Making the 1 0 th Annual Historical Materialism World Working Conference Class 7-10th November 2013 Central London 2 ‘Capital is not a thing, but a social relation between Despite rising levels of class struggle - from a growing persons’ - and between classes. The complex task working class movement in China to the Arab uprisings of analysing class structures and, at the same time, and mobilisation against austerity in Southern Europe transforming and transcending them is at the core of – discourses of class remain largely marginal to political Marx’s legacy. debate and action. Class struggle is often recognised, namely through the language of inequality, but is being 2013 marks the 75th anniversary of CLR James’s increasingly filtered, also on the left, through notions of “The Black Jacobins” and the 50th anniversary of EP ‘the people’ or ‘the 99%’. Thompson’s “The Making of the English Working Class”. Wary of all reifications of class, Thompson showed how The tenth annual Historical Materialism aims to provide the working class was not only made by capital, but made a forum for debating the descriptive and prescriptive itself in everyday struggles and political agitation. James roles that concepts of class and class struggle can have affirmed the need to look at the international division of today. More generally, we seek contributions that account th Annual labour in the context of race and imperialism, and gave for how Marxist theory, historiography and empirical 1 0 voice to the revolutionary agency of the ‘black Jacobins’ research can explain and intervene in the contemporary Historical Materialism and other historically neglected enemies of capitalism and conjuncture. We will be hosting a stream on “Race colonialism. and Capital” (for which a separate call for papers is forthcoming, along with a CFP building on last year’s Conference In the wake of the new conflicts thrown up by “Marxism and Feminism” stream). decolonisation and more recent processes of neoliberal ‘globalisation’, research in the field of labour and working class history has acquired an increasingly global The conference is self-funded and we will depend on dimension, and become more attentive to the critical role voluntary donations by attendants and participants to played by race and gender in the formations of working Making support the organisation and running of the event. The classes. Social struggles and resistance – from Latin suggested donation on the door is £75 for waged and America to Eastern Europe, from the Arab-Islamic world £35 for unwaged. the World to East Asia – continue to show that working classes worldwide have not ceased remaking themselves, at the same time as they struggle against capitalist strategies For logistical and other support – Historical Materialism to turn class composition into class decomposition, to would like to thank the Working Class unmake a world working class. • School of Oriental and African Studies Significantly, in order to understand this changing For their collaboration – thanks to reality and the roots of the crisis of the neoliberal • Faculty of Law and Social Sciences system, a growing body of scholarship questions the at SOAS 7-10th November 2013 representation of labour as a passive factor in production, • Brill Academic Publishers Central London and investigates how workers’ struggles co-determine • Deutscher Memorial Prize committee processes of capitalist development, as well as cultural Socialist Register. mutations and political transformations. • THURSDAY A 13.30-15.15 3 116 B102 B111 G50 Performance Rosa Luxemburg American power in Marxism – Feminism Aesthetics and Practice in Revolution decline? Theorizing the and the struggle Chair: Steve Edwards Chair: Sebastian Budgen future of world order against patriarchy Larne Abse Gogarty – Proletarian Ben Lewis – ‘Is that our Chair: Alex Anievas Chair: Abbie Bakan dance – reproduction and programme – Karl?’ Luxemburg – Sean Starrs – American economic Eleonora Forenza – The ROOM KEY communist consciousness democracy and the challenge of power hasn’t geclined, It «molecular» revolution: Marina Gerber – Collective the German Revolution globalized! Summoning the data connecting feminist and materialist A School of Oriental and African Studies actions and J. Cage Ottokar Luban – Was Rosa and taking globalization seriously thoughts (SOAS) Josefine Wikström – Between Luxemburg’s confidence in the James Parisot – American empire Deborah Sielert – Feminist KLT - Khalili Lecture Theatre (ground floor) practice and performance: Socialist cleverness and creativity of the and emerging powers: In or perspectives: Global processes of DLT - G3 - G50 - G51 (ground floor) objects and dematerialised Proletarian masses justified? against empire? primitive accumulation and an 116 - First floor commodities Examples in the German Stephen Maher – Empire and example of local resistance 4426 - 4429 Fourth floor Revolutionary Movements resistance in the Middle East Ankica Cakardic – Socialist L67 - Lower ground floor 1918/1919 feminist approach to the artificial Peter Green – Rosa Luxemburg division of labour B Brunei Gallery versus Lukács on Class BGLT – Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre – Consciousness – Party and basement Revolution B102 – B104 – B111 – first floor C Cruciform Lecture Theatre D Senate House L67 4426 4429 G51 Marxist theory and Law and Class in Marxist perspectives Queer theory 1 the human sciences 19th century Britain on digital labour Chair: Paul Reynolds Chair: Giorgos Galanis Chair: Robert Knox Chair: David Broder James Penney – Is there a queer C Alexandre Feron – Tran Duc Thao Marc W. Steinberg – Workplace Ursula Huws – ‘Productive and Marxism? and Marxism subjugation and the materiality of reproductive labour in the internet Holly Lewis – Towards a Marxist Catherine Moir – Ideas for a law: master and servant law and age’ theory of sex and gender materialist philosophy of language exploitation in Victorian England Christian Fuchs – ‘Defining and Phillip Homburg – Sign, symbol Edith Hall – The Greek and theorizing digital labour’ and fetish Roman classics and social class in Christoph Hermann – ‘Digital Johan Siebers – Wisdom in Britain 1789-1939 labour and working time’ Communism Colin Barker – Marx on the Eran Fischer – ‘The Ideology of factory acts: some questions digital labour’ A B D THURSDAY B 15.45-17.30 4 116 B102 B111 G50 Imperialisms Art, Race and Capital Race, Caste, Class Social Reproduction old and new Chair: Sebastian Budgen Chair: Dae-Oup Chang Feminism Chair: Adam Hanieh Ben Pritchett – “These dying Doris Lee – Racialization of Chair: Sue Ferguson Luke Cooper – Class, state power centres”: Constructivism and anti- mainland Chinese ‘outsiders’ in Nicole Leach – Transitions to and transition in China colonialism in ‘This is Tomorrow’ Hong Kong, policies, politics and capitalism: Social reproduction Tyler Shipley – New Canadian Tim Fisken – “Mass culture and culture feminism encounters political imperialism political form in C. L. R. James’ Enrique Martino – A Plantation Marxis Tony Norfield – British ‘American Civilization’” island in the East Atlantic. Ann Wiesental – Inherent imperialism Nizan Shaked – Alliances? The Indentured labour in Spanish contradictions and the crises of left versus identity politics in US Fernando Pó and Equatorial social reproduction Art Guinea, 20th c. Selma James John O’Brien – Indian contradictions: Caste inequalities without class alienation? Riya Mary Al’sanah – Zionism and the enemy within: the struggle for Palestinain liberation in Israel G51 L67 4426 4429 FG01 Gramsci The theoretical and Neoliberalism and Race, Migration From French Chair: Peter Thomas political legacy Financialisation and Class Philosophy to of Yugoslav self- French Theory Kasim Tirmizey – Gramsci at the Chair: Giorgos Galanis Chair: Lucia Pradella management peripheries: Revisiting theories of Marcus Banks – Neoliberal Matthew Cooper – The remaking Chair: Esther Leslie the post-colonial state Chair: Toni Prug welfare production relations in of the British working class: trade Tzuchien Tho – From French Aaron Bernstein – Gramsci’s Vladimir Unkovski-Korica – Australia unions and black and Asian Philosophy to French Theory: 1964 reading of Marx’s 1859 Preface Workers’ Self-Management in Serdar Sengul – Finance workers in Britain 1949- 1984 Andrew Ryder – Badiou and the Robert Jackson – Is there a theory Yugoslavia 1948-1950: New and financialisation from the Michael M. Hall – Class and Hegelian Dialectic in 1960s French of fetishism in Gramsci’s Prison Evidence perspective of Marx’s Value Theory ethnicity in the formation of the Philosophy Notebooks? Catherine Samary – From the Jim Wolfreys – Neo-liberalism early Sao Paulo Working Class, Samo Tomsic – The Capitalist Alen Suceska – Gramsci and Yugoslav ‘social ownership’ to the and its limits 1890-1930 unconscious: Marx and Lacan Bahktin. A Marxist philosophy of ‘Commons’ Shaun Harkin – Neoliberalism, Knox Peden – (discussant) language Gal Kirn –Yugoslav Self- migration and the US working Management after the market class. reform (1965): between the logic of vanguard and capital THURSDAY C 18.15-20.00 5 B102 B111 G50 G51 Contemporary racisms Concepts in On reproduction and Housing, rent and and the right Marxist Theory: new motherhood urban development Chair: Paul Reynolds time, machinery Chair: Alex Anievas Chair: Adam Hanieh and the state Kevin Ovenden – Which crisis; Ana Vilenica – Becoming a Mary Robertson – Financialisation whose multiculturalism? Chair: Matteo Mandarini Mother: