‘TOWARDS A COSMOPOLITAN MARXISM’
Historical Materialism Annual Conference 2005,
4-6 November
In association with Socialist Register and the Isaac
and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Committee
University of London Union, and School of Oriental and
African Studies (SOAS), London, WC1
The Editorial Board of Historical Materialism:
Research in Critical Marxist Theory, in collaboration
with the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize
Committee, the Editorial Board of the Socialist
Register, and the Faculty of Law & Social Sciences and
the Department of Development Studies at SOAS is
pleased to announce its annual conference, ‘Towards a
Cosmopolitan Marxism’, 4-6 November 2005.
Since its inception, Historical Materialism has been
firmly committed to the project of creating a space of
dialogue and debate which extends across disciplinary,
linguistic and cultural borders, and promotes the
circulation, cross-fertilisation and expansion of
critical Marxist thought. For the 2005 conference we
have invited a wide range of leading figures in
European Marxist thought to discuss the terrain of a
future ‘cosmopolitan Marxism’. This will be an
exciting weekend of comradely exchange, which the
Editorial Board of Historical Materialism hopes will
grow into an important annual international event.
The conference will be organised with three plenary
sessions (Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture, Socialist
Register and Historical Materialism plenary sessions)
and workshops dedicated to specific themes. Workshop
themes include: the philosophy of Nietzsche, the
critique of Liberalism, Gramsci, Althusser, the young
Marx, the break-up of Yugoslavia, the interpretation
of Capital, Marxism and intellectuals, Marxism and
philosophy, ‘mutations’ in the mode of production,
visions of socialism, Deleuze and Marx, imperialism,
Venezuela, the Historical-Critical Dictionary of
Marxism, thinking the political, and combined and
uneven development.
The Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture, ‘The Politics of
Assumption, the Assumption of Politics’, will be
delivered by Michael Lebowitz on Friday evening, 4
November.
The Socialist Register Plenary Sessions, to launch the
2005 edition of the Register, edited by Colin Leys and
Leo Panitch, ‘Telling the Truth about Class’ and ‘The
State of the Third Way’, will be held on Saturday
evening, 5 November.
The Historical Materialism Plenary Session, ‘War and
Capitalism’, will conclude the conference on Sunday
afternoon, 6 November.
The language of the conference will be English with
consecutive translation provided for a limited number
of sessions, where necessary.
Attendance is free. However, the conference is
entirely self-funding and we will depend on voluntary
donations by attendants and participants to support
the event. The suggested donation is £20 waged and £10
for unwaged for the full event, and £10 and £5 for
one-day attendance.
Please register in advance by email to help us to
guarantee sufficient seating:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
CONFERENCE PROGRAMME
Friday 4th – UNIVERSITY OF LONDON UNION (ULU)
2.30-3.00pm Room 3D– Registration
2.30-3.00pm Room 3D– Opening Presentation – Editorial
Boards of Historical Materialism, Socialist Register,
and the Deutscher Memorial Prize Lecture Committee
3.00-4.45pm SESSION 1
Workshop 1.1 – Room 3C – Lineages of Contemporary
Imperialism
Chair: Jim Kincaid
Tobias ten Brink & Oliver Nachtwey, ‘Lost in
transition - theories of imperialism and the German
world market debate in the 1970s’
Alan Freeman, ‘Bolivar to Bolshevism: what can the
writers of history learn from its makers?’
Workshop 1.2 – Room 3D –"It is difficult to be a
Marxist in philosophy..."
Chair: Esther Leslie
Frieder Otto Wolf, ‘Finite Marxism– some problems
involved in re-reading Capital’
Peter Osborne, ‘Marx and the philosophy of time’,
Nicolas Vieillescazes, ‘Keep it real: Jameson as a
storyteller’
Workshop 1.3 – Room 3B – Combined and Uneven
Development
Chair: Paul Blackledge
Neil Davidson, ‘From uneven to combined development:
between the Enlightenment and the Third
international’,
Colin Barker, ‘Some reflections on uneven and combined
development’
Break
7.00-9.00pm – Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial
Prize Lecture – School of Oriental and African Studies
– Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre
Chair: Chris Arthur
Michael Lebowitz, ‘The politics of assumption, the
assumption of politics?’
Conference social – Venue to be announced
Saturday 5th – SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES
(SOAS)
10.00-11.45am SESSION 2
Workshop 2.1 – Room B102– Capital
Chair: Jim Kincaid
Wolfgang Fritz Haug, ‘Marx’s learning process –
against “correcting Marx with Hegel” (Engels,
Anti-Dühring)’
Chris Arthur, ‘Capital as an object for theory’,
Respondent: Michael Lebowitz
Workshop 2.2 – Room B111 – Althusser
Chair: Peter Thomas
Gregory Elliott, ‘Althusser in his limits’
Vittorio Morfino, ‘The primacy of the encounter over
form’
Mikko Lahtinen, ‘Conjunctures – Althusser's aleatory
interpretation of Machiavelli’
Workshop 2.3 – Room B104 – Yugoslavia
Chair: Alberto Toscano
Rastko Mocnik, ‘Yugoslavia in the world-system’
Ozren Pupovac, ‘Project Yugoslavia: the singular and
the plural’
12.00-1.00pm Lunch
1.00-2.45pm SESSION 3
Workshop 3.1 – Room B102 – Capital
Chair: Alfredo Saad-Filho
Geert Reuten, ‘On the quantitative homology between
circulating capital and capital value; the problem of
Marx’s and the Marxian notion of “variable capital”’
Riccardo Bellofiore, ‘A ghost turning into a vampire:
the concept of capital and living labour’,
Roberto Fineschi, ‘The four levels of abstraction of
Marx's concept of capital’
Respondent: Alan Freeman
Workshop 3.2 – B111 – The Critique of Liberalism
Chair: Alberto Toscano
Domenico Losurdo, ‘A counterhistory of liberalism’
Respondents: Alex Callinicos, G.M. Tamas
Workshop 3.3 – Room B104 – Selections from Das
historisch-kritische Wörterbuch des Marxismus
(Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism)
Chair: Peter Thomas
Juha Koivisto & Mikko Lahtinen, ‘Conjuncture’
Thomas Barfuss, ‘Conformism’
Jan Rehmann, ‘Ideology-critique’
2.45-3.00pm – Coffee break
3.00-4.45pm SESSION 4
Workshop 4.1 – Room B102 – Capital
Chair: Sam Knafo
Andrew Kliman, ‘Reclaiming Marx's Capital from the
myth of inconsistency: notes on a new book’
Mino Carchedi, ‘Marx and the business cycle’
Alan Freeman, ‘Bortkiewicz, Sweezy, Sraffa and the
sacrifice of scientific integrity to academic
respectability: why the theory of history requires the
theory of value’
Respondent: Riccardo Bellofiore
Workshop 4.2 – Room B111– Gramsci
Chair: Paul Reynolds
Giorgio Baratta, ‘Gramsci among us: Hall and Said’
Rocco Lacorte, ‘“Language” and “translation”, “praxis”
and “culture” in Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks’
Fabio Frosini, ‘Immanence and historical materialism
in Gramsci's Prison Notebooks’
Derek Boothman, ‘The multiple sources of Gramsci's
concept of Hegemony’
Workshop 4.3 – Room B104 – Venezuela
Chair: Alex Colas
Marta Harnecker, ‘Venezuela: a revolution sui generis’
Michael Lebowitz, ‘What path is Venezuela
constructing?’
Chris Harman, ‘Venezuela: important steps to come’
4.45-5.00pm – Coffee break
5.00-6.30pm – Socialist Register PLENARY, Khalili
Lecture Theatre (SOAS Main Building) – Telling the
Truth about Class
Chair: Colin Leys
G.M. Tamas, ‘The truth about class’
Discussants: Alex Callinicos, Simon Clarke
6.30-8.00pm – Socialist Register PLENARY, Khalili
Lecture Theatre (SOAS Main Building) – The State of
the Third Way
Chair: Alfredo Saad-Filho
Colin Leys, ‘The cynical state: the corruption of
policy-making in Blair's Britain’
David Miller, ‘Propaganda-managed democracy: lies and
the Iraq war'
Michael Kustow, ‘Playing with the truth: the political
role of the theatre today’
Elisa Van Waeyenberge, ‘Stiglitz's “Third Way”? The
truth about the “post-Washington consensus”’
8.30pm – Conference Dinner
Tas Restaurant, 22 Bloomsbury Street, WC1B
Sunday 6th – SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES
(SOAS)
10.00am-11.45am SESSION 5
Workshop 5.1 – Room B102 – Nietzsche's philosophy and
the postmodernist “hermeneutics of innocence”
Chair: Peter Thomas
Domenico Losurdo, ‘Nietzsche, the aristocratic rebel’
Jan Rehmann, ‘Towards a deconstruction of
postmodernist neo-Nietzscheanism’
Respondent: David McNally
Workshop 5.2 – Room B111 – Visions of Socialism
Chair: Paul Reynolds
Paresh Chattopadhyay, ‘Worlds apart: socialism in Marx
and in early Bolshevism’
Martin Thomas, ‘Three traditions? Marxism and the
USSR’
12.00-1.00pm– Lunch
1.00-2.45pm SESSION 6
Workshop 6.1- Room B111 – The Young Marx
Chair: Matteo Mandarini
Roberto Finelli, ‘A failed parricide’
Respondents: Sean Sayers, David McNally, Peter Thomas
Workshop 6.2- Room B104 – Thinking the Political
Chair: Giuseppe Tassone
Massimiliano Tomba, ‘Another kind of Gewalt: the
possibility of the impossible’
Alberto Toscano, ‘Scattering the ashes: truth and
violence in Badiou's Marxism’
Workshop 6.3 – Room B102 – Marxism and Intellectuals
Chair: Esther Leslie
Alex Demirovic, ‘Intellectuals, epistemological
terrains and formative stages of critical-materialist
theory’
Thomas Barfuss, ‘Active subjects, passive revolution:
agility, cleverness, irony’
Paul Reynolds, ‘History, subject and dialectics:
deconstructing the Marxist intellectual’
2.45-3.00pm – Coffee break
3.00-4.45pm SESSION 7
Workshop 7.1 – Room B111– "Mutations" in the mode of
production
Chair: Alberto Toscano
Mario Candeias, ‘Hightech, Hartz and hegemony’
Carlo Vercellone, ‘The hypothesis of cognitive
capitalism’
Bob Jessop, ‘The future of the capitalist state
revisited’
Workshop 7.2 – Room B104 – Deleuze and Marx
Chair: Matteo Mandarini
Nick Thoburn, ‘“Marxism in general has never existed”:
Deleuze and Guattari's Marx’
Jason Read, ‘The age of cynicism: Deleuze and Guattari
on the production of subjectivity in capitalism’
Workshop 7.3 – Room B102– Iraq
Chair: Paul Blackledge
Loukas Christodoulou, ‘The corporate occupation of
Iraq and worker resistance’
Ali Kadri, ‘Iraq: then and now’
Subir Sinha, ‘Solidarity after Iraq’
4.45-5.00pm – Coffee break
5.00-7.00pm –Historical Materialism PLENARY – War and
Capitalism – Room B102
Chair: Sebastian Budgen
Michael Krätke, ‘The political economy of war’
Alex Colas, ‘Civility and violence’
Peter Gowan, ‘Capitalism and war’
Conference social – Venue to be announced
LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
Chris Arthur (London, author of The New Dialectic and
Marx’s Capital)
Giorgio Baratta (University of Urbino, author of Le
rose e i quaderni. Il pensiero dialogico di Antonio
Gramsci)
Thomas Barfuss (Freie Universität Berlin, author of
Komformitaet und Bizarres Bewusstsein)
Colin Barker (Manchester Metropolitan University,
co-editor of Leadership and Social Movements)
Riccardo Bellofiore (University of Bergamo, editor of
Global Money, Capital Restructuring and the Changing
Patterns of Labour)
Derek Boothman (Univeristy of Bologna, author of
Traducibilità e processi traduttivi. Un caso: A.
Gramsci Linguista)
Tobias ten Brink (Fachhochschule Frankfurt/M, author
of VordenkerInnen der globalisierungskritischen
Bewegung: Pierre Bourdieu, Susan George, Antonio
Negri)
Alex Callinicos (King’s College London, author of
Making History: Agency, Structure, and Change in
Social Theory)
Mario Candeias (University of Jena, author of
Neoliberalismus, Hochtechnologie, Hegemonie)
Mino Carchedi (University of Amsterdam, author of
Frontiers of Political Economy)
Paresh Chattopadhyay (Université du Quebec à Montreal,
author of The Marxian Concept of Capital and the
Soviet Experience)
Loukas Christodoulou (Corporate Watch)
Simon Clarke (University of Warwick, author of Marx,
Marginalism and Modern Sociology)
Alejandro Colás (Birkbeck College, co-editor of The
War on Terror and American Empire after the Cold War)
Neil Davidson (Open University, author of Discovering
the Scottish Revolution 1692-1746)
Alex Demirovic (Universities of Wuppertal, Frankfurt
am Main and Bern, author of Modelle kritischer
Gesellschaftstheorie)
Gregory Elliott (Edinburgh, author of Althusser: The
Detour of Theory)
Roberto Finelli (University of Bari, author of Un
parricidio mancato)
Roberto Fineschi (Università degli Studi di Siena,
editor of Karl Marx: Rivisitazioni e prospettive)
Alan Freeman (University of Greenwich, co-editor of
The New Value Controversy)
Fabio Frosini (University of Urbino, author of Gramsci
e la filosofia)
Peter Gowan (London Metropolitan University, author of
The Global Gamble)
Chris Harman (Editor of the journal International
Socialism, author of A People's History of the World)
Marta Harnecker (director of the Centro de
Investigaciones Memoria Popular Latinoamericana
(MEPLA) in Havana, Cuba, author of Making the
Impossible Possible: The Left at the Threshold of the
XXIst Century)
Wolfgang Fritz Haug (Freie Universität Berlin, author
of High-Tech-Kapitalismus. Analysen zu
Produktionsweise, Arbeit, Sexualität, Krieg und
Hegemonie, editor of Das historisch-kritische
Wörterbuch des Marxismus)
Bob Jessop (University of Lancaster, author of The
Future of the Capitalist State).
Ali Kadri (American University of Beirut)
Andrew Kliman (Pace University, co-editor of The New
Value Controversy and the Foundations of Economics)
Juha Koivisto (University of Helsinki, author of
Unruly Subjects)
Michael R. Krätke (University of Amsterdam, author of
Geschichte der Weltwirtschaft)
Michael Kustow (theatre producer and writer, author of
[EMAIL PROTECTED])
Rocco Lacorte (University of Chicago, co-editor of a
forthcoming anthology on Gramsci, Language and
Translation)
Miko Lahtinen (University of Tampere, author of
Niccolò Machiavelli ja aleatorinen materialismi. Louis
Althusser ja Machiavellin konjunktuurit / Niccolo
Machiavelli and aleatory materialism. Louis Althusser
and Machiavelli's conjunctures)
Michael Lebowitz (Professor Emeritus of Economics at
Simon Fraser University, author of Beyond Capital)
Colin Leys (Queen's University, Canada, author of
Market-Driven Politics, co-editor, the Socialist
Register)
Domenico Losurdo (University of Urbino, author of
Hegel and the Freedom of the Moderns)
David McNally (York University, Toronto, author of
Bodies of Meaning: Studies on Language, Labor and
Liberation)
David Miller (Strathclyde University, editor of Tell
Me Lies: Propaganda and Media Distortion in the Attack
on Iraq)
Rastko Mocnik (University of Ljubljana, author of How
Much Fascism? Essays on post-communist politics)
Vittorio Morfino (University of Milano-Bicocca, author
of Il tempo e l’occasione. L’incontro Spinoza
Machiavelli)
Oliver Nachtwey (University of Göttingen, author of
Weltmarkt und Imperialismus. Zur Entstehungsgeschichte
der klassischen marxistischen Imperialismustheorie)
Peter Osborne (Middlesex University, author of The
Politics of Time)
Ozren Pupovac (Open University, editor of the journal
Prelom)
Jason Read (University of Southern Maine, author of
The Micro-politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory
of the Present)
Jan Rehmann (Freie Universität Berlin, author of
Postmoderner Links-Nietzscheanismus: Deleuze und
Foucault, eine Dekonstruktion)
Geert Reuten (University of Amsterdam, co-author of
Value-Form and the State)
Paul Reynolds (Edge Hill College, co-editor of
Marxism, Intellectuals and Politics)
Alfredo Saad-Filho (SOAS, editor of Anti-Capitalism: A
Marxist Introduction)
Sean Sayers (University of Kent, author of Marxism and
Human Nature)
Subir Sinha (SOAS, author of Uncommon Grounds: Rule
and Resistance in Rural India, forthcoming)
G. M. Tamás (Central European University, author of On
Post-fascism)
Martin Thomas (London, author of Three Traditions?
Marxism and the USSR)
Massimiliano Tomba (University of Padova, author of
Krise und Kritik bei Bruno Bauer. Kategorien des
Politischen im nachhegelschen Denken)
Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths College, author of The
Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation
between Kant and Deleuze)
Nick Thoburn (University of Manchester, author of
Deleuze, Marx and Politics)
Peter Thomas (University of Amsterdam, author of The
Gramscian Moment, forthcoming)
Elisa Van Waeyenberge (SOAS, co-author of Correcting
Stiglitz: From Information to Power in the World of
Development)
Carlo Vercellone (University of Paris I, editor of La
fin du capitalisme industriel?)
Nicolas Vieillescazes (Paris, author of an essay on
Fredric Jameson’s A Singular Modernity. Essay on the
Ontology of the Present)
Frieder Otto Wolf (Freie Universität Berlin, author of
Radikale Philosophie)
DIRECTIONS FOR THE RUSSELL SQUARE CAMPUS (SOAS)
The Russell Square campus (SOAS) is situated to the
north east of Russell Square in Central London. It can
be accessed by a variety of means (see subway and bus
maps):
By Underground/Subway:
The closest station is Russell Square station (C5 on
the subway map provided in the program), which can be
found on the Piccadilly line. Also within walking
distance are
Euston station (Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, and
Circle Lines)
Euston Square (Northern and Victoria Lines)
Goodge Street (Northern Line)
Tottenham Court Road (Central and Northern Lines )
Holborn (Central Line)
By Bus:
There are various buses which go through Russell
square. From North London (59, 68, 91, 168), West
London (7, 91), South London (59, 68, 168), South East
London (188). There are a great variety of buses going
through the general area of Bloomsbury where the
campus is. The best way for finding an efficient route
is to consult the Transport for London Journey Planner
<http://www.tfl.gov.uk/journeyplanner>.
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