"What is Capitalism? and why should we be against it?" (10/15/24 panel)
Panel: What is Capitalism? and why should we be against it?
On the 15th of October, 2024, the Platypus chapter at the Australian National University (ANU, in Canberra, hosted it's first panel on the question "What is Capitalism? and why should we be against it?".
The present is characterised by a political and economic crisis of the global neoliberal order, which are all explained by the differing interpretations of the cause of this crisis: capitalism. If we are to interpret capitalism, understand how its functions and consequences, we must also know how to change it. We ask the panelists to consider the following questions:
What is capitalism?
Is capitalism contradictory? If so, what is this contradiction?
Has capitalism changed since the 1840s? What are the implications of these changes politically for the Left?
Does capitalism inevitably lead to crisis? How does the crisis express itself today?
What would class struggle look like today, and how does the Left relate to this?
What is the role of the Left regarding capitalism? Is there a future beyond capitalism?
Details:
Haydon-Allen Lecture Theatre
Tuesday 15th of October
5:00-7:00 PM
Panelists:
Anthony Hayes - Anthony Hayes is a writer and independent scholar based in Canberra. Over the past four decades he has dabbled in far-left politics, poetry, punk rock, and surrealism. He completed a PhD thesis in Philosophy at the Australian National University in 2017 and currently blogs at the sinister science.
Bruin Christensen - Bruin is a former member of the original Communist Party of Australia, joining it as a high school student in 1970 out of an interest in the New Left, particularly Marcuse and Gramsci, and in Eurocommunism. He studied philosophy at Monash University in the seventies, where he was active in the student movement, before studying philosophy in Frankfurt, Germany. After his return to Australia in 1990, he taught German philosophy of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Dilthey, Husserl and Heidegger) at various Australian universities, ending up in the School of Philosophy in the RSSS at the ANU. He is now working on a second doctorate at the UNSW, on a mind-numbing topic in analytic philosophy. As this will soon be finished, he will soon be able to atone by turning to investigate the Marxist concept of a critique of political economy. This, he hopes, will contribute to a revitalisation of the real left, in opposition not just to so-called neoliberalism but also to the merely cultural, hence pseudo leftism of identity politics. He has a website at http://www.cbchristensen.net/.
Humphrey McQueen - Humphrey McQueen is a Marxist dinosaur, many of whose writings from across almost 60 years are accessible on www.surplusvalue.org.au He is finishing Can robots dream of becoming time poor: what future for labour-times? and Praise Marx, and Pass the Ammunition, a battery of Marxist missiles.
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The Platypus Affiliated Society organizes reading groups, public fora, research, and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the "Old" (1920s-30s), "New" (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left, for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.
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