info@marxconf.org

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

ANDREAS MALM is a senior lecturer in human ecology at Lund University, as well as a prolific writer and journalist. His research and writings focus on the intersections of capitalism and climate change, as well as on the politics of opposing the fossil capitalist system. Amongst his works are Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming and The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World. His talk will concern ways to escalate the struggle against climate change, and the possibilities of direct action and sabotage.

SôNIA GUAJAJARA is an environmental and indigenous activist, and the executive coor-dinator of Brazil’s indigenous movement, Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil, as well as the former vice-presidential candidate of Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party. Guajajara is a leading voice advocating the protection of the Amazon rainforest and indigenous land rights against president Bolsonaro’s plans to open up reservations to mining and commercial farming. Her talk will be followed by a conversation with Patricia Lorenzoni.

COSTAS LAPAVITSAS is a professor of Eco-nomics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is an expert on the relationships between financial systems and development. Based on his expertise in these fields he is a critic of the current capita-list system. Lapavitsas also criticizes the political and economic role played by the European Uni-on in upholding the principles and foundations of this system. His presentation at Marx2019 will highlight the continuing relevance of a Left criticism of the European Union.

CHRISTOPHER SELLERS is a professor of history at Stony Brook University. His rese-arch concentrates on the history of environment and health, of cities and industries, and of inequ-ality and democracy, with a focus on the United States and Mexico. He holds a Ph.D. in Ame-rican Studies from Yale and an M.D. He is the author of Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Di-sease to Environmental Health Science; Crabgrass Crucible: Suburban Nature and Environmentalism in Twentieth-Century America and co-editor of, among other edited volumes, Dangerous Trade: Histories of Industrial Hazard across a Globalizing World .

STEFANIA BARCA is a senior researcher at the University of Coimbra. She holds a PhD in Economic History and has been a visiting scholar at Yale University, postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, and guest professor at Lund Uni-versity. In the past ten years, she has published widely on the political ecology of industrial ca-pitalism, with focus on labour and environmen-tal politics, socialist ecofeminism, environmental justice, degrowth; she has recently co-edited the book collection Towards the Political Economy of Degrowth. She is actively contributing to shaping a Green New Deal policy proposal in Europe.

GÖRAN THERBORN is a professor emeritus of sociology at Cambridge University and is amongst the most highly cited contempora-ry Marxian-influenced sociologists. He has published widely in journals such as the New Left Review, and is notable for his writing on topics that fall within the general political and sociological framework of post-Marxism. Topics on which he has written extensively include the intersection between the class structure of society and the function of the state apparatus, the for-mation of ideology within subjects, and the futu-re of the Marxist tradition.

AARON BASTANI is co-founder and Senior Editor at Novara Media and has a doctorate from the University of London. His research interests include new media, social movements and political economy. He has written for Vice, the Guardian, the London Review of Books and the New York Times and regularly appears on the BBC and Sky News. In his new book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Bastani conju-res a vision of extraordinary hope, showing how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology, and establish meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society merely heralds the real beginning of his-tory. His talk will be followed by a conversation with Aron Etzler, party secretary of the Left Par-ty in Sweden.

KATE SOPER is a British emeritus profes-sor of philosophy, currently at University of Brighton. Her work has focused on femi-nism, the environment and theories of need and consumption. Her most important works include What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Hu-man and The Politics and Pleasures of Consuming Differently. Her talk will concern the current job-loss and disaffection with work, and on the form that a more benign post-work order might take. In contrast to the tech-utopian and ‘luxury com-munism’ visions currently influential on the Left with their rather orthodox views on consump-tion, she will defend the potential of a less tech-no-driven and intensive work culture for intro-ducing more fulfilling ways of living, developing new skills and reinstating some earlier ways of doing and making.

SESSIONS

SATURDAY 26.10

Period 1 10:45-12:15

[ZÄTA] Andreas Malm is a senior lecturer in human ecology at Lund University, as well as a prolific writer and journalist. His research and writings focus on the intersections of capital- ism and climate change, as well as on the politics of opposing the fossil capitalist system. Amongst his works are Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power, the Roots of Global Warming and The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World. His talk will concern ways to escalate the struggle against climate change, and the possibilities of direct action and sabotage.

[PALME] Klimatkrisen – reformismens andra chans? Om löntagarfondsfrågans aktualitet För ett sekel sedan, med införandet av den politiska demokratin, intensifierades diskussionen om möjligheterna att utveckla en reformistisk, samhällsomdanande strategi som syftade till att överskrida kapitalismen och bana väg för socialismen. Demokratin uppfattades då som det instrument som stod arbetarklassen till buds i strävan efter en socialistisk samhälls- omvandling. Kapitalismen skulle bli sin egen dödgrävare genom att göra arbetarklassen till en majoritet i samhället som på demokratisk väg kunde genomföra den eftersträvade samhällsomvandlingen. Nu, hundra år senare, är denna reformistiska politiska strategi död och begraven, i Sverige symboliserat av misslyckandet på 1970-talet att genomföra den ekonomiska demokratin i form av förslaget till kollektiv kapitalbildning genom löntagar-fonder. Men idag har löntagarfondsfrågan aktualiserats på nytt inom vänstern i USA, Norge och Storbritannien. Innebär det ett försök att väcka liv i en traditionell reformistisk strategi eller utveckla en ny? Och kan löntagarfonder och, bredare, ekonomisk demokrati erbjuda ett instrument för att förhindra att kapitalismen löper akut och ytterligare skärper klimatkrisen? Medverkande: Lars Ekdahl, professor emeritus i historia vid Södertörns högskola. Arrangör: Clarté

[SANDLER] Communist Spirits: Discussing Afterlives of Chinese CommunismSeventy years after the Chinese Revolution of 1949, what remains of Mao’s communist legacy? This session brings together authors from the recently published volume Afterlives of Chinese Communism (2019 Verso) to discuss how, and to what extent, concepts and practices from the Mao period continue to shape Chinese politics today. Taking Chinese revolutionary political discourse as the point of departure, the panellists will explore the lessons we can learn from the Chinese communist project and whether there is a future for the egalitarian politics that communism once promise. Chair: Catherine Liu (University of California – Irvine) Panellists: Ivan Franceschini (Australian National University), Matt Galway (University of Melbourne), Jane Hayward (King’s College London), Nicholas Loubere (Lund University), Christian Sorace (Colorado College)

Period 2 12:30-14:00

[ZÄTA] Sônia Guajajara is an environmental and indigenous activist, and the executive coordinator of Brazil’s indigenous movement, Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil, as well as the former vice-presidential candidate of Brazil’s Socialism and Liberty Party. Guajajara is a leading voice advocating the protection of the Amazon rainforest and indigenous land rights against president Bolsonaro’s plans to open up reservations to mining and commercial farming. Her talk will be followed by a conversation with Patricia Lorenzoni.

[PALME] White skin, black fuel I: Responses to climate change from far-right denial to liberal democracy´s inaction- “The Denial Machine - how the fossil fuel industry shaped the climate change debate?”Kjell Vowles is a PhD-student within the Centre for Studies of Climate Change Denialism (CEFORCED)-project, and is researching on climate change denialism in combination with nationalism and radical right-thinking.- Anna Bartfai, an environmental activist and member of the Zetkin Collective.- “Climate change, complicity and economic growth- early response denialism in Sweden”Kristoffer Ekberg is a researcher at Chalmers University of Technology. As a part of the Centre for Studies of Climate Change Denialism (CEFORCED) he is currently working on the history of Swedish climate change knowledge and denial in the political and industrial spheres. - “Changing climate policies in Norway: green – neoliberal – denial”Ståle Holgersen is researcher at Institute for Housing and Urban Research (IBF) and at Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala University. He is a member of the Zetkin Collective

[SANDLER] The Specters of an Impasse: The Ideologies of Environmental DestructionThe capitalist mode of production, to which transformation, exploitation, and the destruction of nature is inherent as it seeks to meet its demand for perpetual capital expansion and accumulation, exerts considerable pressure on the ecosystems on our planet. Different ideological constructions, fantasies, practices, and discourses serve to conceal and maintain the exploitative nature of this system, and in this session, we invite everyone who is interested in exploring the origins, workings, and outcomes of such ideologies. This session also invites contributions that investigate how struggles over, and discourses about nature and environ-mental issues may themselves be ideologically constituted. Participants: Jonas Thoreson, Örjan Bartholdson och Katarina Landström

Period 3 14:15-15:45

[ZÄTA] Costas Lapavitsas is a professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is an expert on the relationships between financial systems and development. Based on his expertise in these fields he is a critic of the current capitalist system. Lapavitsas also criticizes the political and economic role played by the European Union in upholding the principles and foundations of this system. His presentation at Marx2019 will highlight the continuing relevance of a Left criticism of the European Union.

[PALME] White skin, black fuel II: whiteness, fascism, nationalism, and fossil fuel- ”Autarky in the UK: nationalism and climate change”George Edwards is a student and researcher at the Human Ecology department at Lund University. He is a member of the Zetkin Collective.- ”Kulturbolschewismus and on the role of fossil fuels in Nazi Germany”Laudy van den Heuvel has previously studied Dutch Language and Culture and Sociology in Nijmegen (NL), Ghent (B) and Brussels. She is currently doing her Master's in Human Ecology at Lund University. She is a member of the Zetkin Collective.- Skin and fuel: episodes from the history of fossilised whitenessAndreas Malm is a senior lecturer in human ecology at Lund University, as well as a prolific writer and journalist. He is a member of the Zetkin Collective.

[SANDLER] Reclaiming ideological and programmatic hegemony: The role of radical left political foundations in EuropeAlthough it is increasingly obvious that neoliberal capitalism is responsible for the catastrophic climate change and the increase of poverty and inequalities in Europe and the world, people either do not react, or are attracted by authoritarian, nationalist and extreme right discourses. Political education of radical left party members, activists of social movements, trade- unionists and, in a broader sense, society as a whole is an important weapon in the necessary fight of emancipatory forces for regaining hegemony in the field of ideas. Representatives of five European radical left and marxist think tanks (the Swedish Center for Marxist Social Studies, the French Espaces Marx, the Spanish Foundation for Marxist Studies the Greek Nicos Poulantzas Institute, the German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation) and the European network transform! europe discuss their own experiences among themselves and with the public and trace a road for a closer future cooperation.

Period 4 16:00-17:30

[ZÄTA] The enemy of nature is not the worker but capitalism. How to merge class and environmental struggles.The conflict between the environment and work has always been a central theme in the environmental movement. For a long time and still today for many environmentalists, workers are accused of being insensitive towards ecological issues. According to this narrative, for them preserving their jobs is the main aim. Instead, scientific research and struggles on the ground have clearly proved that workers have been and should be crucial actors in any environmentalist mobilization which aims to merge social and environmental justice. We will discuss of labour and the environmental question with two eminent scholars who have uncovered the hidden histories of working-class commitment to socio-ecological justice. Panelists: Stefania Barca and Chistopher Sellers. Chair: Marco Armiero

[PALME] Conversation: Costas Lapavitsas & Kajsa Ekis EkmanThis conversation will revolve around the political implications of the EU’s current development and what implications it may have for member countries such as Sweden, the United Kingdom and Greece, as well as the implications of development for progressive politics. Kajsa Ekis Ekman is a Swedish journalist, writer, and activist. She is the author of several works about the financial crisis, women’s rights, and capitalism critique. Her book Stolen Spring describes the eurocrisis as seen from Athens, and the way in which it affected the Greek economy.

[SANDLER] Klimatomställning och revolution Varför är frågan om revolution avgörande för våra chanser att lyckas möta klimathotet? Vilka förutsättningar finns för en sådan revolutionär klimatomställning? Hur skulle den kunna se ut? Utgångspunkten för samtalet är dels Fronesis #60-61 med temat Revolution, dels en serie artiklar som publicerats under åren i Röda Rummet. I Fronesis temanummer ryms texter om revolutionsbegreppets olika betydelser (exempelvis Marx distinktion mellan borgerlig och proletär revolution) och frågan om revolutionära strategier (bland annat genom texter av Michael Hardt och Antonio Negri å ena sidan och Jodi Dean å den andra). I Röda Rummet har en rad artiklar, inte minst om ekosocialism, publicerats som ger perspektiv på de frågor som ska lyftas i panelsamtalet. Medverkande: Nina Björk, litteraturvetare och författare, Lars Henriksson, facklig aktivist och socialist och samtalsledare Johan Örestig, sociolog och aktivist. Ar-rangör: Tidskrifterna Röda Rummet och Fronesis.

SUNDAY 27.10

Period 1 11:00-12:30

[ZÄTA] Aaron Bastani is co-founder and Senior Editor at Novara Media and has a doctorate from the University of London. His research interests include new media, social movements and political economy. He has written for Vice, the Guardian, the London Review of Books and the New York Times and regularly appears on the BBC and Sky News. In his new book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Bastani conjures a vision of extraordinary hope, showing how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology, and establish meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society merely heralds the real beginning of history. His talk will be followed by a conversation with Aron Etzler, party secretary of the Left Party in Sweden.

[PALME] Egendom och maktUnder 1980-talet vändes den utveckling som i Sverige och många andra delar av världen under lång tid hade kännetecknats av minskat fåvälde, minskad ojämlikhet och utvidgade sociala rättigheter. När vi i finanskrisens kölvatten ser olika rörelser och partier mobilisera mot ökad ojämlikhet samtidigt som ett gryende ekologiskt krismedvetande verkar ta form är det viktigt att inte stanna vid analyser av 1980-talets brott under den allmänna och vanligt förekommande beteckningen ”fördjupad ojämlikhet”. Genom att likställa egendom, inkomst, ekonomiska tillgångar, fördelning av resurser och olika former av maktrelationer riskerar en sådan sammanblandning i analysen av de senaste 40 årens historia grumlar bilden av vår samtid, vilket i värsta fall leder det politiska tänkandet och den politiska handlingen fel. En strategi för jämlik inkomstfördelning som samtidigt ska kunna rå på den globala upp- värmningen verkar helt enkelt ha en gemensam nämnare: de kan inte förlita sig på fördelningspolitiska verktyg och existerande institutioner utan måste på ett eller annat sätt konfrontera ägandet som sådant. Medverkande: Vanja Carlsson, Maryam Fanni och Carl Wilén. Arrangör: Fronesis

[SANDLER] Vem blir fascist? Adornos (mfl) bok Den auktoritära personligheten och modern fördomsforskningAnders Ramsay, bland annat författare till Upplysningens självreflexion. Aspekter av Theodor W. Adornos kritiska teori (2005) berättar om boken The Authoritarian Personality som publicerades i USA 1950 och som nu kommit i nyutgåva (Verso). Boken är en undersökning som med hjälp av djuppsykologiska intervjuer och enkäter försöker förstå de under-

liggande förutsättningarna för att människor låter sig mobiliseras av fascistiska rörelser. Paul Fuehrer och Mats Deland resonerar om hur fördomsforskningen utvecklats med exempel från långtidsundersökningarna "Rechtsextremismus der Mitte" som bedrivits i Leipzig och Bielefeld och ställer frågan vad som finns att hämta idag i Adornos analyser. Medverkande: Anders Ramsay, sociolog vid Mittuniversitetet, Paul Fuehrer, sociolog vid Södertörns högskola och Mats Deland, historiker vid Södertörns högskola.

Period 2 12:45-14:15

[ZÄTA] Kate Soper is a British emeritus professor of philosophy, currently at University of Brighton. Her work has focused on feminism, the environment and theories of need and consumption. Her most important works include What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human and The Politics and Pleasures of Consuming Differently. Her talk will concern the current job-loss and disaffection with work, and on the form that a more benign post-work order might take. In contrast to the tech-utopian and ‘luxury communism’ visions currently influential on the Left with their rather orthodox views on consumption, she will defend the potential of a less techno-driven and intensive work culture for introducing more fulfilling ways of living, developing new skills and reinstating some earlier ways of doing and making.

[PALME] Vad kämpar klimatrörelsen för?Aktioner för klimatrörelsen kan ta olika former, från opinionsbildning till direkt aktion eller en blandning av de två, men det är sällan vi ser en politik artikuleras bortom metoden. Klimatfrågan beskrivs istället som något tekniskt och/eller moraliskt. Tekniskt som i ”lyssna på vetenskapen” och moraliskt som i ”vi slåss för era barn”. Men när vi går hem från blockaden och den fossila industrin återupptar sin verksamhet, vad vann vi, vad var syftet och vilket är vårt politiska projekt? Detta kommer att diskuteras i ett panelsamtal där aktivister från olika organisationer i klimatrörelsen kommer att delta. Arrangör: Allt åt alla Stockholm

[SANDLER] Rebellious agency and structural stultification in public debates on cli-mate change and illegalized immigration In February 1858, Marx wrote in a letter to Ferdinand Lassalle that he was going to write an exposé of capital and its economic categories. The exposé of the system, Marx had stated, was by the same token already its critique. This panel follows the Marxist assumption that the analysis of climate change is at once a ruthless critique of capitalism. It aims at a criticism of political, public debates on migration and climate change, drawing arguments from the works of Althusser’s, Lukács’ and Gramsci’s. Each of the participants takes a different angle from which to articulate what remains invisible in these debates, the involved subjectivities as well as their structural boundaries. Participants: Esther Edelmann, Hannes Kaufmann and Thomas Bragdon

Period 3 14:30-16:00

[ZÄTA] Göran Therborn: The challenges of the left movement 2020Therborn is a professor emeritus of sociology at Cambridge University and is amongst the most highly cited contemporary Marxian-influenced sociologists. He has published widely in journals such as the New Left Review, and is notable for his writing on topics that fall within the general political and sociological framework of post-Marxism. Topics on which he has written extensively include the intersection between the class structure of society and the function of the state apparatus, the formation of ideology within subjects, and the future

of the Marxist tradition. His talk will concern the main challenges of the left movement in thea years to come. The talk will be followed by a panel discussing the new program of the Swedish Left Party.

[PALME] Rätten - kritiskt motstånd eller kapitalismens smörjmedel?Klimatförändringarna är ett av de största hoten som människan har mött. Ett instrument som ofta påtalas i den politiska debatten är hårdare regleringar. Men kan vi förändra genom strängare miljölagar eller kommer rättssystemet i ett kapitalistiskt samhälle alltid att verka som en bromskloss? Kan juridiken vara ett progressivt instrument eller medverkar rätten i ett kapitalistiskt samhälle enbart till stagnation? Medverkande: Åsa Ågren, Mikael Bernadini och Håkan Gustafsson.

[SANDLER] Till ideologikritikens försvarTrots att kapitalismen och fossilkapitalet har frambringat en klimatkris som tycks allt svårare att stoppa presenteras vi antingen med bilden av total kollaps eller av att teknologis-ka lösningar och förändrade konsumtionsvanor är nycklarna till förändring snarare än med krav på genomgripande förändringar. Med andra ord verkar det förekomma ett samband mellan oförmågan att sätta kapitalismen i centrum när strategier för förändring undersöks och den utbredda presentismen där framtiden förminskas till en förlängning av nuet utgör myntets ena sida och där livets slutgiltiga kollaps skymtar fram från den andra sidan. I den här sessionen introduceras och diskuteras det pågående antologiprojektet Ideologianalys – En introduktion (planerad utgivning hösten 2020, Studentlitteratur) samt några av antologins 15 bidrag. Medverkande: Evelina Johansson Wilén, Tomas Wedin, Carl Wilén, Johan Alfssonsson, Vanja Carlsson.

See you at the conference!

We ask for donations to make the conference better, stronger and for it’s work to make a difference. Swish: 1233720018