Last weekend I attended Marxism 2010. It was really an excellent conference, getting just about the right balance between academic and activist focussed speakers and sessions, with as always an impressive line-up. In due course I’ll probably right up a fair bit about it, but for now I just wanted to flag up the personal [...]
BREAKING NEWS – PLEASE REPUBLISH! Earlier this afternoon all staff in the Arts and Education section of Middlesex University received the following email: Dear colleagues, Late on Monday 26 April, the Dean of the School of Arts & Humanities, Ed Esche, informed staff in Philosophy that the University executive had ‘accepted his recommendation’ to close [...]
In capitalism’s early life Marx compared capital to a vampire, that ‘only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks’. Chris Harman thinks a different horror staple is appropriate for the system’s later years. Far from being the sophisticated, sentient vampire count, it is better compared to the mindless, [...]
It’s now fairly commonplace to note how the recession has caused economists to turn to Marx for some answers. On this site Matthew noted the various ways in which Marx himself has shifted into vogue during capitalism’s latest crisis. The problem is, most of what we get in the mainstream doesn’t really get beyond puff [...]
Reports are emerging that the philosopher G.A. Cohen died in the early hours of this morning aged 68. Cohen was most famous as arguably the most significant of the ‘Analytical Marxists’, who attempted to systematise Marx’s ideas into the schemas of analytic philosophy. Implicit, and often explicit, in this task was the purging of the Hegelian core [...]
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 [...]
