Reflections on Marxism 2009

I spent last weekend where I spend the first weekend of every July, at the annual Marxism Festival, hosted by the SWP. Unfortunately, as ever, due to my various commitments (most notably organising the free creche), I didn’t get to see many of what I’m told were highlights. Nevertheless here are a few of my thoughts on the event overall.

Firstly, it was very visibly the biggest for some time. You always have to be wary of this claim, since it tends to be made every year, but as someone who has been to every Marxism except one for the past 7 years (and also who’s seen some of the figures), it really did feel like the biggest I’d been to. It was also very, very young, with large numbers of college and university students who had travelled from around the country. For example, I met two young women who had travelled down from Gloucester solely on the basis of picking up a flyer on a day trip to Bristol, and on the last day found myself discussing the class nature of the Soviet Union with a college student from the depths of rural Cheshire, who had made his own way. That large numbers of young people are being drawn to radical politics, whether they get organised or not can only be a good thing.

For me there were a few major highlights: Getting to see Norman Strike, whose fantastic diary of the Miner’s Strike has now been published by Bookmarks, was an entertaining privilege. Adam Tooze and Chris Bambery engaged in a fascinating debate on whether Hitler could have won. David Harvey was thought-provoking, if a bit all over the place, and Gary Younge constantly surprises me with how radical he is. I missed the Zizek/Callinicos debate, but am told it was a highlight.

Much of this, and more, is on Youtube just search Marxism 2009, and CDs of every session are available from Bookmarks, and will appear at some point on resistance mp3.

One of the things that always amazes me about Marxism, from the organisational side, is how, despite it involving the efforts and stress of large numbers of people, ususally with no compensation whatsoever, how good-natured everyone is. In many cases the organisig team are helping out from 8:30am-9pm, staying up till 2, sleeping on a community centre floor, and doing it all again. Compared to many of the environments I’ve worked in where far smaller tasks have involved bullying, stress and recrimination as a matter of course there is minimal fuss and general calm. This is a credit to those who help, so for all who read this who helped with Marxism in any way, well done comrades!