Labnet: {Disarmed} CFP: anarchism, marxism, libertarian communism - Loughborough University, 09/08

[labnet at lists.labourhistory.net]

From: Dave Berry [mailto:D.G.Berry at lboro.ac.uk] 



PLEASE CIRCULATE AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE

 

Call for Papers for Panel on "Libertarian Communism"

 

1st Anarchist Studies Network Conference

 

4th-6th September, 2008 

 

Department of Politics, International Relations, & European Studies,
Loughborough University, UK

 

Anarchism and Marxism are routinely depicted as being irreconcilable and
hostile worldviews in introductory texts, histories of socialism, and in
much of the dominant literature.  While anarchists and Marxists share
the end goal of a post-capitalist society defined in part by the common
ownership of the means of production, the abolition of the wage system
and the destruction of the state, differing perspectives on the role and
nature of the state and the agents and the organizational forms required
to carry out a radical social transformation are often cited as key
areas dividing anarchists from Marxists both in theory and practice.  A
turbulent history between the two from the schism in the First
International to the proletarian revolutions at the beginning of the
20th century, notably in Russia and Spain, would seem to further bolster
the assertion that anarchism and Marxism are incompatible.

 

However, a cursory glance at radical social movements through the last
century reveals a number of individuals and organizations that defy
strict classification into either camp.  Joseph Dietzgen, William
Morris, Anton Pannekoek, Guy Aldred, Daniel Guerin, Maximilien Rubel,
and Noam Chomsky, among others, have to varying degrees combined an
anarchist critique of hierarchy and authoritarian social and political
relations with a Marxist critique of the capitalist mode of production
and alienated labour.  Similarly, the anarchist/Marxist distinction has
been blurred by organizations and radical social movements ranging from
the Industrial Workers of the World and the Anti-Parliamentary Communist
Federation to post-68 European autonomist social struggles and the
Zapatistas.  Recently, John Holloway, author of "Change the World
Without Taking Power", has stated that in the post-Soviet era "the old
divisions between anarchism and Marxism are being eroded."  

 

The tendency for various anarchisms and marxisms to converge has been
largely overlooked in the academic community.  To these ends, the
libertarian communist panel aims to investigate the intersections
between historical and contemporary anarchist and Marxist currents
including, but not limited to, anarcho-communism, revolutionary
syndicalism, autonomist and libertarian Marxism, council communism,
social ecology/communalism, and Situationism.  Possible topics might
include:

 

- anarchist and Marxist perspectives on revolutionary organization

- the work of Martin Glaberman, Cornelius Castoriadis, Maurice Brinton,
and/or other heterodox Marxists emerging from post-WWII Trotskyism

- anarchism, autonomism, and class struggle organizing outside of the
"point of production"

- the dialectic of spontaneity and organization in emergent social forms
- councils, syndicates, communes, assemblies, informal workplace
organization

- the history of the German autonomen

- anarchist and Marxist theories of the state and capital

- the work of Murray Bookchin

- theories of workers' self-management and non-market socialism

 

For further information about this panel, please contact Saku Pinta
(s.a.m.pinta at lboro.ac.uk) or Dave Berry (d.g.berry at lboro.ac.uk)

 

For further information about the conference, see
http://www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk/HomePage

 

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