ramonmercado Psycho Punk
Joined: 19 Aug 2003 Total posts: 17657 Location: Dublin Gender: Male |
 Posted: 06-08-2013 02:42 Post subject: Communist University 2013 |
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| Quote: | Communist University 2013
Our annual school is 12-18 August in South London, and is open to all. CU is different to most schools on the Left, encouraging the open expression of political differences.
The crisis of global capitalism rumbles on, but the Left is still stuck in the mires of sectarianism and opportunism. Given its explanatory power and practical programme, Marxism has huge potential in this period – a potential being irresponsibly squandered by the Marxist groups existing today. Communist University points a way out of this mess.
Over seven days of intense and open discussion, comrades from a variety of left political backgrounds teach and learn from each other. Differences between comrades are debated in fiercely partisan ways – but without the fear of excommunication that characterises the confessional sects of much of the rest of the left. The aim is political clarity, and to show the relevance of contemporary Marxism to the huge battles the workers' movement will soon be squaring up to.
Come and join us this year and make your contribution to the job of politically tooling our side up for war.
Details and booking
Time & Location
Monday 12th - Sunday 18th August
Glenthurston Apartments, 30 Bromley Rd. London, SE6 2TP (map)
5 min walk from Catford railway station – trains leave London Bridge Station every 10-15 minutes.
Accommodation on-site is available for the whole week- as is cheap, collectively prepared food. Our apartments consist mainly of double and triple rooms- if you would like to share with somebody in particular, please let us know. There is a heated indoor swimming pool & garden at the venue.
Prices
- Full week, including accommodation in shared rooms – £170 (£110 unwaged, £200 solidarity)
- Full week, no accommodation: £60 (£30)
- Final weekend, incl. one night's accommodation – £35 (£20)
- Day – £10 (£5)
- Session – £5 (£3)
Please note that you can turn up on the day and pay for your ticket then (unless you want to stay over, in which case you must book beforehand). Some comrades on low wages have taken up standing orders to pay for CU – let us know if you’d like to do that and we’ll send you the details.
Book your place with Paypal
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Alternatively, send a cheque or postal order (must be for a minimum of £30) to BCM Box 928, London WC1N 3XX (please mark the back with 'CU 2012').
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/action/communist-university-2013/details-and-booking
CU2013 |Timetable
Monday 12 August
2.00pm Fighting for a mass party Nick Wrack
(Independent Socialist Network - personal capacity), Jack
Conrad (CPGB)
4.45pm Will women lead the revolution? Yassamine
Mather, Camilla Power (Radical Anthropology Group)
Tuesday 13 August
10.00am New social media/IT/the net and the
revolutionary claims made for them James Turley
(CPGB)
2.00pm Imperialism Mike Macnair (CPGB)
4.45pm The Middle East after the Iranian elections
Moshe Machover (Israeli socialist), Yassamine Mather
(Hopi)
Wednesday 14th August
10.00am Technology, the “productive forces” and
socialism Gabriel Levy
2.00pm Class Revolution versus People's revolution:
Left debates since the 1790s Marc Mulholland
4.45pm Capitalist crises and their causes Hillel Ticktin
(Critique)
Thursday 15 August
10.00am Why is the left so scared of science? Chris
Knight (Radical Anthropology Group)
2.00pm Political Economy of the Gulf/political
economy of the Muslim Brotherhood? Adam Hanieh
4.45pm Capitalism: terminal crisis or long term
decline? Hillel Ticktin (Critique)
Friday 16 August
10.00am Why getting the Soviet Union right still
matters Jack Conrad (CPGB)
2.00pm The SWP crisis: causes and consequences
Paris Thompson (International Socialist Network)
4.45pm Lukács, Korsch, etc: philosophers of Leninism
or ultra-left? Mike Macnair (CPGB)
Saturday 17 August
10.00am Marxism and broad parties Ben Lewis (CPGB),
Tim Nelson (International Socialist Network)
2.00pm Socialism or barbarism Hillel Ticktin (Critique)
4.45pm The singularity of the Israeli–Palestinian
conflict Moshe Machover
Sunday 18 August
10.00am The Erfurt Programme Ben Lewis
1.30pm Revolution and counter-revolution in the
politics of the everyday: what the anthropology of
human nature tells us about the struggle for left unity
Lionel Sims (Radical Anthropology Group)
4.00pm Evaluation of School
Sessions and speakers
)
Some of this year's highlights:
* Hillel Ticktin is one of the leading Marxist political economists in the world. Originally from South Africa, he left the country to avoid arrest for political activism. After some time working for his PhD in the Soviet Union - where he again attracted the disapproval of the authorities - he began teaching at the University of Glasgow in 1965, and in 1973 he co-founded Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory, an independent, scholarly Marxist journal. Comrade Ticktin has been a regular at Communist University over years and a frequent contributor to our paper. He will be presenting three sessions for us in August - ‘Capitalist crises and the causes’ (Wednesday, August 14), ‘Capitalism: terminal crisis or long term decline?’ (Thursday, August 15) and ‘Socialism or barbarism’ (Saturday, August 17).
* The left’s response to the global crisis of capitalism has been essentially Keynesian. So the title of our morning session on Friday, August 16 - ‘Does Keynesianism offer an alternative to austerity?’ - is apposite for all those who regard themselves as Marxists, or revolutionaries of some stripe. It is presented by the CPGB’s Mike Macnair, a member of the party’s leadership and a frequent contributor to the Weekly Worker. Mike has written and spoken on this subject in the past and it is clearly one that we need to keep returning to given the left’s stubborn insistence that this non-Marxist (actually anti-Marxist) politics is a supportable ‘alternative’ to capitalist austerity.
*Yassamine Mather is an Iranian socialist in exile in Britain. Her political activities on the Iranian left started in 1980s Tehran and later in Kurdistan. In exile, she has been on the editorial board of the monthly journal Jahan and a member of the coordinating committee of Workers Left Unity Iran. She is also a member of the Centre for Socialist Theory and Movements (Glasgow University) and the deputy editor of the journal Critique. Since 2007 she has been active in Hands Off the People of Iran (HOPI).She will be speaking in a debate on feminism(s) with Camilla Power.
*Camilla Power is a senior lecturer in evolutionary anthropology at the University of East London, with a particular interest in female coalitionary strategies, ritual and early human kinship. She uses modern Darwinian selfish-gene sexual selection theory to understand the origins of symbolic culture. She is a leading member of the Radical Anthropology Group and has spoken frequently at Communist University. She will be speaking in a debate on feminism(s) with Yassamine Mather.
* The opening session sees Nick Wrack (Independent Socialist Network but in a personal capacity) and Jack Conrad (CPGB) continue the discussion they began at the April 27 London Communist Forum - see here and here. The Ken Loach-initiated Left Unity project poses once again to a particular section of the workers’ movement its first, most basic task - even if the initiators of LU had very different ideas about its purpose. How does our fractured, deeply divided Marxist left unite as Marxists. How should it then relate to, and fight for a majority in, the movement as a whole? The keynote exchange of this year’s CU kicks off at 2pm, on Monday, August 12.
* Marc Mulholland is a lecturer in modern history and a fellow of St Catherine’s college. The comrade spoke at last year's CU on ‘Why Marx expected the proletariat to be socialist’- watch the video here or read the transcript here. This year, he will be speaking on ‘Class Revolution versus People's revolution: Left debates since the 1790s’ on Wednesday, August 14 in the 2pm slot.
* Chris Knight is the author of Blood relations and a leading member of the Radical Anthropology Group. His ground breaking theory on the revolutionary origins of humanity has become steadily more authoritative in his academic field, but remains a political heresy in the Socialist Workers Party. As the CPGB’s Jack Conrad noted about the controversy, “for the narrowest factional reasons the SWP machine was determined to bury the authentic Marxist tradition [represented in contemporary form by Knight’s thesis] … Discussion of Knight’s book came to a shuddering halt inside the SWP. All that remained [was] a complete inability to say anything at all about the human revolution.”
Appropriately enough given that history, comrade Knight will be asking the pertinent question at this year’s CU - 'Why is the left so scared of science?' (Thursday, August 15 - 10am).
* Paris Thompson is an activist of the recent split from the Socialist Workers Party, the International Socialist Network and one of the 'Facebook Four', a group of comrades who have had the experience, possibly unique even in the unhinged world of sect politics, to be expelled for discussions that culminated in them deciding not to form a faction. Comrade Thompson will speak on 'The SWP crisis: causes and consequences' in the 2pm slot, Friday August 16.
A lot of useful background reading for this discussion can be found on the ISN’s site, linked above, on dissident SWPer Dave Renton’s blog (particular his post on the IS tradition) and the coverage of the unfolding SWP crisis on our own site.
* Please note that Mike Gonzalez, advertised as a speaker in a previous update, is now unable to present his session at Communist University as the comrade has to be abroad to fulfil other commitments. We look forward to his contributions to CUs in future years.
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/ |
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