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The Nature of Capital II – Ecology in Marx’ Work
Date: 29.10.-31.10.2021
Attention: Also the 14th Marx Autumn School will be only online!
The entire Marx Autumn School will be bilingual: All lectures and discussions will be translated simultaneously (German / English), and there will also be a working group in English. This year’s Autumn School is a stand-alone event which does not directly build on last year’s discussions and those who did not attend last year’s school are encouraged to participate!
Our facilitators are:
Dimitra Alifieraki, Ozeni Athanasiadou, Valeria Bruschi, Christian Frings, Ehrenfried Galander, Thomas Gehrig, Tatjana Gossen, Christian Meyer, Nadja Rakowitz, Axel Rüdiger, Bafta Sarbo, Christian Schmidt, Jenny Simon, Christopher Wimmer
The Marx Autumn School is a colaboration by Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung with Helle Panke, MEGA-Verein, TOP B3rlin und ums Ganze.
OXI and Dietz Berlin are our media partners.
More information :
Registration:
With an international programme and working groups, the 2021 Marx Autumn School will continue the discussion on ecology in Marx’s work.
After looking at the human, the body, the ‘internal’ nature of human beings in Marx’s critique of society in 2020, and because of the Covid-19 pandemic, this year we will examine ‘external’ nature. We will look at the use of resources, the role of nature in work and production processes, and the link between the destruction of nature and the development of capitalist productive capacity.
Discussions on the capitalist metabolism of external nature will be foregrounded. We will primarily be drawing on texts from Marx’s Critique of Political Economy, focusing especially on the interface between capitalist production and the use of and destruction of nature. We will thus discuss issues such as the increase of productivity and the ‘growth imperative’, nature as material and ‘a mere matter of utility’, the ‘irremediable rift’ between the metabolism of nature and capitalist society, the relation between agriculture and speculation, the technical revolution, and the ‘ruthless exploitation of nature’.
Kohei Saito, author of Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy, will give a talk on Marx’s understanding of the concepts of capital and nature. Subsequently, in cooperation with activists from countries in which the conflict between capital and nature has dramatic human, social, and environmental consequences, we will analyse current struggles against neo-extractivism. We will focus particularly on processes of resistance and organizing from civil society, as well as their international dimension and connections.
Programme
Friday, 29 October 2021
5-6 pm: Greetings and Introduction
Nature of Capital II – Ecology in Marx`Critic. Introduction to the topic and the reader
With Tatjana Gossen, Thomas Gehrig and Rolf Hecker
(German with simultaneous translation – the link will be published here soon)
6:30-8:30 pm: Working Groups Digital begin
(The access data will be sent by e-mail)
Saturday, 30 October 2021
10 am -12:30 pm and 2 – 5:30 pm: Working Groups Digital continue
7-9 pm: Evening event – Online Lecture
Kohei Saito: Marx’s Vision of Communism in the Anthropocene
In the face of deepening of climate crisis, more and more people advocate for a system change. The question is, of course, what kind of system change? This is a new theoretical challenge for Marxism. Without being able to answer this question, the Marxian legacy of post-capitalism will be seriously threatened.
(in English with simultaneous translation into German – the link will be published here soon)
Sunday, 31 October 2021
9-10:30 am: Early Bird Session
11 am -12:30 pm: Online Discussion
Mine, Forest, Dam – Liberation of a Nature that became Prey. Activists in Exchange about their Struggles and Practices
As widespread and focused as the individual struggles of environmentalists and climate activists which are appearing around the world are, they are interwoven.
Activists from different countries exchange ideas about these struggles, the necessity of their international networking and the possibilities of joint experience, learning and organization processes.
(In German, English, Spanish with simultaneous translation – the link will be published here soon)