ORGANISER LA RESISTANCE

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Laure Waridel, Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche en opérationnalisation du développement durable (CIRODD) (Montréal, Canada)

Ideology & Green Capitalism

Nicole Leaver, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

This presentation will trace some of the ideological currents and narratives in green capitalism today, including the claim that individual choices effectively determine whether nature is restored or derailed. Green capitalism sets forth the illusion that we can remain pro-capitalist while seemingly demanding an alternative choice to capitalist production. One such false choice was the ‘greening’ of England under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who in 1988, proclaimed: “The first thing we have to do is get this country really, really tidy.” The politically discursive message delivered in this example is a way of setting a political agenda that projects a vision of ecology “as if ecology were about re-arranging the furniture.” Sentiments such as these have served to remind us that, over many decades, moments of heightened environmental politics have failed to bring about revolutionary changes, or more precisely, eliminate the ruthless exploitation and degradation of nature. Perhaps it is not surprising then, that since 1988, just 100 companies have been responsible for more than 70% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.In these failures, I propose that environmental politics has itself become a broken record, not only looping over its own past mistakes, but worse yet, propelling the same ruthless system it once proclaimed to fervently oppose. Given that environmental politics are now part of the very same ideological foundations which perpetuate its demise, individualized good intentions only serve to neutralize effective action and exacerbate political depression.

Comment la méthode d’évaluation contingent contribue-t-elle à la subjectivation néolibérale

Céline Hequet, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

Ma présentation vise une critique politique de la méthode d’évaluation contingente, qui permet l’évaluation monétaire de biens environnementaux non marchands à des fins de planification environnementale. Cette méthode repose sur un sondage dans lequel on demande à un échantillon d’individus la valeur monétaire qu’ils seraient prêts à payer pour protéger un bien environnemental d’intérêt. La valeur totale est ensuite intégrée à une analyse avantages-coûts, comme coût s’il s’agit d’un projet d’exploitation ou comme bénéfice s’il s’agit d’un projet de conservation. On a largement critiqué la fiabilité de la méthode ainsi que ses fondements théoriques. Dans plusieurs études, les répondants se montrent peu sensibles aux prix et aux quantités proposés, ce qui amène des chercheurs à conclure que les résultats des questionnaires ne peuvent être utilisés dans des analyses avantages-coûts, mais devraient plutôt être interprétés comme ceux d’un pseudo-référendum. Or, face à ce constat, plutôt que de proposer l’abandon du cadre économique au profit de consultations ouvertement politiques, on suggère d’en multiplier l’utilisation afin d’habituer les répondants. Un tel entêtement à utiliser la méthode m’a amenée à la considérer comme un outil qui, loin d’être neutre, s’inscrit dans un projet politique beaucoup plus vaste. Ce projet, c’est celui du néolibéralisme. Et puisque ses politiques sont entièrement basées sur la rationalité utilitariste, il lui faut produire des sujets adaptés, soit des individus opérant des choix uniquement en fonction d’un calcul d’intérêt personnel, telles des entreprises. C’est pourquoi le néolibéralisme peut être appréhendé, à la façon de Michel Foucault, comme un mode de subjectivation. En m’appuyant sur les réflexions de cet auteur dans Naissance de la biopolitique, j’avance que la démultiplication des sondages d’évaluation monétaire participe à la mise en forme de sujets néolibéraux, forcés de réfléchir les questions environnementales dans un cadre économique.

This session will provide an opportunity for the authors of Climate Leviathan (Verso 2018) to engage with readers of the book. Book description: « How climate change will affect our political theory—for better and worse?Despite the science and the summits, leading capitalist states have not achieved anything close to an adequate level of carbon mitigation. There is now simply no way to prevent the planet breaching the threshold of two degrees Celsius set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What are the likely political and economic outcomes of this? Where is the overheating world heading?To further the struggle for climate justice, we need to have some idea how the existing global order is likely to adjust to a rapidly changing environment. Climate Leviathan provides a radical way of thinking about the intensifying challenges to the global order. Drawing on a wide range of political thought, Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann argue that rapid climate change will transform the world’s political economy and the fundamental political arrangements most people take for granted. The result will be a capitalist planetary sovereignty, a terrifying eventuality that makes the construction of viable, radical alternatives truly imperative. »

Joel Wainwright, Ohio State University (Colombus, OH, États-Unis)

Geoff Mann, Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada)

Yves-Marie Abraham, Hautes Études Commerciales (Montréal, Canada)

Jonathan Durand-Folco, Réseau d’action municipale (RAM), Université Saint-Paul (Montréal, Canada)

Andrea Levy, Canadian Dimension et NCS (Montréal, Canada)

(Post-)Pipeline Politics: Resistance to Oil Infrastructure and the Carbon Economy in Quebec

Kristian Gareau, Concordia University (Montréal, Canada)

The unprecedented transformation of planet Earth and human society, both in terms of the material benefits of modernity and the damages to ecosystems and the climate modern advancements have imparted, would not have occurred without the vast amounts of energy and heat-trapping gases unleashed by fossil fuels. This tension continues into the present day. In Canada in the 2000s and early 2010s, the economic and political pressures to extract bitumen—among the most carbon-intensive and polluting source of fossil fuel on the planet—increased considerably. As industry proposed pipelines to transport the substance to markets, critics feared that more bitumen production meant more toxic spills, climate change, and environmental degradation. In the face of those perceived risks, pipelines became key sites of struggle in an ongoing attempt by concerned actors to mitigate the harm caused by fossil-fueled capitalist economies. Using the Energy East pipeline in Quebec as a case study, the paper interprets how rejection of oil infrastructure and criticism of the shortcomings of governmental protection of people and their environments simultaneously express aspirations for a post-carbon, and to some extent post-capitalist, economy.

La sortie du pétrole comme première phase d’une résolution de la crise écologique au Québec

Patrice Bertolacci, Collectif  »Les Dégriseurs » (Montréal, Canada)

Le système économique dominant, capitaliste et libéral, condamne les sociétés humaines à la précarité, ceci en tarissant les ressources, en dégradant la qualité de l’eau, de l’air et des sols, en détruisant la biodiversité et en déréglant le climat. Or, il semble trop commode d’oublier en quoi consiste encore le carburant de cette machine infernale, à savoir le pétrole en particulier, et les combustibles fossiles en général, qui constituent toujours les trois quarts de la consommation énergétique globale. Sur la base de cette précédente observation, nous nous appliquerons dans un premier temps à rappeler l’importance et le poids des énergies fossiles pour le système économique mondial. De plus, nous aborderons les imbrications profondes qui existent entre la pétrochimie et l’agro-alimentaire, avant de dresser un court portrait de la dépendance actuelle de l’économie québécoise aux énergies fossiles.Dans un second temps, nous nous pencherons sur l’incapacité du libéralisme économique à solutionner la crise écologique. En nous référant à des auteurs classiques tels qu’Adam Smith, Charles Darwin et Thomas Malthus, nous démontrerons qu’une transition énergétique orchestrée sous l’égide libérale équivaudrait à un désastre humanitaire sans pareil. À la doctrine libérale, nous opposerons ainsi une vision humaniste des objectifs et des moyens pour rendre possible une transition hors de la dépendance aux énergies fossiles.Nous ébaucherons trois scénarios idéaux possibles dans lesquelles une transition post-pétrolière pourrait se réaliser. Un premier scénario mondialiste propose d’opérer les changements au niveau d’instances globales. Ensuite, le scénario nationaliste présente une transition effectuée sous la souveraineté de l’État et pouvant user, par exemple, de mesures protectionnistes contrebalançant les tares du commerce international. Le troisième scénario, le scénario libertaire, met de l’avant l’idée d’une transition opérée par le bas, notamment en créant des initiatives collectives, en recherchant l’autarcie et la résilience, en développant des centres de pouvoirs et des associations parallèles, etc. Nous démontrerons les forces et les limites de chacun des scénarios, pour finalement élaborer un modèle mixte réaliste, nous semblant le plus propice à cette transition vers une indépendance pétrolière.

Feminist Energy Transition: Petrofeminism, Deep Energy Literacy, and Decolonized Futures

David Vachon, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

This talk will define and contextualize the concept of deep energy literacy. Deep energy literacy demands meaningful reflection on how energy sources and systems are not only technological and infrastructural but also social. It requires an accounting of how oil-powered patriarchal colonial capitalism and the climate change that it has triggered have produced and continue to enforce extreme inequities built on histories of systemic violence that disadvantage the majority of the global population living on the margins of modern life, not to mention a whole host of species endangered on a warming and increasingly toxic planet. New energy sources will create new material conditions for the forms and habits of social life out of which new politics, new economies, and new ways of being and doing will arise. This talk will argue for feminist energy transition, with its political potential to resist and redress the ongoing inequities of the age of oil and fossil-fuelled power.

Sheena Wilson, University of Alberta, Petrocultures Research Group (Edmonton, Canada)

Portrait énergétique du Québec et résistance citoyenne

Martin Poirier, NON à une marée noire dans le Saint-Laurent (Canada)

Comment la lutte citoyenne dans le dossier des hydrocarbures s’inscrit comme un axe majeur de la transition énergétique et des défis face aux grands bouleversement énergétique ?

Présentation du manifeste Leap

Nicolas Chevalier, Leap Montreal (Montréal, Canada)

Le groupe Leap Montréal est un groupe local qui cherche à promouvoir le manifeste un bond vers l’avant, document qui se veut un recueil de demandes à travers beaucoup de mouvements. Le tout veux profiter de la transition énergétique nécessaire à l’évitement du pire des changements climatiques pour remettre les balances en place. D’une relation plus harmonieuse envers l’environnement et l’un l’autre au droit de vivre dans le respect, l’entraide et la sollicitude, le document se veut une base pour bâtir la transition qui effacera enfin les dommages du modèle capitaliste, extractivisme et exploiteur. Il s’agira d’une présentation qui à été donné déjà à plusieurs groupes citoyens locaux, ainsi qu’aux Front Commun pour la Transition Énergétique, dont Leap Montréal est maintenant membre. 1- Présentation de plusieurs enjeux diverse qui touchent le monde actuellement: La crise migratoire, les évènements extrêmes qui sont en hausse (Ouragans, feux de forêt, inondations, etc.), l’agrandissement des inégalités et autres crises qui ne semble pas connexe en premier lieu. 2- Suivra une présentation du manifeste « Un Bond Vers L’avant » (« Leap Manifesto » https://take.theleap.org/petitions/sign-the-leap-manifesto), de son historique et de ses 15 demandes. 3- Suivra une activité interactive avec la foule pour déterminer les liens entre les demandes. 4- Finissant sur l’importance des agenda intersectionnels et les plans que Leap Montreal et l’organisme Leap central on pour créer un front uni pour une vrai transition juste.

Portrait des groupes écologistes communautaires du Québec

Bruno Massé, Réseau québécois des groupes écologistes (RQGE) (Montréal, Canada)

À quoi ressemble le mouvement écologiste du Québec, aujourd’hui? Tandis qu’il y a beaucoup d’information médiatisée sur les luttes, il y a bien peu de littérature sur la vie des groupes en soit, leurs identités, valeurs, ressources et perceptions. Afin de mieux comprendre le mouvement, nous avons sondé les membres du Réseau québécois des groupes écologistes (RQGE) et 45 groupes ont participé, offrant une fenêtre inédite sur leur réalité. Présentation des résultats suivi d’une discussion.

Jacinthe Leblanc, Réseau québécois des groupes écologistes (RQGE) (Montréal, Canada)

Philippe Saint-Hilaire Gravel, Réseau québécois des groupes écologistes (RQGE) (Montréal, Canada)

La mobilisation dans la forêt du Québec : les défis d’une collaboration élargie

Christophe Aura, (Montréal, Canada)

La sortie du documentaire-choc L’erreur boréale en 1999, dénonçant les excès de l’industrie forestière autant sur le plan écologique que social, a été à l’origine d’un vaste mouvement au Québec visant à modifier un régime jugé trop complaisant à l’égard des entreprises qui la composent. Des groupes nationaux et internationaux se sont rapidement joints à cette mobilisation, issue initialement d’un sentiment de dépossession vécu à l’échelle des communautés forestières. Cette situation, marquée par la confrontation de conceptions et d’intérêts divergents, a mené à des tensions entre certaines parties prenantes et celles-ci pourraient avoir eu un impact sur la capacité du mouvement à faire valoir l’ensemble de ses revendications. Plus encore, l’évolution de cette mobilisation a mis en lumière un enjeu historique au Québec qui ne manque pas d’affecter les luttes écologistes : le clivage entre centres urbains et régions. Comment les tensions entre les parties prenantes aux différentes échelles ont-elles affecté la mobilisation dans la forêt du Québec et renforcé l’émergence d’un contre-mouvement ? Quelles actions pourraient être entreprises pour tenter de surmonter ces défis et anticiper de possibles enjeux similaires lors d’autres mobilisations ? Comment ces enjeux renforcent-ils le clivage entre les centres urbains et les régions ? Outre le cadre restreint de la mobilisation dans la forêt, ces questionnements pourraient contribuer à la réflexion plus générale sur le mouvement écologiste au Québec.

Helping our struggles converge: ecossocialism as a horizon for anti-capitalist and anti-opression movements

Sabrina Fernandes, Universidade de Brasília (Brasília, Brésil)

The 21st Century presents us with a scenario of complex and intertwined struggles. They are found within the direct realm of class struggle in the capitalist industry, as well as against globalized capital, the privatization of water, the spread of rape culture, the rise in racism and xenophobia, and every other expression related to climate change, the financial market, imperialism, sexism and fascism. These struggles are ubiquitous and are often led by the same people, in the same place, at the same time. Yet, the fragmentation of struggles remain, sometimes putting movements at odds with each other, as would be the case of some labour unions fighting to keep an open pit mine open while locals fight to close the mine due to its environmental and health impacts. In cases such as this one, related to environmental concerns, the tendency to place environmentalism outside of the classical anti-capitalist struggles is damaging both to the environment and to mobilization prospects. A false dychotomy is created when, in fact, the environmental agenda has much to add to anti-capitalist and anti-oppression movements. Through a discussion of ecosocialism, I argue that the ecosocialist perspective is useful to reconciling these movements while bringing due emphasis to aspects such as health, quality of living, our relationship to the planet, and how we organize production beyond simply changing its capitalist modus operandi. By bringing examples from movements in the Global South, including examples from personal activist experience, as well as particular struggles found in the North, I suggest that the value-changing tenets of ecosocialism offer an important horizon that connects these struggles and may even help to grow the movements and foster leftist political consciousness.

Towards Decarbonizing and Decolonizing Canada: A convergence of anti-capitalist movements?

Jen Gobby, McGill University, Economics for the Anthropocene, Climate Justice Montreal (Montréal, Canada)

There are multiple intersecting social-ecological crises currently faced in Canada. These include increasing impacts of anthropogenic climate change, growing economic inequality, and the disproportionate levels of poverty and suffering in Indigenous communities across the country. While these crises persist, the federal government is continuing to approve pipelines and other oil and gas infrastructure projects which will facilitate the expansion of the Alberta tar sands, one of the largest single green house gas emitting projects on the globe. These fossil fuel projects are exacerbating the aforementioned crises, while disproportionately impacting Indigenous communities who are on the front lines of both climate impacts and the impacts of the expansion of oil and gas industries. In response to this, grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations and Indigenous communities are working hard to contest the capitalist logics that underlie the continued expansion of the oil and gas industry. People in the anti-pipeline, climate justice and Indigenous land defense movements are resisting unwanted projects as well as developing and promoting alternatives while challenging the dominant narratives about Canada’s economic and energy systems. All the folks I’ve worked with on this research clearly identify capitalism and colonialism as the root causes of the current crises being faced and they target these systems in their change strategies. This paper brings together several years of qualitative research developed and conducted in collaboration with activists in these broad movements. Gathered through participant observation, over 60 in depth interviews, and more than 50 completed questionnaires, these research findings explore the theories of change held by activists and organizers as well as the tactics and strategies being used to make change. This work also explores the major barriers to change being faced by this movement, including internal tensions and external forces. Ultimately, this project is a collective strategizing on what can be done to overcome the barriers and increase the transformative power of these movements to successfully contest, weaken, and provide alternatives to capitalism.

Energy and Institution Size

Blair Fix, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Why do institutions grow? Despite nearly a century of scientific effort, there remains little consensus on this topic. I offer a new approach that focuses on energy consumption. A systemic relation exists between institution size and energy consumption per capita: as energy consumption increases, institutions become larger. I propose that this trend has to do with a general increase in social hierarchy that accompanies increases in energy consumption.

Growing through Sabotage: Energizing Hierarchical Power

Jonathan Nitzan, York University (Toronto, Canada)

According to the theory of capital as power, capitalism, like any other mode of power, is born through sabotage and lives in chains – and yet everywhere we look we see it grow and expand. What explains this apparent puzzle of ‘growth in the midst of sabotage’? The answer, we argue, begins with the very meaning of ‘growth’. Whereas conventional political economy equates the growth with a rising standard of living, we posit that much of this growth has nothing to do with livelihood as such: it represents not the improvement of wellbeing, but the expansion of sabotage itself. Building on this premise, the article historicizes, theorizes and models the relationship between changes in hierarchical power and sabotage on the one hand and the growth of energy capture on the other. It claims that hierarchical power is sought for its own sake; that building and sustaining this power demands strategic sabotage; and that sabotage absorbs a significant proportion of the energy captured by society. From this standpoint, capitalism grows, at least in part, not despite or because of sabotage, but through sabotage.

Shimshon Bichler, (Israël)

Dans le firmament intellectuel de la gauche, il y a trois visions distinctes et divergentes d’un avenir post-capitaliste écologiquement viable: l’écosocialisme, la décroissance et l’écomodernisme de gauche. Alors que toutes les trois s’inspirent de l’héritage marxiste et de la pensée socialiste, chacune souligne différents éléments et interprétations de cet héritage, menant à des conflits fondamentaux sur des questions telles que le rôle et la promesse de la technologie, la poursuite de la croissance économique, la surconsommation et la croissance de la population humaine. Alors que les trois concourent à considérer le capitalisme comme un système de production et de consommation (ultimement) écologiquement catastrophique, les divergences dans leurs conceptions d’une civilisation humaine durable au-delà du capitalisme sont suffisamment importantes pour douter qu’elles puissent être réconciliées. Le but de ce panel est de sonder et de clarifier les différences, tout en entamant un dialogue pour élargir le terrain d’entente.

Roger Rashi, Alternatives (Montréal, Canada)

Yves-Marie Abraham, HEC (Montréal, Canada)

Maristella Svampa, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Córdoba, Argentine)

Andrea Levy, Canadian Dimension (Montréal, Canada)

This first panel in the « Precarious Accumulation serie » will consider: The relationship between debt, profit and accumulation;The impact of structural inequalities on trajectories of economic growth – as emphasized, for instance, by the framework of Uneven and Combined Development;The centrality of the state in the accumulation process – as emphasized, for instance, by the framework of geopolitical economy. »

Paul Kellogg, Athabasca University (Athabasca, Canada)

Radhika Desai, University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada)

Robert Latham , York University (Toronto, Canada)

Animation: Niko Block

Capitalisme et santé: hégémonie et contre-hégémonie

La santé est, en tant que phénomène social, pleinement inscrite dans le système capitaliste : si l’accès aux soins et aux services de santé est de toute évidence affecté par la dynamique propre au capitalisme et par les rapports de force qui le traversent, il en va de même de l’organisation des soins et des services (notamment au niveau du type de soins et de services priorisé), ainsi que (et cela est peut-être moins bien connu) de la conception même de la santé et de la maladie qui prédomine presque sans partage dans nos sociétés. En cela, on peut certainement parler d’une véritable « hégémonie capitaliste » dans le domaine sanitaire.Ainsi, sous le capitalisme tend à s’imposer une conception étroite, individualiste et essentiellement biomécanique de la santé dans laquelle la maladie est le plus souvent appréhendée à partir de ses causes biologiques (virus, bactéries, prédispositions génétiques, etc.) et/ou individuelles (comportements, habitudes de vie, etc.). Conséquemment, la maladie est généralement conçue comme un problème technique requérant des solutions techniques, et donc appelant le développement de pratiques, de savoirs et de discours experts portés et mis en œuvre par une élite professionnelle : les médecins. Cette élite jouit de ce fait d’une place prépondérante et d’une position dominante dans le domaine de la santé, mais aussi plus largement d’un statut socio-économique privilégié. Elle partage donc une certaine communauté d’intérêt avec la classe capitaliste, qui se reflète également sur le plan idéologique.Cette proximité sociale des médecins avec la classe capitaliste s’enracine également dans la persistance du modèle de la médecine libérale fondée sur la pratique privée de médecins-entrepreneurs et entrepreneuses, modèle qui continue, bien que sous des formes renouvelées, de s’imposer comme pivot de l’organisation des soins et des services. Ceci est cohérent avec le fait que, de manière typique, cette organisation est dans les sociétés capitalistes généralement centrée sur les soins et les services curatifs et caractérisée par des tendances fortement hospitalo-centriques : sont priorisés les soins et services spécialisés et ultra-spécialisés prodigués dans des centres hospitaliers de pointe et requérant des dépenses toujours croissantes (privées et/ou publiques) qui bénéficient massivement aux géants (privés) de l’industrie pharmaceutique et des technologies biomédicales.À cette « hégémonie capitaliste » dans le domaine de la santé, il est possible d’opposer une « contre-hégémonie anti-capitaliste » dont on peut trouver des bases, notamment, dans certaines pratiques et revendications historiques des mouvements populaires, syndicaux, féministes et anti-racistes en matière de santé. C’est donc une réflexion critique sur cette « hégémonie capitaliste », mais aussi une contribution à la construction de cette « contre-hégémonie anti-capitaliste » qui sont proposées avec ce panel portant sur le capitalisme et la santé.

Jennie-Laure Sully, Institut de recherche et d’informations socio-économiques (IRIS) (Montréal, Canada)

L’austérité tue. Plus qu’une intuition ou une vue de l’esprit, il s’agit d’une réalité dont la démonstration a été faite dès 2013 par les spécialistes en santé publique et en épidémiologie Stuckler et Basu dans un livre ayant pour sous-titre « Épidémies, dépressions, suicides : l’économie inhumaine ». Ainsi, dans un contexte d’austérité, ce que les gouvernements néolibéraux nomment pompeusement systèmes de santé sont, en pratique, des systèmes de gestion de la maladie. Une fois ce constat posé, que peuvent faire les populations victimes de ces politiques mortifères ? En passant en revue des initiatives de démocratisation de la santé telles que les expériences de communautés saines (municipios saludables) du Brésil et celles des coopératives de santé en Amérique du Nord et ailleurs, Jennie-Laure Sully tentera d’identifier des éléments de réponse.

Anne Plourde, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Anne Plourde se demandera ensuite quelles leçons peuvent être tirées de l’expérience radicale des cliniques populaires qui émergent durant les années 1960 et 1970 pour la construction d’une contre-hégémonie anticapitaliste et d’une stratégie de transition dans le domaine de la santé. Dans cette perspective, quelle conception de la santé et de la maladie et quelles revendications en matière d’organisation des soins et des services opposer aux conceptions et pratiques prédominantes dans les sociétés capitalistes?

Guillaume Hébert, Institut de recherche et d’informations socio-économiques (IRIS) (Montréal, Canada)

L’idéologie néolibérale qui domine nos institutions combinée à une approche technique, biomédicale et individualisée de la santé donne l’impression qu’on ne peut échapper à cette « pensée unique » qui inspire toutes les réformes des politiques publiques. Tout ce qui n’est pas compatible avec le cadre retreint du capitalisme occidental est alors condamné à disparaître. Contre ce fatalisme, Guillaume Hébert nous proposera de faire l’exercice d’imaginer quel pourrait être un système public qui serait soumis à l’intérêt collectif plutôt qu’à ceux d’une élite. On n’a d’ailleurs qu’à porter notre regard sur certaines expériences internationales pour s’apercevoir que l’approche biomédicale individualisée peut être contenue plutôt qu’envahissante.

Samir Shaheen-Hussain, militant pour la justice sociale et pédiatre urgentiste (Tionni’tiotiah:ke, aka Montréal, Canada)

Enfin, Samir Shaheen-Hussain conclura le panel avec un appel à élargir et à radicaliser les perspectives de la gauche en matière de santé, perspectives dominées par une pensée sociale-démocrate étroite et par des revendications qui se limitent le plus souvent aux enjeux de la privatisation, du financement des services publics et de l’accès aux services pour les citoyenNEs canadienNEs. À partir d’exemples tirés d’expériences de terrain dans lesquelles on vise à centrer les marginaliséEs, Samir abordera des pistes stratégiques qui sortent des ornières dans lesquelles se confinent trop souvent les luttes progressistes dans le domaine sanitaire dans l’optique de bâtir des mouvements dynamiques et contestataires qui mettent les principes de la solidarité et de la justice sociale au cœur de leurs préoccupations.

Animation: Élisabeth Béfort-Doucet

Cet atelier introductif vise à préciser la nature et la portée d’une approche critique en rapport à l’économie. Il s’agira avant tout de préciser en quoi consiste une sociologie critique de l’économie, en départageant celle-ci du discours économique lui-même. Alors que la science économique tend à aborder son objet comme un pur donné, comme un fait qui va de soi ou encore comme une réalité naturelle ou universelle qui aurait toujours existé – par exemple en soutenant que les marchés existaient déjà chez les sociétés primitives, sous la forme élémentaire du troc –, nous montrerons à l’inverse que le point de départ d’une approche critique à l’égard de l’économie consiste à reconnaître son caractère irréductiblement social et historique. L’objet de la critique de l’économie se révélera alors beaucoup plus ample qu’il n’y paraît à première vue. Non seulement renvoie-t-il aux pratiques économiques de tous les jours, mais également aux institutions qui les encadrent ainsi qu’aux discours économiques eux-mêmes. L’économie comme discours, institutions et pratiques, voilà l’ampleur du problème que se donne à réfléchir une approche critique en économie, de même que l’ensemble des fronts à partir desquels elle s’y confronte.

Éric N. Duhaime, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) (Montréal, Canada)

This second panel in the « Precarious Accumulation serie » will consider: The intersections of race, gender and class – from the standpoint of the labour process, the accumulation process, and the state;The relationship between free and unfree labour – from the standpoint of the labour process, the accumulation process, and the state;The manner in which the concrete analysis of actually-existing capitalism can be constrained and limited by overly-abstract and disembodied models of “Capital”. »

Paul Kellogg, Athabasca University (Athabasca, Canada)

Abigail Bakan, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

Elaine Coburn, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Peter Hudis, Oakton Community College (Des Plaines, USA)

Capitalization, Capital Goods and the State of Capital : the Boundaries of Accumulation

DT Cochrane, Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada)

‘Capitalization’ is a key concept and practice of finance. ‘Capital goods’ has been an important concept in political economy. However, the definition of capital goods has been a casualty of the confusing and contradictory outcomes of the debates around capital (Cohen & Harcourt, 2003; Nitzan and Bichler, 2009). Political economists Jonathan Nitzan and Shimshon Bichler have offered the concept of ‘state of capital’ as part of theory of capital as power (CasP). With this presentation, I develop the state of capital concept to situate capital goods with respect to the forward-looking pricings of capitalization. While CasP has rejected production as the singular means of accumulation, it has never denied the importance of production. I will use the relationship between capitalization, capital goods and the state of capital as one approach to resituating production within CasP. Together, these three concepts can be used to map the qualitative dimension of accumulation.

Financial derivatives or the aucatalytic sprawl of pseudorational capitalist power

Ulf Martin, Independent Researcher (Allemagne)

Common economic analysis distinguishes the « financial sector » from the « real economy » with the former dominating the latter. This distinction is already rejected in the Capital As Power framework: « capital is finance and only finance » (Bichler/Nitzan) and, as such, is THE control process of the capitalist order. We propose to go one step further: what is commonly called the financial sector should be understood as the application of the capitalist power process onto itself. Capital is the institutionalization of the modern imaginary of « rational mastery » (Castoriadis). Modern rationality is « computable reason » (Krämer). The institution of power (mastery, might) in capitalism is property. Modern money is generated through credit collateralized by property (Heinsohn/Steiger): modern money is a property derivative which, being a number, makes power computable (« Vermögen »). The credit system is the growth engine of capital. The inner contradictions of the credit system as well as the unknown future create risks which themselves are managed through the creation of further derivatives. Finance is « rational » by modern terms by being an attempt to « master » the inner contradictions of finance by applying its logic onto itself. But because the growth of finance, as an integral autocatalytic part of the differential accumulation process, creates the uncertainties it tries to overcome it is actually only a pseudorationality.

Accumulation, Surplus, Crisis

One of capital’s central modal contradictions is that in the course of its insatiable hunt for profit it generates conditions that throw its own capacity for accumulation into crisis. Marx called this crisis dynamic overaccumulation, and its phenomenal expressions can be summarized as variations on the category of surplus—surplus capital, surplus productive capacity, and surplus labour. This panel looks at the kinds of politics both thrown up and foreclosed in the contemporary era of overaccumulation and value crisis.

Surplus Value, Surplus Labor, Surplus Time

Paul Stasi, University at Albany, SUNY (Albany, NY, États-Unis)

One of the best places to draw out the utopian potentials that emerge from Marx’s critique of capital happens in The Grundrisse, where the term “surplus” moves from the central goal of capitalism—the production of surplus value—to the leisure time that allows, among other things, for its critique. But surplus will not produce critique on its own; Marx makes it clear that what is leisure for the capitalist class is immiseration for those dependent on a wage for survival. More than simply a tendency latent within capitalism, then, the production of surplus time opens up a fundamentally political question, one made all the more pressing with the coming automation, and the displacements it is likely to produce.

The current politics of surplus population

Paul Smith, George Mason University (Fairfax, VA, États-Unis)

This presentation works on the hypothesis that our current phase of capitalist accumulation (the post-crisis moment of austerity) includes a clear change in posture towards surplus labour. The constitution of what Capital Vol I calls “the relative surplus population” is continually changing, but the proposal here is that capitalism is now forming ways to extirpate the relative surplus population altogether. In our moment the surplus subject is just as likely to be completely abandoned by capitalism as it is to be put in reserve, incarcerated, etcetera. The presentation tries to explain both why and how this happening, and asks what political response there can be.

Developmental Aspiration at the End of Accumulation: Political Legacies of Bandung in the Era of Value Crisis

Bret Benjamin, University at Albany, SUNY (Albany, NY, États-Unis)

In 1974 the UN passed the Resolution for a New International Economic Order (NIEO)—an event that Vijay Prashad dubs “the highest point in the Third World Project.” This presentation reads the NIEO as a political program woefully mismatched with the objective determinants of an emerging era, the final utopian expression of the Bandung Era in the face of a value crisis (persuasively analyzed by Wertkritik theorists Robert Kurz, and Ernst Lohoff). This presentation considers the political legacies and limits both of the NIEO and the Wertkritik theorists.

Value crisis and value struggle

Beverley Best, Concordia University (Montréal, Canada)

Capital’s production of surplus labour can refer to both the expulsion of labour from production in the drive to increase productivity and to growing global surplus populations always-already separated from the means of reproduction, never to be absorbed into any formal economy. This singular if two-sided process, intensifying since the 1970s, is the historical stage for a transition in anti-capital resistance, identified by Joshua Clover in Riot Strike Riot, from production struggles to circulation struggles. This presentation will argue that if we work from the register of the concept of capital, we can reconceptualize both production and circulation struggles as value struggles and identify an objective continuity at the centre of the long crisis even as it takes the form of what appears to be an impossibly stratified and internally antagonistic working class.

Cet atelier se veut une introduction aux différentes phases historiques du développement capitaliste, de ses origines jusqu’à aujourd’hui (sous-thème: Histoire du capitalisme: de sa naissance à aujourd’hui). Tout d’abord, il présentera différentes thèses sur les origines du capitalisme, en démontrant que celles-ci sont intimement liées à un débat sur la nature même de ce qu’est le capitalisme. Ensuite, il abordera les dimensions géo-politiques de son développement inégal à travers différentes régions du monde dans le contexte de l’ascension de l’empire britannique. Les grandes crises de la fin du 19e siècle et des années 30 seront ensuite analysées et articulées à la montée des rivalités inter-impériales et coloniales. La mise en place de l’ordre d’après-guerre sous l’hégémonie des États-Unis sera ensuite analysée, de même que la réalité inégale du développement des États-providences et des rattrapages économiques au Nord comme au Sud. Une attention particulière sera accordée à la démystification de ce soi-disant âge d’or du capitalisme. Ensuite, il abordera la crise des années 70, et ce qui a mené à l’offensive néolibérale. Enfin, l’atelier va terminer sur la crise de 2007-08.Chaque période analysée sera présentée en référence aux transformations en matière technologique et de l’organisation du travail, de l’entreprise, du système monétaire et financier, d’intervention de l’État, et des relations inter-étatiques. L’atelier va insister sur l’importance de prendre au sérieux le développement du capitalisme en tant que processus historique. Car reconnaître qu’il n’y avait rien d’inévitable dans sa mondialisation, c’est aussi reconnaître qu’il n’y a rien d’inévitable dans son effondrement et son remplacement par un nouveau type de société.

Christian Pépin, Université York / Collectif d’analyse de la financiarisation du capitalisme avancé (CAFCA) (Toronto, Canada)

L’essor des multinationales au XXe siècle a modifier en profondeur la façon d’appréhender la notion de souveraineté et de pouvoir. Même au sens strictement formel, il appert que les États n’en ont pas le monopole. Une nouvelle autorité se développe indépendamment d’eux, et interagit avec eux, soit celui des multinationales. Celles-ci exercent leur pouvoir sur des échelles, selon des logiques, sur des modes et par des approches qui diffèrent des pratiques connues des autorités politiques. Se montrant souvent complices des États, ou vice versa, les multinationales font valoir leur autorité selon une nouvelle économie psychique, perverse plutôt que psychotique ou névrosée, et rappellent dès lors l’importance de développer quant à elles une nouvelle lecture, d’inspiration freudo-marxiste.

Alain Deneault, Collège international de philosophie (Paris, France)

Le « réalisme » comme illusion dans l’analyse des classes. Réévaluer les catégories qualitatives et la critique du capitalisme

Guillaume Durou, Université de l’Alberta (Edmonton, Canada)

Notre communication aborde, de manière polémique peut-être, l’analyse des classes la plus importante à ce jour, soit l’approche basée sur la profession et plus spécifiquement ce que l’on nomme aujourd’hui la micro-stratification (Grusky & Weeden, 2002 ; 2012). Fortement opposés aux typologies conventionnelles wébériennes et marxiennes appelées « large classe » ou Big class, les partisans du modèle de stratification et d’occupation ont sans surprise revendiqué plus de réalisme dans l’analyse du social. Pour ce courant, le concept de classe est souvent perçu comme obsolète et incapable de fournir une contribution pertinente pour comprendre les inégalités sociales. En revanche, nous croyons que les catégories qualitatives permettent de comprendre plus adéquatement les divisions sociales et les contraintes extra-économiques exercées par le capitalisme. Si le modèle de stratification paraît plus sophistiqué quantitativement, il n’est pas sans inconvénient. Notre communication souhaite présenter les limites et les faiblesses de cette approche et revenant sur les débats qui ont traversé les dernières décennies. En nous inspirant des chantiers d’Erik Olin Wright (2008 ; 2015) et de Charles Tilly (1998) nous souhaitons proposer un autre cadre d’analyse des classes dynamique et opératoire qui respecte les dimensions centrales du capitalisme avancé, à savoir la domination, l’oppression et l’exploitation.

Les classes sociales au prisme de la financiarisation: quelques contradictions renouvelées du capitalisme

Audrey Laurin-Lamothe, Postdoctorante, Département des sciences sociales, UQO (Gatineau, Canada)

La population se trouve impliquée doublement et contradictoirement dans la dynamique financière: par l’épargne et l’endettement. L’épargne du salariat est regroupée massivement et rendue liquide (susceptible de créer de la valeur financière) par les activités sur les marchés financiers des investisseurs institutionnels (caisses de retraite, fonds de pension et mutuels, etc.). L’endettement est lui aussi massifié, standardisé et transformé en titre boursier, à partir du crédit offert aux particuliers, que ce soient sous les formes de crédit hypothécaire, de crédit à la consommation ou de prêts étudiants. À ces deux dimensions, s’ajoutent celles de la consommation et du patrimoine immobilier, celui-ci étant utilisé de plus en plus comme un actif financier et une possibilité d’endettement, plutôt que comme un bien d’usage (Montgomerie, 2009).La contribution de cette présentation se situe dans le renouvellement de certaines catégories propres au paradigme marxiste (conscience de classes; exploitation; plus-value) susceptibles de nous fournir des outils conceptuels pour penser les classes sociales au prisme de l’accumulation financière.

À venir

Eric Pineault, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

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Critique de la technique étendue à la sphère économique : vers une stratégie de simplification et de relocalisation

Stéphane Chalmeau, HEC Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

La critique de la technique n’est pas neuve, des penseurs visionnaires ont dénoncé la dynamique du système technicien et ses dérives dès la fin du XIXème siècle. Il est d’autant plus désolant de constater que notre toute société baigne plus que jamais dans une foi inébranlable dans la science et la technologie. Cet article se base notamment sur des travaux de Georg Simmel et Gunther Anders pour identifier trois aspects particulièrement problématiques de l’expansion du phénomène technique : 1. “L’amour du système” et “l’envahissement des fins par les moyens” ; 2. La poursuite d’efficacité maximale ; 3. Le « décalage prométhéen », et discute des implications de cette triple problématique dans la sphère économique, point aveugle du débat académique. Plusieurs stratégies sont ensuite envisagées pour tenter de retrouver un nécessaire équilibre, notamment la voie de la simplification et la « relocalisation ouverte » des activités économiques. Dans la dernière partie, des initiatives de terrain sont utiliser pour illustrer et penser le potentiel de la « relocalisation ouverte » comme outil de réappropriation engendrant des boucles de rétroaction positive sur la voie d’un monde post-capitaliste. (Plan sujet à modifications).

Technology, Everyday Resistance and the Contested Shop floor: A Study of Working Class Politics in the Indian Automobile Industry

Charvaak Pati, York University (Toronto, Canada)

The use of automation in technologically advanced industries such as automobile industry is neither new nor novel. The use of robotics and other highly sophisticated technology to enhance productivity and rationalise labour control is a common feature of post-Fordist production regime which is also known as lean production or just-in time (JIT) production. This phenomenon can be found both in highly industrialised countries as well as countries of the global south such as China, ASEAN countries, South Korea, Brazil and India. The Indian automobile industry has witnessed sharp increase in the volume of production since the economic reforms in the 1990s and picked up exponentially since the early 2000. Historically, the automobile industry has been prone to militant labour struggles and the experience of India is no different. While acknowledging the importance of these struggles, the present presentation examines the everyday resistance that workers engage in on the shop floor of these technologically advanced industries. This presentation critically examines workers’ experience with technology on the shop floors in the social space of Maruti Suzuki’s(India’s largest car maker) Manesar plant. Apart from drawing upon the experience of Manesar workers, the presentation also looks at workers’ experience with technology in the large supply chain located within the Manesar plant which includes Bellsonica, FMI, Krishna Maruti Ltd. among others. In this study, I ask one simple question: How do workers experience technology on the shop floors of highly advanced automobile factories? Furthermore, I ask two related questions: How do workers reproduce their own subjugation on the shop floor by trying to out-compete technology such as robots; and how do they resist their subjugation through everyday resistance on the shop floor? The central argument of the presentation is that workers devise means to resist technologically enhanced labour control regimes on the shop floor, even as they fight for more overt means of confrontation with the management. The workers experience and negotiate with technology both as individual workers as well as a class.

Technological innovation, work intensification and emotional distress under capitalism

Sharry Taylor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (Toronto, Canada)

Life under capitalism is intensifying. Technological innovation, globalization and financialization have created a situation where nearly every facet of life is capable of being assessed for its appropriable value. This hyper-measurability has allowed the working day to become intensified in ways that were not previously possible. Since knowledge work comprises a greater portion of what workers do, representing a shift toward immaterial labour in worker self-valorization, work intensification is also increasingly immaterial; borne by the intellectual and social-emotional capacities of labourers to engage more fully in their work. These immaterial and affective elements, known as “biolabour,” form an increasing proportion of capitalist surplus value. This presentation builds the case that work-related emotional distress is at once constitutive of and psychiatrized by capitalism, making work-related distress increasingly profitable as much through work intensification as through the pharmaceutical industry. From both an anticapitalist and neuroscientific perspective, this presentation will explore how work life under capitalism has become intensified in ways that are endogenously and biologically material within the brain, making capitalist accumulation acquisitive of biolabour. While this biological plasticity is functionally adaptive to the capitalist process, emotional distress often arises from it, making biolabour a labour of mood and affect. Psychiatry explains this emotional distress by “responsibilizing” it as endogenous to the sufferer, ignoring the capitalist social etiology of affective biolabour. This work will conclude by exploring the antipsychiatry movement as part of an emancipatory post-capitalist worker imaginary.

Is the Power of Mass Culture Profitable ?

James McMahon, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

This presentation will examine how and why political economic theories of mass culture have accumulated, but not settled, methodological issues about the meaning of value and the nature of productivity. Labour is certainly an important factor to any comprehensive study of capitalist mass culture, but it is our assumptions about economic productivity and not the ubiquity of wage labour that tells us we have to look at the latter in terms of productive output. Therefore, if we use entirely different assumptions, we might be able to create stronger links between profitability and the ideological aspects of mass culture.

Trump’s Corporate Tax Reform: What’s Power Got to Do with It?

Sandy Hager, University of London (Londres, Grande-Bretagne)

This presentation scrutinizes the Trump administration’s rationale for corporate tax reform. It argues that the most important indicator of competitiveness is not the statutory (official) tax rate, but the effective tax rate — the actual amount of taxes that a company pays as a percentage of its total income. Utilizing the Compustat database, this study is among the first to comprehensively map the evolution of the effective tax rates of US corporations by jurisdiction (i.e. the tax rate they pay on domestic income versus the tax rate on their foreign income). Two main findings stand out. First, the research shows that there has been a long-term convergence between the federal and foreign effective tax rates paid by US corporations. Rather than the federal tax system hampering the competitiveness of US corporations, the rest of the world has been engaged in a decades-long process of convergence toward the US’s low-rate corporate tax regime. The corporate tax cuts enacted by the president are likely to cause a downward spiral, resulting in another process of convergence at even lower rates across the world in the future. Second, a disaggregate analysis of the tax rates of large US corporations versus “the rest” of the US corporations in the Compustat database reveals the highly uneven impact of corporate tax policy. For the top 50 US corporations, federal effective tax rates have been consistently lower than foreign effective tax rates. For “the rest,” the situation is reversed: federal effective tax rates have been higher than foreign effective tax rates. Mostly importantly, over the past two decades, both the federal and foreign effective tax rates of the top 50 corporations have been declining relative to “the rest.” Trump’s tax reform plan does not acknowledge this unevenness, and is likely to enhance the power of dominant capital.

Theorizing income-wealth inequality data – a Capital as Power approach

Max Grubman, Tel Aviv University (Tel Aviv, Israël)

Over the last few years, Piketty et al. produced increasingly comprehensive income and wealth distribution analysis worldwide. In the USA, latest work include DINA – a full Distributional National Accounts methodology and data, as well as a long-term analysis of a full spectrum of assets capitalization. Going beyond neo-classical quantification of capital in « real » terms, the data opens a window for a new CasP analysis of discount rates and the power dynamics that shape them, hence offering a theoretical framework for a better understanding of redistribution in general.

Bien que le logement constitue un droit économique et social nommé par de nombreux traités internationaux, la reconnaissance juridique d’un droit au logement reste floue et pratiquement inexistante au Canada et au Québec. La division sexuée du travail, les inégalités économiques, la discrimination et les violences basées sur le genre constituent des oppressions patriarcales qui se conjuguent avec les logiques du capitalisme de manière à affecter les conditions d’habitation des femmes. Pour ces raisons, le droit au logement des femmes est constamment menacé. Dans le cadre de ce panel, nous proposons d’approfondir différentes facettes du droit au logement d’un point de vue féministe matérialiste afin de saisir les effets de l’imbrication des différents système d’oppression, mais également dégager des perspectives de luttes.

Sur l’intérêt d’utiliser un cadre d’analyse féministe pour comprendre l’exploitation spécifique des femmes relativement au droit du logement en droit civil

Marie-Neige Laperrière, UQO (Gatineau, Canada)

Au Québec, le logement est un lieu d’inégalités entre les femmes et les hommes. Les femmes souffrent davantage de problèmes d’accès au logement, elles y effectuent la majorité du travail domestique et risquent d’y subir des violences. Alors que l’analyse marxiste a permis de faire la démonstration que la place centrale qu’occupe la propriété privée génère une relation d’exploitation pour la classe ouvrière, l’analyse féministe nous semble offrir des voies prometteuses pour comprendre la spécificité du rapport d’exploitation propre à la classe des femmes dans le système d’habitation. Cette analyse suggère que le droit civil, dans sa forme actuelle, participe à la reproduction de ces inégalités. Nous soulevons l’hypothèse que les inégalités dont souffrent les femmes dans l’habitation ne sont un simple effet secondaire de l’application du droit, mais que la structure même du droit civil participe à la reproduction des rapports antagoniques entre les femmes et les hommes.

Trois décennies d’enjeux fonciers au Québec : perspective féministe intersectorielle

Anne Latendresse, UQÀM (Montréal, Canada)

Dans un contexte marqué par la gouvernance néolibérale où les gouvernements réduisent le financement pour les nouveaux logements sociaux, où ils individualisent l’aide financière au logement et où les violences vécues par les locataires refont surface, l’accès des femmes au logement demeure un enjeu féministe au Québec. Outre quelques exceptions, le rapport spécifique des femmes semble avoir été ignoré au sein de l’analyse des enjeux fonciers qui sont au cœur des crises du logement qui touchent des villes à travers le monde. Dans ce contexte, il nous apparaît légitime de revenir sur les grands enjeux fonciers qui ont marqué les trois dernières décennies au Québec. Ainsi, il sera possible de proposer une analyse féministe et intersectionnelle de ces enjeux afin, d’une part, saisir leurs effets sur les femmes dans toute leur diversité et, d’autre part, cerner de nouvelles pistes d’action pour le mouvement féministe et pour le droit au logement.

Le droit à la ville contre l’urbanisation capitaliste mise au défi par les mobilisations féministes pour le droit au logement

Marie-Eve Desroches, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS) (Montréal, Canada)

Parmi les diverses luttes et écrits qui traitent du droit à la ville (Lefebvre, 1968), le logement constitue un important point de convergence. En effet, son accès apparaît comme une condition préalable à l’exercice de ce droit collectif. Cependant, il semble que la plupart des auteurs et mouvements sociaux qui ont recours à cette notion considèrent, d’une part, que le capitalisme est la principale structure impliquée dans l’urbanisation et, d’autre part, qu’il s’agit d’une lutte de classe. Notre étude de cas qui s’intéresse à des mobilisations urbaines féministes pour le droit au logement démontre que le capitalisme et le patriarcat sont deux systèmes consubstantiels qui empêchent les femmes de s’approprier les logements de leur quartier et de participer à sa revitalisation. Cette expérience souligne que pour prendre en considération l’influence du système patriarcal, la notion du droit à la ville peut être élargie en intégrant des revendications et pratiques de luttes féministes.

Rethinking Surplus-Value: Recentring struggle in the Homeplace

Jared Sacks, Columbia University (New York, USA)

Since the 1970s, Autonomist Feminists have critiqued Karl Marx for failing to appreciate the sphere of reproduction as a key driver of capitalism. They have shown how unpaid reproductive work contributes to the production of surplus-value – something Orthodox Marxism has refused to reckon with. This is in part because of a fetishisation of categories such as productive and unproductive labour as the theoretical building blocks of Marxism. However, if we understand Marx’s critique of political economy as a process, we are forced to rethink our understanding of categories such as surplus-value. Within current debates around the production of value under capitalism, it is useful to make can explicit conceptual distinction between where surplus-value is produced and where it is extracted. In doing so, one is foregrounding the sphere of reproduction and the key role it plays in the upholding of capitalist social relations. This contrast, then, informs the struggle against capitalism in the following ways. Firstly, by championing struggles that transcend boundaries of production and reproduction, it builds towards social movement unionism. Secondly, by providing theoretical justification for withdrawing and disrupting reproductive labour, it supports a decentred politics of resistance outside the factory. Finally, it evinces the relevance of building autonomous movements for the production of “the commons”. This paper uses number of examples from recent struggles in South Africa and various countries in South America to illustrate how this reading contributes to, and theoretically valorises, the current diversity of struggles that have emerged, in particular, since the 1960s.

Sex Workers’ Social Movements, Community Self-Defence and Prefigurative Politics

Jamie Magnusson, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

Social Movements & Grass Roots Resistance (Feminist, Anti-Racist, Queer)Our paper flows from community organizing in downtown Toronto involving street based sex workers. Based on this work, we argue that ongoing production of illegal economies is a constitutive feature of capitalism, the exploitive and violent features of which are intensifying as shadow economies and formal economies are increasingly interfused. A material basis for this interfusion is late capitalist financialization, which is also the material basis for a global consolidation of illegal economies, and integration into state power and state governance. At the level of community organizing, we see how these global political economic trends play out in the lives of sex workers, including racialized, undocumented women and transwomen. Their work is producing wealth through sex and drug economies, and yet sex workers are relentlessly exposed to state violence as well as illegal violence with which the state is complicit. This paper curates an archive of community organizing pedagogies involving sex workers in the Toronto context that illustrates emergent prefigurative politics through community self-defence practices. Community self-defence is defined as self-organizing practices aimed at improving the wellbeing and resilience of communities. Community self-defence is historically important within communities that are targeted for elimination or containment by the state. Prefigurative politics can emerge from community self-defence projects when the communities become sufficiently robust and enduring to form political processes and terms of engagement that are pedagogies for social movements and solidarity. Our paper reveals the vitality of political organizing undertaken by women/women-identified located within illegal economies. The paper demonstrates the importance of understanding sex workers as political subjects whose pedagogies of community self-defence and prefigurative politics are worthy of study and broad based political solidarity.

Sabra Rezaei, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

Women on Strike in Quebec, 1939-1945: Moving Forward by Looking Back

Mikhail Bjorge, Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada)

Before World War II there was no specific labour law to speak of in Canada. Near the end of the war, the government introduced Order-in-Council 1003, which guaranteed compulsory collective bargaining, among other things. Traditionally, this move by the state was seen as either a concession to militant unions, or to fend off an electoral attack from the left by the insurgent CCF. Although both of these realities may have played a part, the main focus of the legislation was to get unions to control their workers. Building off a chapter from my PhD thesis, this talk will examine, specifically, strike action by women in Quebec during World War II. By doing so, this presentation will show how effective wildcat, illegal, and bottom-up non-unionized shopfloor agitation was; particularly when juxtaposed to normative strike action (or inaction) from other unions. By using these historical examples, particularly of women at work and women on strike, this presentation will show how the state was able to constrict effective action on one hand, while transplanting the site of discipline from the state to unions themselves. Further, this presentation will examine ways forward for the working class, by using historical examples of women’s agitation in munitions plants, boot and shoe production, and tobacco. The labour movement does not have to look or act in the manner in which it does, and we do not have to look terribly far in the past to find examples.

What can materialists learn from French feminist theory?

Brittany Murray, Franklin and Marshall College (Lancaster, USA)

This presentation is meant to address the question of whether materialism can be compatible with feminism, and if so, which feminism(s). More specifically, it focuses on the complications that emerge during periods of historical transition. Feminism may have unintended consequences for an anti-capitalist future, and the “right” feminist intervention, in one historical context, can nevertheless be the wrong one now. The French feminist project, écriture féminine, or “feminine writing”, functions as my case study. Formulated in the wake of the May 1968 protests, writers like Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous developed feminist theory with an anti-capitalist, anti-colonial bent. These inclinations, however, are not necessarily apparent now. My aim is not necessarily to rehabilitate écriture féminine for a materialist feminism, but I will demonstrate why it is important, for those of us invested in a post-capitalist transition, to understand how this particular strain of feminism fared during an earlier economic transition. In order to illustrate my point, I show how feminism functioned as a vanishing mediator during the 1970s, a period of significant economic transformation in France. The vanishing mediator, a model of historical causality developed by Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Zizek, and Kathi Weeks, describes how the political and economic infrastructure of a new society can be slipped in under cover the goals of an older society. I argue that écriture féminine did just that sort of historical work; French feminists addressed themselves to an older French society, one marked by nationally protected and state-run capitalism. I argue that, in critiquing this old iteration of capitalism, French feminists inadvertently laid the groundwork for a new iteration of French society, one adapted to a liberalized, globally oriented economy. I will conclude by examining the implications, What does the story of French feminism in the 1970s mean for feminism and materialism now?

Sexual Politics in Capitalist Societies: Towards a Historical Materialist Investigation of the Diremption between Sexuality and Class

Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz, York University/Historical Materialism Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

This paper takes as its point of departure the need for a new configuration of the notion of class in relation to sexual politics. Such a new configuration can mobilize interventions in what I take to be an endemic problem in contemporary politics: the quest for inclusivity in the political that has nonetheless led to an unchecked desire for totality, or the dictum that all marginalized positions be accounted for at once and for all time. The effort to cope with an endless social fracturation of identifications (e.g. queer, disabled, racialized etc.) stymies political action as it attempts to include all possible subject positions in their allied fractuality. However, this attempt in turn usurps or undermines the possibility of a political space that would be capable of addressing and responding in action to the needs such subject positions present in the first place. In particular, I focus on the recent discourses of queer theory that have challenged the centrality of class as the key political site of social transformation. Most marxist responses to this challenge of queer theory have been to enfold sexuality back into class analysis, i.e. by arguing that queer sexuality intersects with, or is co-constitutive of the larger problematic of class oppression. This disconnection in contemporary politics points to a deeper diremption between comprehension and political action, and thus will be the initial ground by which I frame my discussion in this paper.

Capitalism, Ecology and Sexual Revolution

Alan Sears , Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada)

There have been significant changes in gender and sexuality over the period since the 1960s, including augmented (though still highly inadequate) access to contraception and abortion, a higher cultural profile for sexual activity, and improvements in the formal rights of women, lesbians, gays and (to a lesser extent) trans people. These changes are substantial enough that they are commonly referred to as “the sexual revolution.” While this sexual revolution since the 1960s has made a real difference in the lives of many, queer, anti-racist and other critics point out that the dominant regime of sex and gender normativity has been reformed but not overturned. This paper will take the term “sexual revolution” back to its origins in the social insurgency of the early 20th century. Wilhelm Reich was one among many who developed conceptions of sexual revolution in the period from the 1890s-1930s. These sex radicals tended to see sex and gender liberation as important, and often missing, dimensions in broader struggles for revolutionary emancipation. Black feminist and other radical voices from feminist, anti-racist, ecological and anti-colonial struggles through the 20th century challenged and expanded these conceptions of freedom. In this paper, I will focus on the contribution of ecological conceptions of sustainability to our understanding of anti-capitalist sexual revolution. The human body plays a central role in the interchange with nature, and yet ecological sustainability and sexual liberation tend to be dealt with as separate issues. This paper connects the conceptions of first (pristine), second (transformed by humans) and third (post-revolutionary) nature from the works of Neil Smith, Edward Said and John Bellamy Foster to a queer, feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonial understanding of sexuality in relationship to hierarchies of dispossession in racial capitalism.

Nouvelles perspectives féministes sur les questions de différence

Chantal Maille, Université Concordia (Montréal, Canada)

Dans cette proposition de panel je souhaite introduire une série de perspectives féministes récentes qui ont porté sur les questions de différence, notamment l’analyse intersectionnelle ainsi que les féminismes postcoloniaux, décoloniaux et marxistes. En première partie j’entends proposer un survol rapide des textes canoniques de ces courants avant de m’attarder plus longuement sur plusieurs des concepts qui sont au centre de ces analyses, dont la classe et la race.J’entends montrer que les emprunts conceptuels faits aux théories critiques de la race et des classes sociales dans l’approche féministe intersectionnelle et dans les féminismes postcoloniaux, décoloniaux et marxistes permettent de complexifier l’analyse pour mieux refléter les spécificités des oppressions vécues par les femmes de toutes conditions et origines et apporter une nouvelle lecture des hiérarchies et des rapports de domination. Dans un deuxième temps, je ferai un bref survol des modèles théoriques et des données empiriques autour des notions de classe et de race en lien avec un questionnement sur la possibilité d’opérationnaliser une analyse féministe de la race et de la classe pour le contexte québécois. Je montrerai que les réalités des femmes minoritaires et racisées sont rendues invisibles par le manque de données ainsi que par l’utilisation de catégories non-spécifiques, alors qu’un travail de relecture de l’histoire s’impose pour réinscrire la présence de groupes minoritaires à l’intérieur de la société québécoise mais aussi pour définir des catégories qui mettent en relief les oppressions qui résultent de l’entrecroisement du genre avec les particularités sociales, politiques et historiques du Québec.Au plan de la production de ces théories, je montrerai comment des femmes qui avaient été historiquement marginalisées en raison de leur position de race et de classe ont revendiqué la pleine visibilité de leurs expériences et critiqué les approches féministes basées sur la femme universelle. Quelles sont ces voix, d’où viennent-elles et que disent-elles ? Quel est l’apport des femmes migrantes et racisées ainsi que celui de leurs descendantes au féminisme, sur le plan théorique et au niveau de l’organisation des luttes ? Mon propos visera à illustrer l’idée qu’aujourd’hui plus que jamais cohabitent au sein du féminisme des récits, des analyses et des pratiques qui témoignent de l’hétérogénéité des conditions de vie des femmes.

Social Reproduction: Beyond History and Structure?

Aaron Berman, New School for Social Research (New York, NY, États-Unis)

The 1960s and 70s philosophical re-readings of Capital, in part spurred on by the re-discovery of the Grundrisse, pose significant questions regarding the relationship between Marx’s ‘method’ in his late work and the popular picture of historical materialism derived primarily from the Communist Manifesto. In my view, our thinking of anti-capitalist revolution and transition to post-capitalism needs to be further updated to the meet the challenges posed by Marx’s post-1856 writings. This presentation will restage some aspects of the polemic between the French Althusserian school and the German Neue Marx-Lektüre in order to highlight the ways in which both traditions (and their successors) continue to struggle with the relationship between the logic of capital and the history of capitalism in ways that inform our attempts to think revolution today. I would like, in this presentation, to sketch this problem in more detail and to suggest that social reproduction theory, read philosophically, may offer tools to productively reframe the problem in such a way as to render it soluble.

The Social Question and Historical Materialism: the Implication for Historical Materialism of Social Revolutions

Jeremiah Gaster, York University (Toronto, Canada)

There has long been a crises in the theoretical understanding of the world afforded historical materialism, Ellen Meiksins Wood’s work was devoted to renewing historical materialism, this presentation aims to take up some of the ways that she thought through this renewal and attempts to analyze “social revolutions” through her work. In all of the social phenomena that circulate throughout the human reality, political phenomena (I.e., the set of phenomena that germinate relations of power between oppressors and the oppressed) are some of the most foundational form of human relationships, as they in the last and first instance make relations between humans into relations between the human and the non-human, between the dominated and the dominator. When relations of ruling, of whatever sort, are created these relations sunder the very meaning of what it means to be human, they do not express a natural being. To the contrary, relations of ruling, at their most basic level, especially when crystallized between humans, tend to assume a “naturality” that does not exist, humans do not naturally oppress other humans, ruling is no accident nor is the justification for ruling an accident, rather this assumption of ruling is in itself completely unnatural. The work of a renewed historical materialism is the examination of this contradiction between what is never natural, and yet what appears to be the most natural aspect of human relationships. To this end, this presentation will examine a specific set of social-political phenomena, social revolutions, which themselves are a specific set of other phenomena, revolutions, and which may teach us something about the “naturality” of political relationships. It would be most obvious to understand what social revolutions are, by splitting apart the term the “social” and the concept “revolutions”. On the one hand, we are thus able to understand that social revolutions are the answer to any question, which are similar to the question asked by Colonial Rainsbourogh during the Putney debates (“I desire to know how this comes to be a property in some men and not in others”), and on the other hand, we can learn a lot from the current state of revolution studies in Comparative Politics. Nevertheless, In this presentation, I propose to isolate one form of revolution, that of the social revolution.  In this presentation will define social revolutions to such an extent that I will trace out some political specificities of lived experiences of these peculiar “moments of madness,” as (Zolberg, 1972) identifies where “anything is possible,” in my (upcoming) dissertation, I have been researching this very specific form of revolutions, and consequently, I will argue that social revolutions are one of the few moments when dreams of human emancipation from relations of domination, repression, exploitation, and oppression are quite possible. If Skocpol (1979) writes that social revolutions are the moment when “rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below,”then by examining social revolutions  I will argue pace Skocpol that rather social revolutions are not simply the moment when the elites (either “political” or “ruling” accommodate the masses and respond to them (as if they could do otherwise) but rather are the moment when the masses are in control of the political community.  To begin, I will specify social revolutions as a specific type or form of revolutions, themselves a specific form of collective political action.  Then, I will focus on what it means when the “social question” is raised.  Finally, I will end with examining the political possibilities and potentialities that thus remain in the socio-political phenomena of social revolutions,and thus, this presentation will also identify what makes social revolutions different from other revolutionary movements, (See, e.g.;(Skocpol, 1979); (Wootton, 1986); (Wolin, 1996a); (Davidson, 2015). What this presentation insists is unique is the identification of “social revolutions” with the “social” question and thus the political implications of this presentation are to be found in the refinement of the understanding of possibilities of the “political realm.” In short, during a social revolution, the lived experience of the revolution is itself a life-changing experience for the people who have inserted themselves as the political community. This presentation, in analyzing social revolutons, will thus also examine the implications for a renewed historical matertialism of “social revolutions.” I argue that, in fact, understanding social revolutions is at the root of the work of historical materialism, for at their heart, social revolutions are the refusal of the ruled to be ruled, and this refusal changes the world.

« The Normative Dimension of Social Reproduction Theory »

Aaron Jaffe, Juilliard School, International Women’s Strike (NYC), the Campus Antifascist Network (New York, NY, États-Unis)

Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) has recently emerged as an advanced analytical strategy to appreciate the gendered, embodied, and affect-laden dimensions of capitalism’s survival as a system of social relations. Yet, in addition to providing a model that avoids the politically stultifying division of “identity” from “class”, SRT can offer compelling norms for critique, struggle, and picturing a post-capitalist future. SRT’s departure from bourgeois ideals or pretensions to value-neutrality provides the frame to concretely ground socialist resistance and aspirations. In this presentation I briefly show how SRT offers a much-needed theory of mediation between the particularity of individuated experience and the abstract logic of capital. By providing the framework for thinking local forms of oppression as contributing to and significantly guided by the universality of capital, SRT avoids the identity politics of postmodernism and the abstract universality of previous, quite narrow, forms of class-based anti-capitalist analysis. This approach articulates normative commitment by situating the harm of exploitation within and contributing to the enveloping capital-specific determinations of domination and alienation. Instead of thinking, for instance, gendered identities as sites of their own absolute legitimacy, SRT can think gendered oppressions in and through the logics by which capital not only creates value but provides a historically malleable social fabric through which such value-expansion is possible. In this way, gendered bodies at, excluded from, or pressured into some (and away from other) forms of work can be recognized as central to the relations of capitalist oppression, and therefore also as crucial sites of resistance. Most promisingly, in providing a unitary framework for coordinating diverse sites and modes of resistance, SRT is normatively committed to a diverse working class. A many-sided humanity, rich in a diversity of needs is therefore simultaneously at the root of SRT’s revolutionary politics as well as its normative commitment to a socialist future.

Amidst the new radicalization struggles against class oppression and those for liberation of the oppressed are too often counter-posed. Sometimes self-proclaimed socialists reduce oppression to class, deny the autonomy and specificity of struggles against oppression, and promise that if workers unite as a class liberation will automatically follow. By contrast some forms of identity politics reject Marxism as having nothing to say about liberation struggles, reject the idea that workers and oppressed share common interests, and therefore presume that struggle remain separate from the struggle against capitalism. This panel will make the case that the best of the Marxist tradition and new developments within it provide a way conceptualize oppression as a product of capitalism society, that each must be fought in their own right with specific demands, and that those sections of the class that don’t suffer specific oppressions have an interest in that struggle as part and parcel of building solidarity in the fight for a new socialist society.

Sue Ferguson, Toronto New Socialists, Wilfrid Laurier University (Toronto, Canada)

Jen Roesch, International Socialist Organization (New York, USA)

Khury Petersen-Smith, International Socialist Organization (New -York, USA)

Alan Sears, Toronto New Socialists, Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada)

Animation: Ashley Smith

Capital, Class Struggle, and Identity Politics: A Marxian Critique

Siyaves Azeri, École Normale Supérieure (Paris, France)

One specificity of capitalist society, in contrast to precapitalist social formations, is the universal form of capitalist production, which is also manifest in the universality of capitalist social strata, that is, social classes and in the politically mediated forms of capitalist domination (in particular the mediation through the state). Capitalism, not only appropriates the archaic forms of inequalities (ethnical, racial, cast, gender etc.) but also posits them as capitalist inequalities by grafting its “civilized horrors” “on the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, etc.” (Marx, 1993, 345) alongside the specifically capitalist forms of discrimination, just as it posits these identities as eternal, natural, “in-itself” entities. Capital, in essence, is indifferent toward this multitude of identities, since the only true goal that interests capital is self-valorization; it is in this sense that capital is the greatest leveller. However, capital posits identities to the extent that such social differentiation contributes to intensifying the exploitation of surplus-value. It is not because a person is a woman that she is being paid less; rather, one is posited as a women owing to the lesser pay she gets for a similar work—social roles imposed on genders, thus, is a by-product and part of the justification of such positing. So is the case with other identities—black, coloured, Middle Eastern, immigrant etc. Attributing essentiality to such identities reproduces capital’s self-proposition as a natural entity and not a social relation; it amounts to fetishization of these identities, which is the other side of the coin of capital-fetishism. The struggle for a better world is possible only if the universal and multi-faceted nature of class struggle is conceived of properly and if the struggle aims at the essence of capitalist relations of production—commodification of labour and production of surplus-value—and its political form of existence—the state.

Accumulated Violence: Convergent Crises, Commons and the Politics of Transition

Sourayan Mookerjea, University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada)

This presentation decolonizes Marx’s critique of political economy by re-theorizing the centrality of colonialism, imperialism and patriarchal domination to historical and actually existing racial capitalism. Drawing on the work of Silvia Federici and social reproduction feminists, decolonization and postcolonial theorists such as Frantz Fanon, Jairus Banaji, Kalyan Sanyal, Ranojit Guha, Glen Coulthard, and Leanne Simpson, as well as Western Marixists such Henri Lefebrve, David Harvey, Peter Linebaugh, Marcus Rediker and Massimo D’Angelis, this paper re-situates the problematic of “intersecting systems of oppression” in relation to contemporary interpretations of Marx’s sarcastic debunking of classical political economy’s fable of primitive accumulation. In doing so, the paper problematizes the schematic distinction between ‘white settler colonialism’ and ‘colonialisms of exploitation’ (Patrick Wolfe) by arguing that colonialism, as an ongoing process of accumulated violence, is the production of patriarchal capitalist spaces of colonization of common wealth on a world scale. The singularity and local specificity of accumulated violence is explored in two ways; through a critical engagement with Jason Moore’s reworking of the theory of capitalist crisis to include ecological crises and through an examination of contemporary racisms and sexisms in Canada, Quebec and India as well as a consideration of feminist environmental social justice activisms and commoning practices across these locations. Through this itinerary, the paper argues that subalternized domains of social reproduction give rise to a multitude of autonomous domains of subaltern politics. Such a retheorization of the historical conditions of possibility of contemporary class politics from below articulates the point of departure for a properly post-Western Marxism adequate to the challenges of finding a path to a great transition to post-capitalism. This paper also fits two other conference themes: 1) Capitalism and Contemporary Oppressions and 2) Ecological Crisis. My colleague and research collaborator Dr. Sheena Wilson (on Feminist Energy Futures) has also proposed a paper for this conference and we would be happy to be placed on the same panel.

Feminism, Marxism and Origin Stories: Revisiting Engels and Indigeneity

Abigail Bakan, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

Karl Marx died in 1883, with much of his writing unfinished and unpublished. His life long collaborator, Frederick Engels, turned his attention to editing and completing Marx’s unfinished works. One of the first of these was the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Here, among other arguments Engels makes a strong case for women’s emancipation, thoroughly grounded in the historical materialist method he advanced with Marx. The text is strongly reliant on Marx’s notebooks on Lewis H. Morgan’s 1877 study, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization. The subtitle of Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is significant: “In Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan”. Morgan’s major study considers the life and social organization of the Iroquois, or Haudenosaunee, the five Indigenous nations which had survived the violence of colonial occupation and resided in an area of northern New York State for a period of time following the US Civil War. Importantly, among other contributions Morgan provided a detailed account of an Indigenous population where women were not subjugated by patriarchal oppression. This observation has been confirmed repeatedly, not least through the continued practices, oral histories and contributions to scholarship and policy of indigenous peoples, in the majority Indigenous women, themselves. While there is a considerably body of literature addressing Origin of the Family, this paper considers the contribution from the lens of Indigenous and anti-racist feminism. Issues that come to light are Morgan’s reliance on an Indigenous guide, Ely S. Parker, the contribution of Indigenous societies to first wave American feminism, and the implications of Engels’s classic text for current debates in socialist theory, history and practice.

Belonging to one of the world’s largest stateless nations, Kurdish women contribute to a re-articulation of women’s liberation. As a result of their ethno-cultural identity, Kurdish women have undergone especially harsh levels of class oppression, patriarchal violence, and subordination to the state; in response, they have developed their own unique forms of political agency. Nothing illustrates this transformative process better than the Kurdish social movement’s embrace of egalitarian principles, gender equality, and radical democracy.By rejecting to comply with the premises of the global patriarchal capitalist nation-state order; reclaiming legitimate self-defense; dissociating the monopoly of power from the state; and fighting a brutal force not on behalf of imperialist forces, but in order to create their own terms of liberation, not only from the state or fascist organizations, but also their own community. This panel will begin with deconstructing “Jinneology”, the Kurdish women’s movement’s theoritical framework being currently put into various forms of praxis in cities and rural Kurdish regions of contemporary Turkey and Syria (Bakur and Rojava). Beginning from this point of discussion this panel will question the racial violence that constitutes Kurdish woman’s subjectivities and communities locally and globally. In addition from the lived experiences of a former Kurdish female political prisoner, this panel will explore the role of incarcerated women in the Kurdish social movement, offering an alternative approach to both the male-dominated canonical approach and the feminist approach to the Kurdish women’s movement. Then moving to armed Kurdish women’s groups which have been met with harsh state violence, useing a gross combination of racism and sexism, centered around sexualized torture, systematic rape, and propaganda that portray these militant women as prostitutes, because they dared to pose themselves as enemies of hyper-masculine armies. And lastly delving into the necropolitics of the Turkish state being sites of Kurdish solidarity and resistance to the colonialism and sovereignty. The panel will analyze how guerilla women’s dead bodies and their demand of mobility challenge the colonial borders of nation states.Living in a territory that is colonized between four nation states, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran, Kurdish women face different forms of oppression in each of these territories depending on the forms of violence adapted by each state organ. This panel will provide a prime example of women’s struggle in different contexts of capitalist statehood from very-centralized to war-torn and from religiously-motivated to quasi-state. This situation created both drawbacks in terms of the division of the power of women, but it also enabled a situation where women strategized their type of resistance to fight the local forms of patriarchy, capitalism, and oppression while providing premises for all women worldwide.

Elif Genc, New School for Social Research (Toronto, Canada)

Berivan Sarikaya, OISE, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

Ruken Isik, University of Maryland (College Park, MD, États-Unis)

Sevgi Arslan, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

La vulnérabilité et la relationnalité comme bases pour penser une société post-capitaliste idéale

Laurie Gagnon-Bouchard, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

La contribution que je vous propose se veut une réflexion qui s’intéresse aux bases sur lesquelles devraient s’inscrire les modèles de sociétés post-capitalistes idéales. Ainsi, j’entends proposer de nouveaux fondements pour réfléchir une société utopique qui s’inspirerait de l’écoféminisme et de l’éthique du care. Ma conférence se divisera en deux parties. Dans un premier temps, j’exposerai les critiques que font les écoféministes (Shiva, Mies, Merchant, Plumwood), les penseurs de la décolonialité (Dussel, Mignolo) et la féministe marxiste Silvia Federici du modèle capitaliste actuel et de son fondement théorique. Nous verrons alors que le point commun évident rassemblant les différentes approches se présente comme la critique des oppositions dualistes (culture/nature, homme/femme, raison/émotion, esprit/corps, civilisé/sauvage) qui ont servi à construire les rapports de pouvoir qui persistent encore aujourd’hui. Ce constat permettra d’ouvrir la réflexion sur la nécessité de chercher d’autres bases théoriques sur lesquelles fonder une société idéale qui s’extirpe des rapports de pouvoir et de la domination. Dans un second temps, je proposerai de concevoir la vulnérabilité et la relationnalité comme nouvelles bases d’une société utopique post-capitaliste. Mon hypothèse est que les notions de vulnérabilité humaine et de relationnalité, qui sont au cœur de l’éthique du care et de l’écoféminisme, pourraient constituer le socle à partir duquel réfléchir une telle alternative. La vulnérabilité et la relationnalité sont des conditions de notre existence qui ont été niées dans le fondement théorique de nos sociétés capitalistes. Nous ne pouvons plus ignorer la nécessité de formuler une approche de la société post-capitaliste juste qui soit inclusive des différentes visions du monde et de la nature. En ce sens, la revalorisation de la vulnérabilité et de la relationnalité me semble inéluctable si nous voulons élaborer une société post-capitaliste intéressante qui éviterait de reproduire l’oppression.

Éloi Paradis-Deschênes, Université d’Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada)

“Lessons from the Emergence and Acceptance of Market Ideology: Resistance and State Building in the Midwestern US”

Brad Bauerly, North Shore College (Danvers, MA, États-Unis)

While there have been many recent studies outlining the transition to capitalism in the U.S., many rest on a structuralist reading of economic change that posits a one-off transition that unleashes market imperatives and brings forth capitalist hegemony. Missing are the specific details which might illuminate the agents of these changes. This study overcomes the shortcomings by elucidating the agents and details of the drawn-out nature of the U.S. transition. The details will be outlined through a historic enquiry into the two main forces of change: the various forms of resistance to economic development and the state building responses to these movements that constructed the market forces producing further rounds of capitalist development. By focusing on the transition in what was known as the Old Northwest – MN, WI, MI, IL, IN, OH – between the 1830s and the 1880s, this study will reveal the significant developments in resistance and class struggle that occurred in both agrarian and labor forms, in the state building necessary to mitigate and neutralize this resistance, stimulating and superintending the transition, and in the market innovations these social processes fed into and grew out of. In doing so a ‘strong’ agro-industrial theory will be developed that recognizes the co-developmental processes of the transition with industrial development and market expansion directed by the active hand of state. The history of the Midwestern transition rests on the specific federal government developments in infrastructure building, land policy, and technological research and the way these were initiated in response to specific episodes of class based resistance. Detailing this history explicates the agentic processes that moved craft artisans into wage earners and subsistence farmers into producers for markets, which became the basis of the establishment of capitalist hegemony in America.

The « Western Wave » of 1848: Reconsidering the Underground Railroad in the Atlantic Age of Revolution

Thierry Drapeau, Université du Québec en Outaouais (Gatineau, Canada)

In the 1840s, as Europe was about to plunge into the revolutionary abyss, increasing numbers of African American slaves in the south of the United States were liberating themselves from bondage by running away northward through the clandestine network of escape known as the Underground Railroad. In fact, successful slave escapes were so overwhelming that the slave population was declining significantly in the upper South during that decade, hence causing an ominous threat to the country’s sectional balance. When news of the outbreak of a new revolution in France reached American soil in March 1848, African Americans—enslaved and free—immediately related to and were inspired by the event, leading Frederick Douglass to speak of the underground black liberation movement as the “western wave” of an upcoming transatlantic revolutionary tide. Building on Douglass’s insight, my presentation will argue that it is useful to weave the story of the Underground Railroad into the history of the nineteenth-century revolutionary Atlantic world. In taking the still largely ignored standpoint of African Americans involved in the underground work of self-emancipation across North America, I will throw into focus a “black 1848”, where the ideas of republicanism, socialism, and internationalism were translated by the enslaved and their allies for immediate abolitionism. In the end, this exploration will drive us to a different understanding of the Underground Railroad—one in which, on the one hand, collective operations of self-liberation across North America re-emerge as a distinct, yet entangled, form of labour internationalism in the form of escape, while, on the other hand, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act re-emerges as a pre-emptive conservative reaction, although not of royalty, but of slavery.

Family, Politics and Gender: Radical New Yorkers’ Response to the Paris Commune

Isobel Plowright, Columbia University (New York, USA), Columbia University (New York, USA)

“The Superintending State: Early American Resistance, Agro-industrial State Building and the Transition to Capitalism. »

Brad Bauerly, North Shore College (Danvers, MA, États-Unis)

This presentation will the influence of early agrarian movements on state institutional capacity building in the US, revealing how the two forces of state intervention and social movement pressure converged to produce a dynamic relationship between the transition to agrarian capitalism and industrialization or agro-industrialization. It will be shown how this protracted agro-industrial development fueled both social movements and state building responses that furthered capitalist development. By highlighting four specific categories of state building– land policy, infrastructure development, agricultural technology and agro-industrial development – this research reveals how the agro-industrial project developed out of rural class struggle spurred economic development and created unique capacities as the US state sought to quell and integrate this rural class struggle into capitalist development.

For Christ and Sugar: The Iberian Origins of Island Capitalism

Jason Opal, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

Histories of capitalism conventionally begin with early modern England. Beginning in the 1500s and continuing through the 1700s, we know, English landlords began to physically and legally “enclose” their estates and to claim new powers over the servants who labored there. This resulted in mass dislocations and state-led violence against the “masterless men” whom English capitalists needed to exploit new lands—both at home and on American plantations. This presentation proposes another starting point: fifteenth-century Portugal, which repeatedly launched latter-day Crusades into North Africa. These expeditions were intimately linked to Portuguese sugar cultivation on Madeira and Cape Verde, which devoured workers with its ferocious work regimes. Slaving expeditions against Muslims gradually lost their explicit religious purpose as Portuguese ships ranged farther down the west African coast; by the late 1500s, the islands of São Tome and Principe had become concentration camps where enslaved blacks—imagined as “infidels” or even as non-humans—produced sugar for a Mediterranean market. At the same time, Portuguese colonists in Brazil made common cause with English adventurers in the Caribbean, setting the stage for the historic transfer of sugar-making skills from the Iberian world to the British island of Barbados in the 1640s. The extreme slavery on that island then shaped Anglo-American ventures in Jamaica, Carolina, and Virginia.Why does this matter? Because capitalism still reflects its origins in religious war and slaving expeditions. This is most visible in the endless search for nameless, rights-less labor in poor and weak countries. More subtly, modern capitalism retains a fundamentally religious drive for total mastery over people and places. Once possible only on small islands, this fanatical vision now targets the world at-large, demanding counter-visions that are both radical and practical.

Uneven and Combined Confusion : on the geopolitical origines of capitalism and the rise of the West

Matthew Dow, York University (Toronto, Canada)

This presentation offers a critique of Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nişancioğlu’s ‘How the West came to rule: the geopolitical origins of capitalism’. We argue that while all historiography features a number of silences, shortcomings or omissions, the omissions in ‘How the West came to rule’ lead to a mistaken view of the emergence of capitalism. There are two main issues to be confronted. First, we argue that Anievas and Nişancioğlu have an inadequate and misleading understanding of “capital” and “capitalism” that tilts them towards a theoretical stance that comes very close to arguing that everything caused capitalism while at the same time having no clear and convincing definition of “capital” or “capitalism”. Second, there are at least three omissions—particular to England/Britain within a geopolitical context—that should be discussed in any attempt to explain the development of capitalism: the financial revolution and the Bank of England; the transition to coal energy; and the capitalization of state power as it relates to war, colonialism and slavery. We conclude by calling for a connected-histories approach within the framework of capital as power.

Book Launch: Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism

Charles Post, City University of New York (New York, USA)

Whether described as “Political Marxism” or “Capital-centric Marxism,” Robert Brenner and Ellen Meiskins Wood’s approach to the origins of capitalism transformed the terms of debate on this issue among both Marxist and non-Marxist scholars. Beginning with a rigorous concept of capitalism’s specificity—the market dependence of both non-producers and direct laborers—Brenner and Wood developed a rigorous alternative explanation of the origins of capitalism in the English countryside in the “long sixteenth century” to that provided by both the “demographic” and “commercialization models.” Over the years, Brenner and Wood’s work has inspired a new generation of Marxist scholars to extend their insights to the origins of capitalism outside of England. In a forthcoming volume, Case Studies in the Origins of Capitalism, to be published as part of Palgrave’s Marx, Engels and Marxism series, Xavier Lafrance (UQAM) and Charles Post (CUNY) have brought together case studies ranging from France, Catalonia, and the United States to Canada, Japan, Brazil, and Turkey. This panel will highlight four contributions to the volume on Canada, England, Japan and Social Reproduction and the transition to capitalism. History of Capitalism: From Origins to the Present

Xavier Lafrance, UQAM (Montréal, Canada)

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Industrial transition in England

Michael Zmolek, University of Iowa (Iowa City, USA)

The Peasantry and Tenancy-Market Dependence: Rural Capitalism in Meiji-Era Japan

Mark Cohen, Chinese University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, China)

Rethinking the ‘Social’ in the transition to capitalism: Reading Federici and Brenner Together

Nicole Leach, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Colonialism(s), Race, and the Transition to Capitalism in Canada

Jessica Evans, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Apports de la pensée marxiste dans la conceptualisation des activités domestiques comme travail.

Camille Robert, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Devant l’échec du marxisme orthodoxe à penser l’exploitation spécifique des femmes, des féministes socialistes et des féministes marxistes, comme elles se revendiquaient, entreprennent de théoriser l’exploitation des ménagères en mobilisant la catégorie marxiste de travail. Ce faisant, elles accordent aux ménagères un statut de travailleuses et font d’elles des actrices politiques à partir de leurs propres lieux de production. La maison et le quartier deviennent alors une « usine sociale », nécessaire à la reproduction de la force de travail. C’est donc à la fois dans une posture d’inspiration et de dépassement du marxisme classique que les féministes analysent le travail ménager comme forme d’exploitation spécifique des femmes dans le système capitaliste. Durant les années 1970, cette analyse non-orthodoxe est source de conflits, non seulement à l’intérieur du mouvement féministe, mais plus largement dans la gauche. Nous proposons ici de présenter les échanges entre féminisme et marxisme dans le Québec des années 1970 en faisant ressortir les alliances et les oppositions.

Le capitalisme, les Juifs et les femmes dans le nationalisme de Lionel Groulx : la nécessité de penser la résistance au capitalisme dans une perspective intersectionelle.

Roxane Bélisle, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

À partir des années 1940, Lionel Groulx emploie l’expression «seconde conquête» pour mettre en garde les Canadiens-français envers les périls posés à la nation par une industrialisation rapide menée par le «capital étranger». Le capitalisme représente pour lui la principale menace à la nation canadienne-française, orientant son nationalisme autour de l’idée de la sauvegarde de la nation. Alors qu’il existe une historiographie dense et de nombreux débats sur la question des Juifs dans les écrits de Lionel Groulx, le rôle des femmes dans la pensée du chanoine a été peu traité par les historiens et historiennes. Pourtant, tel que l’a démontré l’historienne Susan Mann, l’image des femmes est au cœur du nationalisme de Groulx et la baisse du taux de natalité des canadiennes-françaises est un élément central des inquiétudes qu’il entretient pour la survie de la nation. On peut ainsi articuler la question de la sauvegarde de la nation en réaction au capitalisme, mais aussi face à la double menace posée par les Juifs et par les femmes. En revisitant Lionel Groulx d’une telle façon, on peut comprendre sa pensée comme une forme d’opposition au capitalisme dans laquelle sont imbriqués antiféminisme et antisémitisme. Ceci nous permet d’insister sur la nécessité de penser la résistance au capitalisme dans une perspective intersectionnelle et de souligner le danger posé par une tendance conservatrice anticapitaliste et une secondarisation des luttes féministes et antiracistes.

Revenu garanti, salarisation et marchandisation de la vie.

Marie-Pierre Boucher, Université du Québec en Outaouais (Gatineau, Canada)

À partir des interprétations de l’Acte de Speenhamland discutées par Polanyi dans La Grande transformation (1943), nous allons interroger le procès de marchandisation des pratiques sociales qui accompagne les revendications de reconnaissance des activités jusqu’à alors non salariées. En prenant la province du Québec comme toile de fond, nous souhaitons examiner trois cas qui s’échelonnent sur trois périodes (1960-1970; 1970-2017; 2016-). Le premier, directement lié à la référence speenhamlandienne, concerne la régulation étatique et vise à articuler l’idée d’allocation universelle à la dynamique d’activation de l’Aide sociale; les cas 2 et 3 concerneront le service domestique, et les études supérieures (de la revendication pour le paiement des stages à l’idée de salarier les études supérieures), les deux ayant fait l’objet d’appel à la reconnaissance en empruntant au vocabulaire du travail. Notre analyse sera nuancée pour tenir compte des situations de pauvreté liées aux discriminations systémiques (de genre en particulier). En dépit de cette nuance, notre argumentaire concernera la méconnaissance des rapports de domination et de destruction de la vie qu’incarne le travail, et la reconduction des problèmes que ces revendications visaient à résoudre.

Animation: Magda Fahrni

L’état des choses sur l’État.

Robert Sweeny, Université de Terre-Neuve (St. John’s, Canada)

Selon Martin Petitclerc, j’écarte la question centrale de la formation de l’État et ainsi relègue en arrière-plan toute question politique dans mon livre Why Did We Choose to Industrialize ? Le résultat de ces erreurs conceptuelles est que mon livre « risque de limiter notre capacité à développer un savoir historique critique sur le capitalisme. » Depuis longtemps au Québec, la question coloniale s’articule autour des rapports avec l’Empire britannique, et donc les Rébellions de 1837-38 représentent le nœud gordien à résoudre. La critique de cet héritage anime mon livre. La question coloniale centrale selon moi, c’est le fait qu’il s’agit d’une colonie de peuplement. Ainsi la continuité l’emporte sur la rupture et les rapports impériaux sont à déterminer, par la recherche historique; ils ne sont pas prédéterminés par une identité nationale préexistante. Le drame au centre de mon ouvrage est pourquoi on a accepté de remplacer une économie morale par une économie libérale ? En posant la question ainsi, on modifie considérablement notre vision de l’état. Grâce à cette perspective locale, au lieu de voir l’État par en haut, on le voit par en bas, qui nous permet de voir apparaître la raison d’être de l’État lui-même. L’État se révèle comme une structure complexe de contrôle des échanges afin d’assurer la stabilité de l’unité économique de base de cette colonie de peuplement : les foyers de petits producteurs marchands, organisés pour la vaste majorité en unités familiales. Les implications politiques de cette conceptualisation nouvelle fournissent la substance de cette communication.

Un marché des terres autochtones? La propriété foncière à Odanak et Wendake au 19e siècle.

Brian Gettler, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

Depuis la fin du XVIIIe siècle, une propriété foncière autochtone, qui s’inscrit dans le cadre du régime seigneurial, mais qui est distincte des censives concédées aux Canadiens, se développe dans les terres concédées pour l’usage des Autochtones. Durant le XIXe siècle, les Abénaquis d’Odanak et les Wendats de Wendake ont recours aux notaires pour enregistrer leurs mutations foncières. À partir de nos recherches préliminaires dans les greffes de notaire, nous présenterons des exemples de mutations foncières témoignant du marché foncier qui se développe dans ces deux communautés. Ces actes de mutations foncières nous permettront de nous pencher sur la question de la valeur de ces terres en théorie réservées pour les « Sauvages » et de l’enjeu de l’identité « ethnique » des parties impliquées dans ces transactions. Nous analyserons également les liens entre, d’une part, les Abénaquis et les Wendats et, de l’autre, des terres situées en dehors des réserves. Nous chercherons à décortiquer le processus qui a permis à certains Wendats au cours du XIXe siècle de devenir une source importante du capital pour leurs voisins, aussi bien non autochtones qu’autochtones, voulant acquérir des terres. En considérant également le cas d’Odanak, ceci nous mènera à examiner sous un autre angle le rôle de la politique dans le développement capitaliste. Si les gestes posés par certains Autochtones au XIXe siècle semblent s’accorder parfaitement avec l’« esprit du marché », l’État libéral en voie de développement allait rendre ces gestes de plus en plus difficiles. À l’instar de l’agriculture dans l’Ouest à la fin du XIXe siècle, l’État se lance quelques décennies plus tôt à la reconfiguration du marché des terres chez les Autochtones de l’Est, enfermant celui-ci à l’intérieur des réserves.

Isabelle Bouchard, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (Trois-Rivières, Canada)

L’Acte seigneurial de 1854 en perspective: propriété et amélioration (improvement) au Bas-Canada.

Louis-Philippe Lavallée, McGill (Montréal, Canada)

L’abolition du régime seigneurial apparaît trop souvent dans l’historiographie québécoise comme une nécessité historique, comme l’aboutissement « inéluctable » d’un régime désuet et anachronique sous la pression du capitalisme industriel. En rupture d’une telle lecture qui tend à réduire l’abolition du régime seigneurial à titre d’épiphénomène du grand récit de l’essor du libéralisme économique, ou comme simple et inévitable résultat d’un processus de « modernisation » et « d’industrialisation », nous chercherons dans le cadre de cette présentation à contrebalancer cette tendance historiographique et d’aller au-delà d’une lecture économiciste et téléologique qui subordonne l’analyse du changement social comme la manifestation directe des exigences du développement capitaliste. Nous nous pencherons particulièrement sur l’étude des idées de la propriété et de l’amélioration (improvement) qui furent mobilisées dans le cadre des débats sur l’abolition de la tenure seigneuriale. Ces débats ne représentaient pas qu’une « guerre d’idées », mais étaient partie prenante des conflits sociopolitiques sur la définition et la légitimation de la forme de tenure privilégiée, et ce, au profit et aux dépens de qui. Nous aborderons également la question de la propriété comme une relation sociale en mettant un accent particulier sur l’analyse des luttes sociales, politiques et juridiques entre divers acteurs : seigneurs et habitants, propriétaires terriens, squatteurs, spéculateurs, etc. Nous chercherons à cet égard à intégrer la question seigneuriale dans le cadre plus général de la transformation des droits de propriété au Bas-Canada. Cela nous invite ainsi à prendre en compte plusieurs thématiques discutées bien souvent de façon isolée dans la littérature, une situation parfois renforcée par la compartimentation de la connaissance dans un contexte où prédominent les impératifs de spécialisation de la recherche universitaire.

Animation: Dalie Giroux

L’Amérique latine et les structures du capitalisme mondial.

Geneviève Dorais, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Cette présentation proposera une réflexion sur les enseignements que l’histoire de l’Amérique latine peut nous livrer sur le développement et le fonctionnement du système capitaliste globalisé. Elle abordera pour ce faire trois moments forts de l’épanouissement de ce système marchand dans cette région du monde: 1) la période d’expansion coloniale des XVe et XVIe siècles dans les Amériques; 2) la période de contestation anti-impérialiste de l’entre-deux-guerres; 3) la période d’impulsion néolibérale dans la période des dictatures militaires des années 1970-1980. La réflexion cherchera à mettre en relief les débats historiographiques qui ont contribué à une meilleure compréhension du fonctionnement capitaliste en Amérique latine. Empruntant tout à la fois à l’histoire sociale d’influence éminemment marxiste (je pense notamment aux thèses d’Immanuel Wallerstein sur le système-monde, et à la révision abrupte qu’en a offerte l’historien Steve Stern (1988) par le biais de l’histoire latino-américaine) et aux histoires intellectuelles et politiques s’attardant aux phénomènes de résistance latino-américaine, cette réflexion sera portée par deux objectifs précis. Le premier propose d’interroger les origines du système capitaliste mondial, tout en justifiant les raisons pour lesquelles il est important de resituer les origines plurielles de ce système encore trop souvent conjugué exclusivement au singulier. Le second entend donner des exemples de forme de résistance qui ont été mises en place par des latino-américain.e.s pour résister aux conséquences néfastes, et localisées, du capitalisme mondial.

Des expériences autogestionnaires de Mai à l’autogestion comme perspective révolutionnaire.

Francis Dolan, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Cette présentation proposera une réflexion sur les enseignements que l’histoire de l’Amérique latine peut nous livrer sur le développement et le fonctionnement du système capitaliste globalisé. Elle abordera pour ce faire trois moments forts de l’épanouissement de ce système marchand dans cette région du monde: 1) la période d’expansion coloniale des XVe et XVIe siècles dans les Amériques; 2) la période de contestation anti-impérialiste de l’entre-deux-guerres; 3) la période d’impulsion néolibérale dans la période des dictatures militaires des années 1970-1980. La réflexion cherchera à mettre en relief les débats historiographiques qui ont contribué à une meilleure compréhension du fonctionnement capitaliste en Amérique latine. Empruntant tout à la fois à l’histoire sociale d’influence éminemment marxiste (je pense notamment aux thèses d’Immanuel Wallerstein sur le système-monde, et à la révision abrupte qu’en a offerte l’historien Steve Stern (1988) par le biais de l’histoire latino-américaine) et aux histoires intellectuelles et politiques s’attardant aux phénomènes de résistance latino-américaine, cette réflexion sera portée par deux objectifs précis. Le premier propose d’interroger les origines du système capitaliste mondial, tout en justifiant les raisons pour lesquelles il est important de resituer les origines plurielles de ce système encore trop souvent conjugué exclusivement au singulier. Le second entend donner des exemples de forme de résistance qui ont été mises en place par des latino-américain.e.s pour résister aux conséquences néfastes, et localisées, du capitalisme mondial.

1978 : la crise du mouvement révolutionnaire. Le cas du groupe En Lutte!.

David St-Denis Lisée, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Dix ans après 1968, la mouvance qui avait constitué le plus important pôle de la gauche radicale au Québec entre en crise. Issu de la rupture sino-soviétique, propulsé par le contexte des luttes anti-impérialistes et par l’adhérence du discours de la Révolution culturelle en Chine dans la jeunesse militante, le mouvement marxiste-léniniste connaît quelques années dynamiques avant d’entrer en crise idéologique. La chute des modèles politiques et les prévisions non réalisées accélèrent le désarroi des tenants de l’«anti-révisionnisme ». L’une des organisations les plus influentes de ce courant, le groupe EN LUTTE!, constitue un cas particulier. Rarement avait-on vu une organisation communiste – qui plus est, fonctionnant dans une relative clandestinité – débattre au grand jour des principes fondamentaux de son existence. À partir de 1978, le développement d’initiatives internationalistes et d’études sur l’histoire du mouvement communiste, entreprises dans le but de consolider le mouvement, le poussent au marasme. À partir d’une recherche dans les archives du groupe EN LUTTE! et celles de son secrétaire général Charles Gagnon, cette communication a pour objectif d’ouvrir des pistes de réflexion constructives sur un aspect du militantisme communiste au 20e siècle : le désenchantement.

 » Révolution tranquille  » : Mémoire d’État ou mémoire de la résistance?

Jaouad Laaroussi, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Depuis plusieurs décennies, les gouvernements successifs ont participé au démantèlement l’État social Québécois avec leurs programmes de « Rigueur budgétaire », de « Révolution culturelle », de « Réingénierie de l’État » ou de « Déficit zéro ». C’est dans ce contexte que les mouvements sociaux — syndicats, étudiants, féministes, communautaires, etc. —se sont saisis de l’héritage de la « Révolution tranquille » en guise de contre-modèle à ces programmes de coupures. Ainsi, la défense des « acquis » et du « modèle québécois » a entrainé différents groupes à concevoir la « Révolution tranquille » à la fois, comme leur moment fondateur et comme leur horizon d’attente. Pourtant, la radicalisation du mouvement syndical, l’émergence d’un syndicalisme étudiant de combat, du mouvement féministe et des groupes populaires s’est déroulée à la suite des principales réformes de la Révolution tranquille et souvent en raison de la désillusion qu’elles ont provoquée. Dans le cadre de cette communication, nous allons interroger le paradoxe de cette mémoire de la Révolution tranquille, comme mythe fondateur du Québec moderne — Mémoire d’État — et comme mythe fondateur des groupes d’opposition — mémoire des résistances. Alors que l’historiographie récente s’est principalement attelée à démystifier la « Grande noirceur » en dévoilant les éléments de continuité avec la « Révolution tranquille », nous proposons d’interroger a posteriori la Révolution tranquille, en présentant les éléments de rupture à l’égard du projet libéral réformiste porté par ces nouveaux mouvements sociaux.

Animation: Thierry Drapeau

Crédit, morale et société à Montréal au 19e siècle

Alexandre Lapalme, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

L’historiographie québécoise de la pauvreté et des questions sociales a eu tendance à se focaliser sur l’étude des modes institutionnels de prise en charge ou encore sur les mécanismes associatifs ou charitables de régulation de la pauvreté. Ces angles de recherche négligent toutefois une panoplie de moyens moins visibles utilisée par les communautés populaires pour obtenir des produits de premières nécessités, des biens matériels ou simplement un service quelconque. L’analyse de réseaux et de dispositifs subalternes et parallèles de financement à Montréal au 19e siècle — c’est-à-dire extérieurs au système bancaire par ailleurs encore en constitution durant la période et qui servait essentiellement le secteur marchand — jettera un regard nouveau sur différentes facettes de la vie économique et sociale québécoise. En nous penchant sur les relations de crédit interindividuel formelles et informelles, nous mettrons en lumière des jeux de pouvoir et de solidarité qui traversaient horizontalement la société.

Régulations politiques et sociales du travail durant la première moitié du vingtième siècle en Italie et en URSS

Moscha Yannissi, (Montréal, Canada)

Il est impossible d’aborder l’histoire politique du capitalisme en omettant les régulations sociales et juridiques du conflit industriel, proposées ou imposées par les courants contestateurs de ce système. Le conflit industriel, inhérent au capitalisme, en raison de l’opposition des intérêts des détenteurs des capitaux et des travailleurs, a donné naissance à plusieurs courants idéologiques et politiques, dont les objectifs allaient d’atténuation des problèmes sociaux jusqu’à la disparition de ce conflit. Dans cette communication nous proposons de faire une brève présentation des résultats d’une recherche que nous avons réalisée dans le cadre de rédaction d’une thèse que nous avons soutenue en 2004 à l’Université Laval. Dans cette thèse nous avons examiné et comparé le droit du travail d’Italie fasciste et d’Union Soviétique durant la période 1922 – 1936. Cette communication comprendra un bref survol des orientations opposées idéologiquement de ces deux régimes et une présentation plus détaillée des régulations juridiques, apportées dans le domaine des relations du travail par rapport le contexte économique auquel ils faisaient face et le courant de la pensé juridique de l’époque.

L’école de la régulation au Québec : les travaux du Projet accumulation et régulation au Québec (PARQ)

Cory Verbauwhede, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Régulation et crises du capitalisme, publié en 1976 par Michel Aglietta, est reconnu comme étant le texte fondateur de l’« école de la régulation ». Illustrant son propos avec le cas des États-Unis de 1870 à 1970, Aglietta cherchait à se démarquer de la « science économique conventionnelle », qu’il qualifiait de « totalitaire », en ce qu’elle n’était capable de rendre compte ni du « temps vécu » ni du « contenu social des relations économiques ». Par l’étude de cent ans de développements, Aglietta voulait remédier aux lacunes qu’il attribuait aux théories néoclassiques et à pousser plus loin certaines des observations keynésiennes : en raison de sa focalisation sur l’immédiat, Keynes aurait en effet omis d’étudier les « sujets économiques et leurs relations » les uns par rapport aux autres sur le temps long. De son côté, le Projet Accumulation et Régulation au Québec visait à « renouveler l’analyse historique de la socio-économie québécoise aux XIXe et XXe siècles … [en caressant] également l’objectif d’éveiller l’intérêt pour la production de concepts opérationnels propres à appréhender la réalité spécifique du Québec ». Dans notre communication, nous proposerons d’évaluer comment le néomarxisme hérité de l’école de la régulation a été repris dans les travaux du PARQ, le tout afin d’identifier des pistes intéressantes pour une histoire politique du capitalisme au Québec.

Réflexions historiennes sur l’exploitation et la grève au temps du néolibéralisme

Martin Petitclerc, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

La transformation incessante des conditions sociales d’existence, qui caractérise l’expérience néolibérale, est une caractéristique bien connue du capitalisme. Dès 1848, Marx et Engels affirmaient que « ce bouleversement continuel de la production [capitaliste], ce constant ébranlement de tout le système social, cette agitation et cette insécurité perpétuelles distinguent l’époque bourgeoise de toutes les précédentes ». Ce bouleversement capitaliste a créé les conditions d’émergence d’un nouveau sujet politique, la classe ouvrière, qui partageait une expérience commune de l’exploitation. Près de 175 années plus tard, le bouleversement des conditions sociales d’existence est toujours au coeur de l’expérience du capitalisme, mais sans que puisse émerger un sujet collectif porteur d’un projet global d’émancipation. Dans cette présentation, nous proposons de réfléchir au rôle joué par le déclin de la grève dans cette fermeture néolibérale de l’horizon politique. En nous appuyant sur l’histoire sociale québécoise, nous aborderons l’évolution de cette pratique sociale de contestation et, dans une visée plus prospective, le sens de sa pertinence politique au temps de la consolidation du mode de gouvernement néolibéral.

Animation: Sébastien Rioux

Ouvriers, soldats et paysans pauvres ont pris le pouvoir politique entre leurs mains à l’automne de 1917. Bien qu’il y ait de nombreux débats sur ce qui s’est passé avant et après la révolution bolchevique, cette session expliquera comment le pouvoir soviétique a fonctionné à la base. Qu’est-ce qui a changé pour les gens ordinaires? Les femmes ont immédiatement obtenu des droits formels, légaux et de l’égalité, mais quelle différence a été faite dans leur vie quotidienne? Les nationalités opprimées de l’Azerbaïdjan à la Pologne et le peuple juif dans tout l’empire ont gagné le droit à l’autodétermination, mais était-ce seulement de nom? Si beaucoup de gens savent quelque chose sur la façon dont la libération sexuelle, l’éducation de masse et la démocratie soviétique ont prospéré pendant un certain temps, cette session fournira des histoires sur ce que le socialisme ressemblait et ressentait pour les gens ordinaires. Questions bienvenues!

Todd Chretien, Haymarket Books (Oakland, États-Unis)

John Riddell, Independent Researcher (États-Unis)

Sherry Wolf, Rutgers University (New Jersey, États-Unis)

Lenin, Democracy and Socialism

Jean Baillargeon, Independant Scholar (Toronto, Canada)

In my presentation, I will assess some of the criticisms that have been levelled at Lenin and “Leninism” from the Left. Many socialists, notably Emma Goldman and Rosa Luxemburg, were very critical of Lenin and the Bolsheviks for having created a centralized, authoritarian, and hierarchical political organization in the months and years following October 1917. My aim is to situate the authoritarian deviations of the Bolsheviks against the backdrop not only of the extraordinary challenges they faced after 1917, but also of Lenin’s vision of democratic socialism prior to 1917. Lenin believed that democracy was in many ways the basis of socialism. He prioritized the need to secure the material conditions for democracy throughout Russia, including electrification (which he called “the foundation of democracy”) and education. Lenin wished to foster a spirit of collective intelligence, what Toni Negri calls the “general intellect”, as an integral part of political transformation. I conclude with thoughts on the contrast between Lenin’s vision of democratic socialism and the excesses of the Revolution, and the practical questions regarding collective action that are part of Lenin’s legacy.Hill, Christopher. Lenin and the Russian Revolution. Hodder and Stoughton for the English Universities Press. London. 1947.V.I. Lenin. Revolution at the Gates: A Selection of Writings from February to October 1917. Edited and with an introduction and afterword by Slavoj Žižek. Verso. New York. 2002.Zizek, S., Budgen, S., Kouvelakis, S. (Eds.). Lenin reloaded : toward a politics of truth. Duke University Press. Durham. 2007.

The Legacy of the Russian Revolution and Totality

Kaveh Boveiri, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

My presentation elaborates on the relationship between totality and revolution in the particular case of the Russian Revolution. It argues for the standpoint of the open, objective totality, as one distinctive characteristic of this revolution. In so arguing, it is different not only from the standpoints that deny totality, from the ones that deny objectivity, but also from the standpoint that argues for a closed totality. The cardinal slogans of this revolution, namely, ‘‘Peace, Bread, Land’’ and ‘‘All Power to the Soviets’’ are shown to be the manifestations of such a totality.

Ethics, Politics and Post-Capitalism

Paul Gray, Brock University (St.Catharines, Canada)

What is the relation between ethics and politics? In part, they seem to be at one and the same time overlapping and antagonistic ways of regulating human society. Lenin, in The State and Revolution, follows Marx and Engels in regarding politics as inextricably wrapped up in the state. Therefore, if the state is to wither away under socialism, so too would politics. In this case, ethics would again become the sole way of regulating society. Indeed, it can be argued that ethics is most important for any worldview that envisions an end to politics and the state. And yet, socialist thought, including Lenin’s, has tended to neglect ethics in comparison to other worldviews that, because they believe in the permanence of the political, would seem to be less dependent on ethics. In this essay, I draw out some of the destructive legacies of this neglect.

Was The Soviet Union Post-Capitalist?

Gabrielle Magro, York University (Toronto, Canada)

What does it mean to raise the question of whether the Soviet Union was post-capitalist? What, that is, does it mean to make the claim that societies vary in kind, by form, by logic? Especially in light of value-form theory (which begins, I take it, with Marx), are those who would refer to the Soviet experiment as « state capitalism » justified? If so, how are we to properly conceptualize and understand the Soviet failure to overcome the logic of capitalism?

October 1917 as Social Revolution

Niloofar Moazzami, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

In the wake of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the weakness of Provisional Government, the Bolsheviks won the election by using tactics such as “constant critical propaganda directed at industrial workers and at garrison and front-line troops, driven along with the wave of spontaneous popular rebellions, calling for peace, land, bread, workers’ control and all power to the soviets”. Skocpol (1979)I will discuss the subject of social revolution as elaborated upon by Skocpol (1979) as one of the forces for change in modern societies, with special emphasis on the distinctive pattern of sociopolitical change. According to Skocpol, social revolutions are rapid, with basic transformations of the state and class structures, and they are mostly carried out by class-based revolts from below. They form a combination of social structural change with class upheaval on the one hand and political transformation on the other hand. I will discuss the Bolsheviks’ revolution as a social revolution and not only a political revolution (which is the transformation of state structures without social structural transformation following class conflict). I will shed light on this standpoint with reference to Tilly’s (1978) point of view on revolution. Skocpol, Theda. State and Social revolutions-a comparative analyses of France, Russia and china. Cambridge university press. Cambridge. 1979. 407p.Tilly, Charles. From Mobilization to Revolution. Random house. New York. 1979. 349p.

L’AURORE DE NOTRE LIBÉRATION : Le panafricanisme, l’anticolonialisme, et le féminisme aux lendemains de la révolution russe. L’Internationale communiste (1919-1943) se vantait d’une structure centralisée et de la direction des campagnes depuis son quartier général à Moscou. Pourtant, les efforts de l’Internationale dans les domaines de travail «périphériques» ont été caractérisés par l’initiative locale et la synergie transnationale.

John Riddell, Historien du socialisme : Unité contre le colonialisme et La Ligue contre l’impérialisme 1927-36. (Toronto, Canada)

Ameth Lo, Groupe de recherche et d’initiative pour la libération d’Afrique: La Longue Marche vers une transition post-capitaliste: Perspectives panafricanistes. (Toronto, Canada)

Daria Dyakonova, Université de Montréal: « Le communisme est impensable sans la libération des femmes »: Le Mouvement communiste international des femmes 1921-26. (Montréal, Canada)

Animation: Aziz Fall

A Social Democratic Path to Socialism? Worker-Controlled Capital in Sweden and Québec

Shannon Ikebe, UC Berkeley (Berkeley, CA, États-Unis)

A revolutionary path to socialism in the West envisioned by Marx was decisively defeated in 1917-23; what were the prospects of transition to socialism in its aftermath? Was there any prospect of a transition to socialism from advanced capitalism? I examine the rise and fall of the Wage-Earner Funds (löntagarfonder) proposal in Sweden in the 1970s, which was among the most plausible path to socialism from advanced capitalism. Proposed by radicalized unions in 1975, the Wage-Earner Funds sought gradual socialization of the whole economy through continuous annual transfer of a portion of corporate profits to unions. Based on an analysis of political struggles within the labor movement over the Wage-Earner Funds, I posit that social democratic dominance of the postwar era had contradictory effects upon working class politics. The characteristic features of Fordist-Keynesianism, including full employment and centralized unions with high density, furnished the bases for the socialist Funds to emerge. In particular, peak-level bargaining politicized the economic to a great degree, enabling the union confederation (LO) to adopt a national, macroeconomic perspective rather than typical sectoral perspectives. However, it is also the structural features of Fordist social democracy – centralization and disempowering of the grassroots – that constrained the militant mobilizations by the labor movement, which eventually doomed the transformative form of Wage-Earner Funds proposal to defeat by the early 1980s. The Swedish case also sheds a light on the politics and possibilities of the union funds in Québec (the FTQ Solidarity Funds and the CSN Fondaction), as a more limited yet actually-existing form of worker-controlled capital, even if the prospect of actual socialist transition through these Québécois funds was hardly on the agenda; to what extent, and under what circumstances, can worker-controlled capital pose a threat to bourgeois hegemony, or on the other hand, reinforce it?

Debtors of the world unite

Jesús Suaste , Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Puebla, Mexique)

Where do we stand on the issue of ‘financial power’? Have anti-capitalist groups around the world developed an alternative to the current financial system? What might a ‘general strike’ against money and finance look like? More broadly: is there a financial scheme, a banking model, a monetary policy, or a credit system that we could distinctly identify as anti- or post-capitalist?The wide variety of social conflicts that emerge from the financial activities – involving debt, inflation, the capitalist control over credit and issuance of money, fiscal paradises, flight of capitals, among others – seems to point to the same underlying problem: the vulnerability of the community to the power embedded in the private control over the means of production and circulation of money, credit and debt. The underlying premise of this proposal is that a post-capitalist project will remain incomplete and unfeasible as long as it does not address the question of how to reorganize this field. My presentation will offer: a) an overview of the ideas and projects attempting to design an alternative to the dominant financial system (focusing on those that emerged after the 2008 financial crisis); b) an assessment of the advantages and limitations of these ideas and projects. This discussion should lead us to the broader question of how a community could build a democratic model for the administration of the financial technologies and institutions.

Financial innovation among Black, Muslim Canadian women: A case study on mutual aid and banking cooperatives in the Somali community in Toronto, Canada

Caroline- Shenaz Hossein, York University (Toronto, Canada)

The 1920s Antigonish movement in Nova Scotia, Canada was about social change brought by ordinary people at ‘kitchen tables’ to discuss the way business was conducted so as to uplift the lives of people. The Antigonish story is inspiring. So too is the collective organizing by hundreds of Somali-Canadian women in the late 1980s ,who gather around ‘kitchen tables’ to promote self-help among excluded Black Muslim Canadian women. For at least three decades, Somali-Canadians make spaces for people to collectively organize and to innovate in cooperative banking systems. The new form of cooperative banking is called: Ayuuto. For the past thirty years, Ayuuto rooted in peer-to-peer banking helps in order for Somali-Canadian women to present a positive view of Somalis and to counteract financial exclusion. Ayuuto fills the gaps of the underbanked and unbanked in Toronto. In spite of the business and social exclusion in society, Somali-Canadian women do not wait on handouts rather they form mutual aid groups. Interviews were carried with 71 subjects across the city of Toronto, Canada to learn about Ayuuto, a financial innovation taking place. Ayuuto exists as a response to the intense forms of exclusion because of people’s intersecting identities of race, class, faith and gender in Canadian society and business.

Maymun Abukar, York University (Toronto, Canada)

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L’économie sociale d’hier à aujourd’hui: du socialisme à l’anarchisme?

Cette activité se veut un dialogue intergénérationnel sur l’économie sociale/les alternatives économiques au Québec, d’hier à aujourd’hui. Issu·e·s de générations politiques différentes et d’horizons culturels hétérogènes, les quatre panélistes illustreront à travers leurs trajectoires des affiliations ou référents idéologiques à la fois convergents et divergents. Les présentations se feront en deux temps. Premièrement, un survol individuel d’une dizaine de minutes par personne. Un questionnement commun servira de fil rouge aux présentations : quel contexte? quelle(s) vision(s) de l’économie sociale ou d’alternative économiques avaient/ont les socialistes ou les anarchistes/anti-autoritaires ? Quelles étaient/sont les activités de ces militant·e·s ? Quels sont les défis ? Quelles apprentissages peut-on en tirer ?Deuxièmement, un échange, animé par Nesrine Bessaïh, permettra de pousser un peu plus loin certains des éléments présentés dans les trajectoires/témoignages et de mettre en relief des éléments de convergence, de divergence et d’apprentissages.

Témoignages d’Anna Kruzynski et de Jessica Cabana: de la génération anti-autoritaire/anarchiste qui émerge à la fin des années 1990. Deux micro-cohortes qui passent de la rue aux alternatives seront analysées. Celle qui émerge des luttes altermondialistes post-2001 et qui conteste l’économie sociale en pleine institutionnalisation (ex. Initiatives regroupées lors de Sortir du Capitalisme) et celle qui naît dans la foulée de la grève de 2012 et qui s’impose rapidement dans un contexte mouvant mais plein de possibles, celle de l’innovation sociale à l’ère du 2.0 (ex. Initiatives réunies lors de Transformer Montréal).

Jessica Cabana, Hive Café (Montréal, Canada)

Anna Kruzynski, Université Concordia (Montréal, Canada)

Témoignages de Juan-Luis Klein et Jean-Marc Fontan : de la génération de l’engagement social (décennie 1960), qui a transité par le militantisme universitaire (décennie 1970), pour conduire à l’intellectualisme critique engagé (à partir des années 1980). Les deux chercheurs partageront des éléments synthèse de ces grandes périodes.

Jean-Marc Fontan, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Juan-Luis Klein, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Animation: Nesrine Bessaïh

Les pratiques de travail non-hiérarchiques dans des entreprises collectives: Quelles perspectives pour une transformation sociale anticapitaliste?

Mathieu Roy, Université Concordia/Réseau Koumbit (Montréal, Canada)

Face aux différentes crises qui nous affectent et qui renforcent les inégalités et les injustices, et qui restreignent nos libertés, il devient essentiel de se mobiliser pour initier le changement et affronter les jalons du système capitaliste destructeur. Malgré tout, la nécessité de répondre à nos besoins essentiels amène les classes populaires à se confiner dans le marché du travail afin d’obtenir de quoi payer les factures et restreint la capacité de mobilisation nécessaire à la transformation sociale qui mettra fin à la domination du système capitaliste. Comment alors se sortir du cloisonnement du travail quotidien qui nous réduit à la simple expression de « consommatrices/teurs »? Découlant d’une collaboration relative à un projet de recherche sur l’impact des pratiques de travail non-hiérarchiques au sein de deux entreprises collectives actives sur le territoire connu sous le nom de « Québec », Réseau Koumbit et la Ferme Coopérative aux Champs qui Chantent, la présentation que nous proposons visera à approfondir deux éléments qui contribueront aux réflexions du sous-thème Alternatives Économiques et Émancipation du thème Stratégies de Transition de la conférence La Grande Transition. Regroupant une membre du collectif de travail de Réseau Koumbit, Mari Deckers, et un étudiant à la maîtrise au programme individualisé de l’Université Concordia, Mathieu Roy, le duo de présentatrices/teurs aborderont les deux éléments suivant : 1) Les pratiques de travail non-hiérarchiques pour transformer et libérer le quotidien (par Mathieu Roy); et 2) L’autogestion et l’élimination de la hiérarchie au travail pour soutenir les efforts d’une transformation sociale anticapitaliste (par Mari Deckers). La présentation prendra la forme d’un groupe de discussion où les deux personnes présentatrices initieront les échanges autour de leurs éléments respectifs à partir d’expériences concrètes et d’observations au sein des deux entreprises collectives faisant l’objet du projet de recherche de l’étudiant co-présentateur.

Guillaume !, Réseau Koumbit (Montréal, Canada)

Les pièges de l' »innovation sociale »

Yves-Marie Abraham, HEC Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

L’innovation sociale est à la mode, aussi bien dans le milieu des affaires, que dans le « tiers secteur » ou chez certains militants « de gauche ». Ses partisans les plus enthousiastes y voient une manière efficace de faire face aux difficultés que connaissent nos société sur le plan social, écologique et politique, mais aussi un moyen de transformer ces sociétés en profondeur et en douceur pour les rendre plus justes, plus soutenables et moins aliénantes. Nous soulignerons tout d’abord que cette « solution » émerge dans le contexte du passage de l’État-providence à l’« Entreprise-providence ». Pour les initiatives privées (entreprises, coopératives, OBNL…) que désignent la notion d’innovation sociale, il s’agit le plus souvent de prendre en charge la production de biens et de services que les États occidentaux assumaient jusque-là ou auraient pu assumer.Il s’est constitué ainsi au cours des trois dernières décennies un nouveau « champ » (Bourdieu) dans lequel ces initiatives mènent une lutte pour l’accumulation d’un capital symbolique spécifique, que nous nommons « capital de bienfaisance » et qui représente la condition de leur survie ou de leur croissance. La matière première de ce processus d’accumulation est le « malheur d’autrui ».Loin de constituer un espace de transformation de nos sociétés, ce champ fait surtout office de béquille pour l’État social et offre un alibi moral au capitalisme avancé. C’est aussi le lieu d’exploitation privilégié d’une force de travail très scolarisée et prédisposée à se sacrifier pour les grandes causes de l’heure (justice sociale, protection de l’environnement, participation citoyenne,…). Ces acteurs de « l’innovation sociale » risquent ainsi de n’être que les « idiots utiles » d’un système qu’ils prétendent vouloir changer. Toutefois, sur les marges de ce champ, certaines initiatives présentent un potentiel de transformation et d’émancipation intéressant, à condition d’être associées à d’autres formes d’action politique.

This activity brings together engaged-scholars of Indigenous resistance and resurgence. It is a dialogue on resistance to what Taiaia:ke Alfred refers to as “colonial capitalism” and on resurgence in the form of alternatives rooted in both traditional Indigenous and settler-social economic practices. Karine Awashish (Opitciwan community, Atikamek Nation) will share her insights on collective economic initiatives in the Nitaskinan and on the challenges of community economic development in First Nations territories. Kam’ayaam/Chachim’multhnii (Cliff Atleo, Jr., Tsimshian (Kitsumkalum/Kitselas) and Nuu-chah-nulth (Ahousaht)) will discuss the complexities of economic resurgence in Nuu-chah-nulth communities. He will explore how these communities navigate/adopt/resist mainstream capitalism while working to sustain their unique cultural identities, practices and worldviews. David Newhouse (Onondaga, Six Nations of the Grand River community) will then talk about the challenge of indigenous economic development in the shadow of the borg (of capitalism). He will explore the complexities of finding/creating/retaining space within/beyond capitalism given its incredible flexibility and its tendency to absorb “alternatives” without weakening its core.

Karine Awashish, Coop Nitaskinan et Commission de développement économique des Premières Nations du Québec et du Labrador (CDEPNQL) (Shawinigan, Canada)

Kam’ayaam/Chachim’multhnii (Cliff Atleo, Jr.), Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, Canada)

Animation: Anna Kruzynski

Les expériences passées en agriculture urbaine pour penser l’économie et l’agriculture de demain

Serge-Olivier Rondeau, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

À l’aube de la révolution industrielle à Montréal au XIXe siècle, les populations des campagnes avoisinantes immigrent massivement vers la ville pour y trouver de l’emploi dans les manufactures encore naissantes. Les savoirs de ces personnes en agriculture vont leur permettre d’élever des animaux et de faire des jardins dans l’agglomération pour assurer leur autonomie alimentaire et celle de leur famille dans une période où les salaires insuffisants les plongent dans une extrême précarité. Toutefois, la densification du cadre bâti, la manière de lotir l’espace ainsi que la règlementation municipale au cours de la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle vont tous concourir à éliminer ces pratiques agricoles du territoire montréalais et contribuer à soumettre entièrement la majeure partie des citadin-e-s au travail salarié pour l’acquisition de denrées alimentaires (Castonguay, 2012 ; Bradbury, 1984). Dans cette communication, je propose de retracer les arguments qui ont mené à l’adoption des règlements qui interdisent, pour la première fois de l’histoire de Montréal, une pratique d’élevage sur son territoire, celle du cochon. Par le biais de ces derniers, je voudrais montrer certaines formes d’organisations sociales qui étaient liées de près à des pratiques agricoles en milieu urbain. Les manières de vivre de cette époque pourront peut-être permettre d’imaginer d’une part, des façons différentes de s’alimenter qu’il serait possible de mettre en œuvre dans une économie post-capitaliste et post-carbone et d’autre part, une agriculture où l’« écart métabolique » à l’origine de la crise écologique sous le capitalisme dont parle Marx (1981) est dorénavant comblé.

L’alimentation comme levier d’émancipation

Sébastien Rioux, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Cette présentation se veut une réflexion critique sur le rôle de l’alimentation dans l’économie politique du capitalisme. Depuis les années 1950, l’agriculture productiviste et le secteur de la transformation alimentaire ont été de plus en plus sollicités afin de gommer les contradictions profondes du mode de production capitaliste, notamment à travers leur capacité à réduire le coût de la force de travail en tant que marchandise. Cette présentation soutient l’idée que l’économie politique de l’alimentation offre non seulement une avenue permettant d’appréhender le pouvoir destructeur du capitalisme en tant que système d’organisation sociale, mais également la possibilité de réfléchir au potentiel émancipateur de l’alimentation en tant que vecteur privilégié de transformation des pratiques et relations sociales.

Decommodifying food

Sam Bliss, University of Vermont (Burlington, VT, États-Unis)

Commodity farmers receive the market prices of foods, and thus make profit by maximizing production and minimizing costs. Markets systematically allocate commodity food to those willing and able to pay the market price. Agri-food systems cover 40 percent of Earth’s ice-free land, release about a quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, slurp up two-thirds of all freshwater withdrawals, and threaten biodiversity more than any other human activity. One in ten people are chronically undernourished, yet about 70 percent of plant calories produced in the world become livestock feed, biofuels, industrial materials, and waste instead of food for humans. Scholars and policy makers tend to suggest fixing food markets so that they feed hungry people first and reward ecologically sound agricultural practices. Such market-based solutions require massive wealth redistribution and commodifying the environment.Another option is to create non-market systems for producing, distributing, and purchasing food. Centralized, state-based food systems could in principle feed everyone and encourage ecological agriculture, but would likely prove anti-democratic and susceptible to regime change. Little evidence beyond rhetoric suggests that powerful actors want to feed all humans or end environmentally destructive agriculture. Under what conditions might local, self-organized, participatory agri-food systems emerge? What actors and groups are already decommodifying food in industrialized capitalist societies? How can these practices spread?

Vers une redéfinition des espaces ruraux: la paysannerie comme source de transition

François Desjardins, Université Laval (Québec, Canada)

Cette communication vise à exposer les différentes motivations et idées qui mènent à une reterritorialisation de l’économie rurale et comment celle-ci participe à la mise en place d’une transition post-capitaliste.Si les différents plans de développement institutionnels et privés dans le monde rural ne conçoivent l’espace qu’autour d’une croissance économique basée sur un modèle extractif, de multiples initiatives visent plutôt une réappropriation du territoire. Dans un contexte néo-libéral, le système alimentaire conventionnel intègre l’alimentation dans des flux mondialisés et dans des dynamiques de délocalisation et de relocalisation. Face à cette situation, et sous la forme d’une contre-tendance, une multitude d’alternatives ont vu le jour. Les marchés publics, l’agriculture soutenue par la communauté ou encore la réintroduction de circuits courts constituent en ce sens des initiatives construites sur une vision à long terme soucieuse des impacts environnementaux mais également du bien-être de chacun des acteurs de la chaîne alimentaire. En effet, face à l’incapacité du système à revitaliser les milieux ruraux, plusieurs actrices et acteurs revisitent la notion de paysannerie et s’organisent comme mouvement de résistance et de transformation. Ces alternatives visent notamment à se réapproprier l’espace et faire du territoire un enjeu collectif pour la transformation des communautés. Pouvant être associée à une représentation du territoire comme un milieu de vie et un ancrage socio-économique, la reterritorialisation est d’ailleurs l’une des clés d’émancipation utilisées pour favoriser la cohésion sociale, le respect de la biodiversité et une vision de développement pérenne et durable. Par la création de nouveaux espaces collectifs, des modes d’échange et de production orientés vers les communs, elles et ils créent des pratiques innovantes pouvant participer à un changement profond, tant au niveau économique que social.

La coopérative à notre mesure a été mise sur pieds (!!!) parce que nous croyons qu’il est plus que jamais impératif de démontrer que la fabrication écologique et locale de biens, soit la confection de souliers dans le cas présent, est possible dans une perspective de renforcement de l’autonomie et de la résilience de nos communautés. Il va s’en dire que cette initiative s’inscrit par le fait même au sein d’une alternative au capitalisme tout en mettant de l’avant une nouvelle forme d’organisation autogérée faisant partie intégrante de sa communauté. D’autre part, il est primordial pour nous de partager ouvertement notre expérience et nos outils afin d’aider à la réalisation de d’autres initiatives allant dans la même direction. Nous serions donc honoré.e.s de pouvoir partager notre parcours, nos outils ainsi que les défis auxquels nous avons dû faire face vu la nature du projet et ce, sous la forme d’une présentation/discussion conviviale. De plus, la coopérative aura démarré ses activités depuis le mois de janvier 2017 au moment de l’événement, ce qui est idéal de notre côté.

David LeBrasseur, Coopérative à notre mesure (Montréal, Canada)

Sophie Riendeau, Coopérative à notre mesure (Montréal, Canada)

David Lapierre, Coopérative à notre mesure (Montréal, Canada)

S’organiser au lieu de se faire organiser

Martin Zibeau, Horizons Gaspésiens (Saint-Siméon, Canada)

Comment une communauté d’individus peut-elle espérer reprendre une part de contrôle sur son économie, sans pour autant être « contrôlante » à son tour?En Gaspésie, quelques exemples concrets sur le terrain sont en cours d’essai depuis quelques années. Les exemples présentés seront ceux d’Horizons gaspésiens, une coopérative de solidarité créée dans le but de servir de support administratif à une panoplie de projets autogérés. Parmi ceux-ci, le Loco Local un espace citoyen autogéré ouvert à tous et toutes 24h sur 24, sept jours sur sept et où la confiance est au coeur de l’expérience. Le Demi, une monnaie alternative créée à même le dollar canadien en coupant celui-ci en deux avec une paire de ciseaux et les Chemins gaspésiens, un répertoire vivant autogéré qui veut aider à faire sortir de l’ombre le fait que l’économie sociale et collaborative est un pilier fort de l’économie gaspésienne.

VIRAGE et la participation consciente

Ian Segers, VIRAGE, UQÀC (Chicoutimi, Canada)

VIRAGE, FABRIQUE D’IDÉES est un festival transdisciplinaire où se croisent les sciences, les arts, les savoirs-faires, les expériences terrain, la politique et les alternatives économiques dans un objectif précis: co-construire et accélérer la transition socio-écologique. VIRAGE se déroule en pleine nature dans un village en région éloignée, à Ste-Rose-du-Nord au Saguenay et accueil des centaines de citoyennes de tout le Québec et durant quatre jours. L’intelligence collective est stimulée par une approche participative originale qui met en dialogue une diversité de savoirs articulée à travers trois grandes dimensions : 1- La tête : Pour décoloniser l’imaginaire, il est important de comprendre notre monde par ses dimensions théoriques et conceptuelles. En s’exerçant à chercher, à analyser et à s’interinfluencer, il devient possible de polliniser nos imaginaires et développer de nouvelles approches théoriques adaptées aux réalités socio-écologique de notre époque.2- Les mains : Cette dimension implique la mobilisation et la transmission de savoirs-faire dans une volonté d’apprentissage collectif. L’idée, c’est de (ré)apprendre comment faire les choses, mais aussi à les déconstruire et à réparer le matériel autant que l’immatériel. 3- Le coeur : C’est réapprendre à faire confiance en ce reliant à soi, aux autres et à la nature tout en célébrant notre interdépendance à cette inestimable communauté de destin planétaire. En explorant de nouvelles narrations du monde, le cœur permet de co-construire d’audacieuses éthiques post-capitalistes tout en faisant face aux émotions individuelles et collectives qui nous assaillent dans cette époque d’effondrementLe festival est autofinancé à 90%. À part un support financier de la MRC du fjord, VIRAGE se finance par la vente de billets et de bières spécialement fabriquée pour le festival. Mais rien ne serait possible sans le don et le contre-don entre organisateurs, bénévoles, festivalières, conférenciers et artistes. Lors de l’édition 2017, nous avons initié le « billet solidaire » : une personne peut acheter un billet supplémentaire qui sera donné à une personne ne pouvant pas assumer le prix du festival. Pour l’édition de 2018, nous voulons pousser plus loin les pratiques économiques innovantes et proposer aux festivaliers la « participation consciente ». Cette formule de financement développé par l’Université du Nous(http://universite-du-nous.org) propose de questionner les façons d’échanger les richesses. Cette formule implique pour les organisatrices une totale transparence et la diffusion du montage financier pour que les festivaliers puissent donner ce qui leur parait juste. Cette conscience se développe sur la base de trois questions : ce que je VEUX payer? Ce que je PEUX payer ? Ce que je DOIS payer. Cette pratique économique sera le sujet central de la conférence proposée.

Cette activité réunira des militantes et chercheures-engagées féministes qui expérimentent et/ou réfléchissent les alternatives économiques. Elle se veut un dialogue intergénérationnel historique, rassembleur et critique: des perspectives féministes radicales sur l’économie des années 1970s (Côté) aux écoféministes de la génération altermondialiste qui vivent l’autonomie collective (Prud’homme et Beau-Ferron) ou qui pensent la souveraineté alimentaire (Beaulieu-Bastien) en passant par la revendication pour des infrastructures sociales comme levier vers l’autonomie économique des femmes mise de l’avant par la Marche du pain et des roses dans les années 1990s (Germain). Animée par Julie Raby, et commentée par Louise Boivin, cette activité abordera rêves, initiatives, désillusions, grincements, instrumentalisations, démantèlements, mais aussi ouvertures. Elle permettra de soulever des questions importantes en lien avec la reconfiguration des rapports de classe, de genre et de racisation et de proposer quelques pistes pour différencier ce qui est progressiste comme alternative économique et ce qui ne l’est pas.

Elsa Beaulieu-Bastien, Université Concordia (Montréal, Canada)

Denyse Côté, Université du Québec en Outaouais (Gatineau, Canada)

Louise Boivin, Université du Québec en Outaouais (Gatineau, Canada)

Elisabeth Germain, (Québec, Canada)

Maude Prud’homme, Tache d’huile (Gaspésie, Canada)

Gabriella Kinté, Librairie Racines (Montréal, Canada)

Catherine Beau-Ferron, Hameau 18 (Cap-au-Renard, Canada)

Animation: July Raby

This activity brings together activists, organisers and entrepreneurs from racialized communities of Montreal who are engaged in taking back economic practices for social justice. Facilitated by Stephanie Guico, each of the participants will be asked to engage with a series of questions as they share their experience: Would they qualify their work as emancipatory? If so, what aspects of mainstream Quebec are they working to free themselves from? Is their practice rooted in anti-capitalism / what worldview are they working to materialize? What controlling influences have they and the people they work with had to free themselves from to move towards this worldview? How does the vision materialize into work, projects, etc. And how do they not lose track of the spirit of it when having to transpose to « deliverables » and « project statements »? Professor Jessica Gordon Nembhard will act as commentator, engaging in in situ analysis, based on her vast experience with community economics, Black Political Economy and popular economic literacy. This activity will provide a snapshot into the ongoing work by racialized communities to develop economic alternatives and to improve working conditions, busy work that is often overshadowed by more visible forms of social justice organizing in the face of racist, xenophobic and sexist assaults on individual and collective well being. It will be a space for sharing of dreams but also of challenges and for the drawing of lessons on how to consolidate and grow community-based approaches to social and economic justice.

Stéphanie Germain, (Montréal, Canada)

Mostafa Henaway, Immigrant Workers Centre (Montréal, Canada)

Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, City University of New York, Green Worker Cooperatives (New York, USA)

Will Prosper, Montréal-Nord Républik (Montréal, Canada)

Animation: Stephanie Guico

Que se passe-t-il à Pointe-Saint-Charles avec le Bâtiment 7 ? Cet ancien bâtiment ferroviaire, objet d’une réappropriation réussie par et pour sa communauté et d’un imposant travail de développement, se propose ni plus ni moins de devenir une fabrique d’autonomie collective, un commun où se réapproprier les fondements de la vie. Dans les semaines entourant l’ouverture de sa première phase, des militantEs qui portent à cœur le projet proposent deux présentations, une sur l’arcade autogérée Press Start et une sur le Bâtiment 7 dans son ensemble, suivi d’une discussion collective.

Co-constructing an emancipatory economic initiative with youth in Pointe Saint-Charles / Co-construire une initiative économique émancipatrice avec la jeunesse de Pointe Saint-Charles

Michelle Duchesneau, Press Start youth-led cooperative arcade (Montréal, Canada)

Press Start is a youth-led cooperative arcade in Pointe Saint Charles that is set to open its doors in the spring of 2018, in Bâtiment 7. Our project emerged out of Saint Columba House, a community organization with a mission for social justice through education and empowerment. From 2015-16, three adult collaborators worked with five youth to devise a community consultation, exploring the needs and issues faced by youth in the community. The five young womyn who led the consultation interviewed over two hundred youth. After analysing the data, numerous issues emerged, as well as proposed solutions. Youth aged 14-19 shared that they were in need of employment opportunities in the community, in need of decision-making spaces, and spaces that are “by youth and for youth”. One solution proposed was capable of responding to many of the issues named: a youth-led cooperative business. So here we are, a year and a half later, working on a self-managed not for profit cooperative business with a social mission to create employment for youth in the arcade and in the broader community. Questions that we will explore: Why is it important that youth participate in the transition to a post-capitalist society? What are the social justice values and economic practices that frame this initiative? How does the re-framing of the economy and the construction of a youth-led cooperative business break with capitalism?

Akki Mackay, Saint Columba House (Montréal, Canada)

Shane Keith, Press Start youth-led cooperative arcade (Montréal, Canada)

Samara Allison, Press Start youth-led cooperative arcade (Montréal, Canada)

Imane Tidli, Press Start youth-led cooperative arcade (Montréal, Canada)

Réappropriation à grande échelle. Le cas du Bâtiment 7.

Judith Cayer, Bâtiment 7 (Montréal, Canada)

Le projet du Bâtiment 7 embrasse si largement dans sa proposition de transformation, son histoire complexe, ses millions de dollars d’investissements et son écosystème humain organisationnel en pleine explosion qu’il ne peut manquer de susciter des questions et de la curiosité. Nous proposons donc une discussion collective autour des éléments suivants : Histoire et ténacité : la réappropriation du territoire comme une base pérenne d’action collective; Utopie et enracinement : la réconciliation entre besoins de base et visions stellaires; Contradictions et audace : la mobilisation des millions nécessaires; Auto-organisation et autogestion : le tricotage de projets depuis l’échelle des vécus et le vertige de la démocratie directe; Accessibilité et viabilité : le pari de la mixité et de l’accessibilité radicale à l’ère de l’embourgeoisement et dans l’ombre du service de la dette.

Isabelle Monast-Landriault, Bâtiment 7 (Montréal, Canada)

Community, Democracy, and Mutual Aid: Toward Dual Power and Beyond

In “Community, Democracy, and Mutual Aid: Toward Dual Power and Beyond » », writers and organizers John Michael Colón, Eleanor Finley, Mason Herson-Hord, Katie S. Horvath, Dayton Martindale, and Kelly Roache outline a bottom-up transition strategy to achieve a libertarian eco-socialist society. Grounded in principles of direct participation, social ownership, equality, commoning, and community restoration, the presentation answers the subtheme’s question, “Is a convergence of the different fronts in our struggle (economic, political, social) and its various sectors (community oriented, antiracist, ecological, anti-colonial, etc.) possible?” with an emphatic and detailed, “Yes!”—all through a framework of developing radical democracy as a counterpower against the capitalist institutions that now dominate our lives. We propose a set of new communal institutions of democratic, collaborative governance and self-sufficiency. Drawing from a diverse range of thinkers and organizing traditions, we outline a dual-power theory of transition that can guide our movements to greater power and transformative potential. We then discuss in detail some of the democratic cooperative institutions that will form the basis for this transition, including neighborhood councils, community land trusts, collective housing, mutual aid networks, community gardens, community-owned energy, and worker-owned cooperatives. Describing an essay version of this proposal by several of our panelists, which received first place in the Next System Project’s contest earlier this year, Naomi Klein said that our work stands out because it “sketches out a flexible roadmap for scaling up participatory democracy, in a creative synthesis of a number of different strands of radical thought.” The panelists are co-founders of Symbiosis, an organization laying the groundwork for the establishment of a national (and eventually global) confederation of radically democratic municipalist projects.

Dayton Martindale, These Times ()

Dayton Martindale will discuss the environmental necessities for local democratic self-determination, the fostering of ecological and posthumanist ethics through participatory democratic citizenship, and how both urban and rural areas can approach the ecological crisis within a municipalist framework.

Mason Herson-Hord, Motor City Freedom Riders (Detroit, MI, États-Unis)

Mason Herson-Hord will discuss the development of some of these particular institutions within this dual power movement strategy, using organizing work in Detroit as an illustrative example.

John Michael Colón, Auteur (Brooklyn, NY, États-Unis)

John Michael Colón will discuss our theory of social change, which insists on the need to plan discrete institutions that both solve discrete problems and form the building blocks of a new and radically democratic society in the here and now.

Kelly Roache, Solstice Initiative, Energy Democracy Solar Fund (New York, NY, États-Unis)

Kelly Roache will discuss shared solar energy initiatives in New York State, movement building around energy democracy, and the role for community ownership of energy infrastructure in building democratic autonomy.

Eleanor Finley, Institute for Social Ecology (ISE), University of Massachussets (Montréal, Canada)

Eleanor Finley will discuss municipalist projects in Kurdistan, Catalonia, and the United States and lessons that can be drawn for such initiatives elsewhere.

Katie Horvath, Symbiosis (Detroit, MI, États-Unis)

Katie Horvath will discuss ongoing efforts to found a national or international network of democratic confederalists that can support and seed local chapters across the world. »

Conscience de classe, conscience féministe

Céline Coat, Éducation nationale (France) (Paris, France)

Marxisme et féminisme : peut-on penser une « conscience féministe » ?Pour lutter contre une oppression, une exploitation ou une domination sous quelque forme qu’elle prenne, il faut déjà en prendre conscience, il faut réaliser qu’une situation ne va pas de soi et qu’il pourrait en être autrement. Pourquoi ceux qui n’ont que leur force de travail devraient la vendre à ceux qui possèdent les moyens de productions, pourquoi certaines personnes n’auraient pas le droit de vote et ne peuvent choisir de se marier ou non et avec qui ?Certains théoriciens marxistes comme Marx, Lénine ou Lukacs ont mis en avant le rôle essentiel de la conscience de classe dans la lutte des travailleurs contre leur exploitation et pour leur auto-émancipation. Dans cette perspective déjà cette notion fait l’objet de débats. Mais qu’en est-il des autres combats contre des oppressions ou exploitations ? Peut-on, dans une perspective de lutte contre le patriarcat, exporter ce concept et formuler l’idée d’une « conscience féministe » ?Envisager la possibilité d’une analogie entre la conscience de classe et ce qui serait une telle « conscience féministe », c’est se placer d’emblée au cœur d’un débat déjà ancien mais toujours polémique, entre marxismes et féminismes. Ce débat concerne essentiellement le statut de la lutte féministe vis-à-vis de la lutte de la classe ouvrière, considérée comme première, l’oppression des femmes étant souvent considérée dans le mouvement ouvrier comme une conséquence secondaire de l’exploitation capitaliste. Mais ce débat est aussi marqué par les influences réciproques, par différentes tentatives de conciliation qui se traduisent notamment par un certain nombre d’emprunts critiques du féminisme à la théorie marxiste. Des théoriciennes féministes ont par exemple analysé ce qu’on appelle “tâches ménagères” en terme de “travail domestique” et a mis en évidence l’exploitation économique subie par les femmes.Il s’agit donc de savoir si l’emprunt de ce concept de conscience est pertinent pour éclairer les luttes féministes.

Pratique de la parole : accumulation processuelle et éthique de la déprise

Maxence L.Valade, Université Concordia, Stasis – Groupe d’enquête sur le contemporain (Montréal, Canada)

Un mouvement intellectuel pluriel s’applique actuellement à théoriser l’accumulation primitive comme un processus au cœur du capitalisme plutôt qu’en tant que moment historiquement circonscrit. Partant du fait que l’exploitation est précédée et encouragée par divers types d’appropriations (des femmes, de la terre, des usages…etc), la reproduction du capitalisme qui colonise de plus en plus d’espaces y est mise en lumière. Si Marx accordait un rôle central à l’État au sein de l’accumulation primitive, la définition qu’il offrait de ce premier restait liminaire : les moyens de coercition extra économiques. Nous souhaitons, au sein de notre présentation, éclairer la section du Capital dédiée à l’analyse de l’accumulation primitive par la théorie de l’État et de la capture que Gilles Deleuze et Félix Guattari déplient dans le second tome de Capitalisme et schizophrénie, Mille plateaux. Ces derniers privilégient une description des formations sociales « par des processus machiniques, et non par des modes de production (qui dépendent au contraire des processus) » (Deleuze&Guattari, 1980, 542). En d’autres termes, « ce n’est pas l’État qui suppose un mode de production, mais l’inverse, c’est l’État qui fait de la production un ‘mode’ » (Ibid., 534). En montrant les affinités qu’entretient la conception de l’appareil d’État qu’élaborent Deleuze et Guattari avec la conception du pouvoir constituant que tente de déconstruire Walter Benjamin, nous montrerons comment une politique de rupture face au capitalisme implique de se dégager des rets de la souveraineté. Nous pointerons en quoi cette mise à distance s’enveloppe dans un usage de la parole qui la rend habitée et habitable, par un rapport particulier à la vie et l’exigence qui en découle plutôt que par la prise sur la vie qui exige de nous. Bref, nous construirons une éthique territoriale qui se veut informer une stratégie.

Temps de travail et temps de loisir. Tendances contemporaines.

Jonathan Martineau, Bishop’s University (Montréal, Canada)

Cette présentation interroge certaines dynamiques contemporaines qui président à la reconfiguration des temps de loisir en temps soumis aux impératifs du temps du marché. Je propose premièrement une théorie historique du temps capitaliste. Je m’attarde deuxièmement au parcours historique de la séparation entre temps de travail et temps de loisir dans les sociétés capitalistes. Je présente ensuite une série de réflexions théoriques et éthiques basées sur les données d’usage du temps dans les sociétés capitalistes contemporaines. Je mobilise de façon critique certains aspects de la théorie de l’accélération sociale pour réfléchir à la notion d’aliénation temporelle.

L’aliénation : une explication marxienne de l’indifférence et de l’impuissance sociales

Thierry Gendron-Dugré, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

L’un des principaux obstacles à une éventuelle « grande transition » est que notre système économique induit chez les individus un sentiment d’impuissance, voire d’indifférence à l’égard de l’ordre social et des injustices qu’il perpétue. Ce sentiment partagé de détachement envers le monde et les individus qui le composent, Marx avait conçu de l’expliquer grâce à une analyse célèbre du travail sous le capitalisme : celle du travail aliéné. Dans ses Manuscrits économico-philosophiques de 1844, il cherche à montrer comment la forme salariée du travail, qui est toujours un travail pour un autre, prive le travailleur de son lien objectif avec le monde; lien que le travail permettait justement de confirmer. Détaché du produit de son travail et des moyens de l’exécuter, le travailleur est privé de la possibilité de se réaliser, au sens il n’est plus en mesure de s’exprimer objectivement. Or, « [ce] rapport [de l’ouvrier au produit aliéné de son travail] est en même temps le rapport au monde extérieur sensible, aux objets de la nature, monde qui s’oppose à lui d’une manière étrangère et hostile » (Manuscrits économico-philosophiques). Autrement dit, par son propre travail – dont la forme salariée lui est imposée par l’ordre social dominant – le travailleur en vient à se détacher du monde au point où il ne croit plus à sa capacité de le changer. Ce faisant, non seulement est-ce que le travailleur devient une puissance de travail abstraite (détachée des moyens objectifs du travail), mais il est réduit à adopter la posture d’un spectateur impuissant vis-à-vis un ordre social qui se reproduit à la manière d’une nature aux lois intangibles. Avec cette analyse, Marx nous donne non seulement les moyens de comprendre l’une des principales sources d’un des obstacles à une transition, mais indique une voie à suivre pour le dépasser.

Melancholia lies at the root of the left’s paralysis. And yet, the overwhelming majority of ‘radical’ leftist political ideas have only further entrenched themselves in the logical presuppositions of melancholia, and thereby its restrictive ethics, all variations of which serve to make any positive political agenda immediately illegitimate. The philosophical disposition underlying this quagmire is a particular synthesis of Derrida and Levinas, which posits an unbridgeable abyss between ethics and politics. Criticisms of melancholia are not absent – among others there is the Lacanian thesis that melancholia is founded on a conceptual misrecognition of lack as loss, and Agamben’s suggestion that melancholia involves abandoning the object before it is ever lost. A synthesis of the two demands that in place of the popular ‘radicalization’ of melancholia what is need is a political act homologous to the analytic, which would collapse the abyss posited between ethics and politics. My presentation assumes the above thesis, but expands on it by proposing a specific parallax shift that makes such collapse possible: a constitutive shift from the logic of tragedy to that of comedy, the fallout of which is the abandonment of the tragic outlook on the future and a radical opening of its horizon, by way of a reconceptualization of that very ‘same’ past. The logic here is that of negative determination. Despite its abstract appearance, this move proposes clear outlines of how to mourn the losses of the past in a manner that not only criticizes the left’s failures, but through that negation opens up the future and our collective libidinal attachment for a new political determination. Paradoxical as it may appear, the proposal of this presentation is simple: it is only through the aesthetic form of comedy that the impossible path between the present’s infinite extension and nostalgia for the past can be taken.

Srdjan Cvjeticanin, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI, États-Unis)

This panel will present a range of thinkers engaging Marxist cultural theory through the lens of social reproduction to engage issues pertaining to countercultural or subcultural activities. We define counterculture as an ‘alternative mass’, that is to say the cultural aspect of counterhegemonic political praxis. Taking issue with recent formulations that assert that the concept of ‘counterculture’ is elitist and inherently in opposition to radical politics, our presentations provide a glimpse and actual resistance taking place historically and in the present day, in countercultural spaces. Jordy Cummings and Kate Doyle Griffiths tackle the overall question of Counterculture and Social Reproduction by way of engaging the American South’s historical counterculture. Tobin LeBlanc Haley examines resistance by those labelled “mentally ill” within the Mad movement, and uses a social reproduction framework to examine the limitations of our present model in regards to so-called mental health. Finally, engaging in debates as to the responsibility of cultural producers, Crystal Stella Beceril presents a critique of the dominant left understanding of “cultural appropriation” to work towards a non-reductionist, anti-essentialist understanding of countercultural production in 2017.

The Devil Fools with the Best Made Plans: Counterculture and the American South

Kate Doyle Griffiths, International Women’s Strike (Brooklyn, USA)

In really-existing social movements, countercultural affiliation has traditionally been both a frame of reference and a binding force, a proverbial secret handshake that shows that a given comrade is “down”, be it within the Bohemian milieux of the First International or queer or otherwise antinomian enclaves in both the city and countryside in 2017. It is our position that counterculture is a product of how everyday life is produced and reproduced within capitalist social property relations. The social reproduction of counterculture is a product of capitalism’s combined and uneven development and the near universality of uneven and mixed consciousness. Yet given the historic relationship between counterculture and radical left-wing politics, it comes as some surprise that prominent leftist writers have questioned the utility of counterculture as a space of counterhegemonic praxis.The legacy of the ‘sixties’ counterculture is decidedly a mixed one. Yet for anti-capitalists to get a handle on the recent growth of the “Redneck Rebellion” movement, the uptick in using southern iconography and “gun culture” to mobilize against white supremacy, we cannot assume that this milieu was hot-housed out of nowhere. This is the coming-to-the-surface of a long dormant hippie counterculture rooted milieu, explicitly southern, yet viscerally rejecting the “Dixie” oriented connotation. Southern hippies, musicians, bohemians and intellectuals have expressed a decided ambiguity at their ‘heritage’, embracing a ‘different’ south, multiracial, queer-friendly and ready to fight “the man”, as the saying used to go. Is this a resilient form of counterhegemonic rebellion birthed in a countercultural milieu? Or is it tailing southern machismo? It is too soon to have a full-fledged answer to this question. Our paper, however, will raise these questions within the context of the social reproduction of counterculture, and, in turn, the question of counterculture’s political meaning. We in turn, assert that our formulation is generalizable, and can be used for engagement with countercultures as such.

Jordy Cummings, Red Wedge Magazine (Toronto, Canada)

Social Reproduction and the Mad Movement: Developing a New Framework for Analysis

Tobin LeBlanc Haley, Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada)

The Mad Movement is a relatively new and growing countercultural movement that employs scholarship and activism as a means of challenging the mobilization of psychiatric categories and mental health care practices in the oppression of people with psychiatric labels in late capitalism. As part of this movement, radical scholars have developed Mad Studies. Mad Studies is a field dedicated to mapping and analyzing the oppression of people labelled mentally-ill and proposing non-capitalist forms of subsistence that support de-pathologized approaches to people who experience mental difference – what Mad scholars call Madness.Although largely anti-capitalist, the number of scholars developing Marxist analyses of Mad issues is relatively limited to date. Moreover, within the existing Mad Studies literature, deploying Marxist analytic tools the insights of feminist political economists have been largely ignored. This is surprising given that the transition to capitalism in the West, and what Marxist scholars identify as the gendered separation of production and social reproduction is central to the impoverishment of people exhibiting mental difference, the development of asylums and, alongside scientific racism, the rise of psychiatry.In this presentation, I propose a feminist political economy framework for Mad Studies. I argue that we must understand and analyze mental health care systems as spaces of social reproduction for people often excluded from the labour force due to mental difference. The sites of mental health care, such as hospitals, housing services, and prisons, are spaces through which oppressive psychiatric understandings and carceral practices are enacted alongside the exploitation of the deeply gendered and racialized labour of service providers. Such an analysis demonstrates that shifts in mental health care are part of, and related to shifts in capitalist production and social reproduction rather than psychiatry creating new opportunities for counter-hegemonic interventions.

More Things Die In the Winter Here: Three Poems

Crystal Stella Beceril, (Brooklyn, USA)

The three poems read by the presenter – two of which appear in Red Wedge’s newly released fifth issue – revolve around themes related directly and indirectly to social reproduction theory: intimacy, migration, domestic labor, gender and sexuality. In reading them as a beginning to the panel and the Red Wedge stream, the aim is to interrogate the ways in which artists and cultural workers concerned with issues related to social reproduction might integrate form and content, allowing the structures of feeling the emerge from gender-based and intersecting oppressions to impact the structures of poetic expression.

In working towards Red Wedge’s development of a new Marxist critical aesthetic theory, we often turn towards the work of Fredric Jameson. Jameson has engaged the concepts of ‘cognitive mapping’, put simply, a cartography of the affect produced in diverse circumstances, notably in experiencing and producing artistic production. Jameson points out that we experience an “Affective Contagion”, a “glowing enlargement of affect well beyond the natural limits and boundaries of the individual”. This is to say, emotions are socially produced and reproduced by capitalist social property relations, and in turn, act as a sort of virus. The three papers on this panel examine diverse modalities of affect. The critically acclaimed visual artist Adam Turl engages the concepts directly, in reference to his own work. Agatha A. Slupek examines the affective contagion of rage in regards to political mobilization. Finally, Jordy Cummings presents his original theorization of the affect produced by improvised cultural production, music as well as acting/comedy and painting.

Evicted Art: Totality and Cognitive Mapping

Adam Turl, Evicted Art Blog (Las Vegas, USA)

To invoke Fredric Jameson, an alternative aesthetic of cognitive mapping, displacing earlier forms of epic narrative structure, will “raise spatial” (and I would add, therefore, temporal) “issues as” a “fundamental organizing concern.” Like other ideas seeking to translate anti-capitalist aesthetic strategies into a neoliberal context (Jameson’s temporal elevator trope, for example, in relation to climate change), cognitive mapping is a resource for representing the contradictory totality of contemporary capitalism and the differentiated totality of potential resistances. In addition, cognitive mapping can be read in connection to past anti-capitalist art strategies, such as surrealism, which explored the intersection of the social and psychological. This presentation will relate Marxist ideas of cognitive mapping, along with narrative conceptual art concepts (rooted in underground Russian and Eastern European art practices in the 1970s and 1980s), critical irrealist (surrealist and speculative fiction) concepts and epic theater (Brechtian) concerns, to contemporary art practice – particularly focusing on art as a cognitive mapping of constrained working-class subjectivities. This will be demonstrated in relation to my own writing and practice, in particular the installations, 13 Baristas (Brett Westley Gallery, 2015), The Barista Who Could See the Future (Gallery 210, 2017) and Revolt of the Swivel Chairs (LV Cube, 2018), and other examples from contemporary artists and art history.

When Solidarity Means Revenge

Agatha A. Slupek, Graduate Students United (Chicago, USA)

The notion of redress lies at the heart of the modern liberal democratic notion of justice. That you or the nation might owe me, or some group, something for past harm done is a formal principle few challenge, based as it is in the capitalist logics of ownership, exchange, credit, and debt. That I might pursue a form of redress with a vengeance, however, goes against a prominent current of liberal thought, on whose account the emotions of envy and vengeance are themselves detrimental to democratic politics. Martha Nussbaum (2016) argues that the public expression of anger is precisely that which threatens to ruin the fabric of liberal democracy. That this view is widespread is apparent when one considers the numerous pieces of disdainful news commentary as to anger and outrage since the eruption of a movement for black lives into the public sphere. Anger and vengeance ruin the fabric of liberal democracy, based as it is on reasoned deliberation among equals. I ask: and what if it did do that?In this paper, I consider the role that the symbols and affects of vengeance have played in feminist and counter-hegemonic discourses. Notably, numerous feminists have turned to the symbol of the Greek deities of The Furies, goddesses of blood vengeance who punish matricide, in order to articulate their radical visions of justice. French feminist Hélène Cixous turned to them in order to think justice in the light of the French state’s irresponsible admission of contaminated blood into the hemophiliac populace during the height of the AIDS crisis in France. On April 13th in Montreal, a black-bloc banner read “From Montreal to C-Ville, Bash the Fash: Soldarity means Revenge”. I argue that vengeance is an appropriate register for thinking resistance when our lives are at stake.

The Ecstatic Configuration: Utopia, Improvisation and Socialism

Jordy Cummings, Red Wedge Magazine (Toronto, Canada)

Utopian art is art that allows a glimpse at the possibility of a future not yet discursively representable. To be distinguished from didactic art, utopian art doesn’t portend to produce a given set of politics ‘from above’, but rather in its very essence, discovers and examines utopian potentiality embodied in both form and content. Thus, Perry Anderson, attending psychedelic rock concerts in the late sixties, posited that rock music was the world’s first communist art form. This paper takes Anderson’s point seriously, and, drawing on Fredric Jameson, finds the highest form of utopian content in art to be found in the practice of improvisation. The best, hence the most utopian improvisation, is that in which artists collectively find this utopian place in a sense that they could not as individuals. This could be improvised comedy or drama, as in the films of Christopher Guest or Mike Leigh. Most frequently, however, it is in the group dynamic of improvised music. Bill Monroe, the bluegrass pioneer, called this act when instruments have a conversation. One musician could ostensibly be playing one song, another a second song, and a third a third song, out of which, the utopia of something new appears out of space. John Coltrane and his contemporaries were able to channel the utopia of black liberation through their improvisation, while the Grateful Dead, in their dissonant feedback and mellifluous guitar solos were able to counterpose the horror of Vietnam with the beauty of the implicitly communist hippy ideal, as shared by Anderson. This paper constitutes a first step in developing a general theory of utopia and improvisation. Drawing on Jameson, as well as Walter Benjamin and Ernst Bloch, the purpose is not merely to attach politics to art by way of ascription, but to examine the utopian praxeology of improvisation.

Concomitant with the scaling back of the gains of decolonization and the deregulation of economic systems has been the undermining of democratic societies by fascist tendencies which profit from a neoliberal socialization of the individual. The last two decades have seen a Gramscian “passive revolution,” a strategic revival of class domination that takes hold of all spheres of life. The mapping of the neoliberal subject in this context becomes a way of mapping the effects of the “emergence of a worldwide capitalist civilization” (Aijaz Ahmad). What this new engagement with the real wants to represent and challenge is the world of combined and uneven development, where the realities of modernization are mystified and violence in the peripheral regions is made as invisible as the abject poverty in its centers.The papers in this panel aim to develop a critical discourse on contemporary culture which allows for a systematic understanding of how control over cultural production is used, especially by the far right, to manipulate public perception. We ask how we can coordinate a strategic pushback that focuses on the potential of political art to promote a critical intervention in public debates in the interest of anti-colonial and anti-capitalist projects.

“Coming of Age at the End of History: Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games and the Dystopian Bildungsroman”

Sofia Cutler, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games inaugurated a new dominant form in American popular culture: the dystopian Bildungsroman. Since its publication, many other series have followed. These post-apocalyptic, coming-of-age stories can be read as allegories of American youth’s confrontation with a future of ecological unsustainability, economic precarity and social unrest. Although Collins’ novels have been praised (and condemned) for their virulent social commentary, I argue that dystopia and Bildungsroman function as dialectical counterparts in a carnivalesque gesture that releases but ultimately contains the force of its critique.

À venir

Carolyn Jong, Concordia University (Montréal, Canada)

In 2014 a handful of trolls launched an internet campaign called GamerGate, leading to widescale harassment targeted largely at marginalized people working in videogames, outspoken feminists, and anyone labelled a “social justice warrior”. While the campaign drew public attention to the long-standing culture of misogyny in games, many questions remained unasked. For example, what were the material conditions that led to the rise of GamerGate and cemented their position as a herald of the “culture war” championed by the Alt-Right? Drawing on Gramsci’s concept of the war of position, I look at some strategies and tactics used by both the Left and the Right in games, as well as underlying structural issues that helped fuel the conflict.

From Cosmonauts to Xenomorphs: Capitalism in Space and Science Fiction an Ideological Battleground

Carl Plowright, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

Popular ways of imagining future space exploration are entangled in both a technocratic worldview and an aesthetic engagement with science fiction. The genre is not just a reflection of post-industrial technological advancement, but a constitutive part of its material and ideological basis. Elements of science fiction media have been widely adopted as cultural touchstones by the far right and its public intellectuals in ways consistent with science fiction history and fascist representations of futurity. Drawing on Jameson and Gramsci, we demonstrate how technocratic worldviews involve a tacit intensification of colonialism and imperialism, presenting a fantasy of a capitalism revitalized on the verge of total exhaustion.

Sean McDonell-Maulsby, Independent researcher (Montréal, Canada)

The Religions of Neoliberalism: Fiction and History in 21st Century Indian Literature

Suvij Sudershan, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

The restructuring of the Indian economy in the 1990s was paralleled by the rise in influence of right-wing Hindu discourse throughout civil society. My paper engages specifically with the utilization of culture and history. For this purpose, I read Daggers of Treason (2017) by Niraj Srivastava juxtaposing it with readings of other mainstream writers, like Chetan Bhagat and Amish Tripathi. I argue that Tripathi and Srivastava engage in a project of historifying mythology and mythifying history. Their works provide a religio-historical backdrop to Bhagat’s writing, which offers a glimpse into the mainstream, neoliberal ideologies of contemporary India, and its vision of caste, class, and gender.

Infectious Ideologies: America’s Postcolonial Unconscious

Felix Fuchs, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

No longer an allegory on consumerism stuck in a cannibalistic cycle, zombie fiction has become a representation of a world torn apart by economic crises. Reading M.R. Carey’s The Girl with All the Gifts and several TV shows alongside Fanon, I argue that we see a vision of a collapsing global division of labor which is confronting the imperialist centers with the desperation they have inflicted on their peripheral regions. Yet, the end is no longer imagined as total collapse but as a vision of rebuilding a future beyond capitalism.

Animation: Sara Farah (U of Minnesota)

As the world grapples with climate change, and as President Trump’s administration leads a frontal assault on the the practice of science itself, an organization of radical scientists from an earlier era has been founded anew: Science for the People (SftP). From 1969 to 1989, through political activism and publications such as its bimonthly magazine, the original SftP sustained a critique of science in service of capitalism, imperialism, oppression, and war, while struggling for a science that served human development, peace, social justice, and environmental sustainability. The new SftP aims to replicate and build upon the contributions of its predecessor. Toward that end, this panel will look at some of the original group’s major contributions.Comprised of scholars with expertise on SftP history and moderated by an organizing member of the newly revived SftP, this panel will evaluate the content and significance of SftP’s critiques of Imperialism and Biological Determinism. Daniel Chard will discuss SftP’s opposition to U.S. imperialism, Anna Duensing will cover SftP’s critique of biological determinism and Paul Rubinson will assess the organization’s take on notions of neutrality and objectivity in science. Christopher Dols will provide commentary and facilitate discussion with the audience.

Conor Dempsey, Science for the People Steering Committee, PhD candidate in Neuroscience, Columbia University (New York, États-Unis)

Taylor Lampe, Masters Student in Epidemiology, Columbia University (New York, États-Unis)

Laura Peñaranda, Science for the People Steering Committee, Housing Rights Advocate (New York, États-Unis)

Gail Robson, Masters Student in Public Health, Columbia University (New York, États-Unis)

Erik Wallenberg, Science for the People Geoengineering Editorial Collective, PhD candidate in History, CUNY Graduate Center (New York, États-Unis)

Animation: Christopher Dols

Precribed Form, Liberatory Content: Emancipatory Pedagogy in Canadian High Schools

Donald Wilson, Kamloops-Thompson Teachers’ Association, British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, Communist Party of Canada (Kamloops, BC, Canada)

Following Marx’s critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, I will explore the degree to which prescribed curriculum, analogous to a constitution abstracted from the social and historical forces from which it is derived (class interests envisioned as universals), alienates teachers and students from content and practice, and how actual student engagement allows them to construct an analysis of reality based on authentic experience. I will discuss the way in which students, the school structure and culture, as well as the prescribed curricula, condition teachers to act in ways that reifying our role as ‘teacher,’ reinforcing the mechanisms of oppression in opposition to emancipatory goals. Emerging from the ways in which courses are domesticated by prescribed learning outcomes and these social relations requires reflection and action: I will explore ways teachers attempt to obviate this tendency towards complicity in oppression, and the ways in which our liberation as teachers is bound up with the liberation of our students. I look at the ways in which teachers approach the curriculum, how they adapt their pedagogical praxis to the strictures of prescriptive design, and how they resist doing so. Flowing from this analysis of actual teaching practice, a secondary aim, is to reflect on the praxis of teaching a course from the perspective of critical theory in ways that are consistent with the spirit of the content: how the prescriptive demands of the curriculum can met in ways that allow students to be producers of knowledge rather than consumers of it, to demonstrate that the fulfilment of a course occurs when students and teacher pass through conscientization to transforming reality.

Automation and the Pedagogical Landscape

Richard Simpson, University of Alaska Southeast (Juneau, AK, États-Unis)

In the Grundrisse Karl Marx identifies how capital’s division of labor involves an antagonism between town and country that results in the creation of new civic formations and a fundamentally geographic project involving the “urbanization of the countryside, not ruralization of the city as in antiquity” (473). Whereas scholars have paid great attention to the way in which urban space functions to perpetuate the division of labor and increase forms of social and racial inequality around the world, less attention has been brought to the process by which urbanization has produced social landscapes that aim to disavow these objectives. My presentation examines the spatial process by which private property and manufacturing relationships in the nineteenth century United States dialectically emerged alongside new urban forms of collective social space aimed at eliminating class inequality and social unrest. These emergent ‘pedagogical landscapes’ utilized educational principles of cooperative labor to initiate and preserve new subjectivities based upon unifying the self-development of the individual with labor productivity. I argue that such dialectical landscapes remain an integral part of today’s global knowledge economy. Contemporary corporate celebrations of the flexible workplace and the cooperative, process-based, labor rhetoric of ‘humanist management’ strategies have emerged in tandem with a specific transnational geography: demiurgic urban planning projects and dynamic corporate campuses now demarcate the rise of unique urban conglomerations strategizing an ‘ideal’ dot-com workplace for this ‘knowledge-economy’ discourse. The persistence of this spatial process has significant implications for both the politics of postmodern culture as well as new conceptions of global praxis: contemporary articulations of humanist management undermine traditional conceptions of critical pedagogy and radical aesthetics, and yet at the same time, provide an unprecedented opportunity for this nineteenth century project of a humanist social organization on a global scale to begin its argument anew.

The Legal Academy Is Failing the Great Transition

Christopher Whitehead, Faculty of Law, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

The legal academy has thought its way out of being interested in the “nuts and bolts” of capitalism. This state of affairs is problematic. Law is one of the great instruments of capitalism; therefore, this problem is one that poses a risk of the great transition not being so great after all. Surprisingly, the problem—as a problem specific to law—is one that has attracted little attention. One jurist, James Lindgren, has identified a lack of diversity—in the United States—in the “demographic makeup of law faculties compared to the larger pools of lawyers and the general public”. Another jurist, Cass R Sunstein, has pointed to the “groupthink” that results from any lack of diversity in any community. However, I know of no jurist who has identified any lack of interest within the legal academy for the inner workings of capitalism; nor do I know of any commentator who has discussed the associated risks for progressive interests. In order to contribute fully to the great transition, the legal academy needs to recognize and address this lack of interest. The very transition itself may depend on the legal academy doing so.In this presentation, I identify the signs that there is indeed such a disinterest— in Quebec, English-speaking Canada, and elsewhere—in the inner workings of capitalism; the risks that this disinterest presents; and strategies for helping the legal academy recognize and address it. If the legal academy fails to do so, we have much to lose. There is a risk that the great transition may not come to pass. Even more alarmingly, there is a risk that there will be a great transition—to something worse than we have ever known.

Imagining Anarchist Pedagogy within the Neoliberal University: Teaching and Acting Resistance in the Shell of the Old

Jayne Malenfant, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

Based within my research working with young anarchist punks across Canada, as well as work around education, institutional barriers, and youth homelessness in Montreal, I ask how we can imagine pedagogies which empower and engage students who are most likely to be excluded from traditional schooling institutions. As educators, how can anarchist forms of knowing and learning allow us to provide tools that will allow ourselves and our students to establish new, grounded and hopeful forms of resistance? Drawing from my own work, as well as I will focus on how spaces like anarchist free schools can disrupt space who is imagined as the ideal “student” (and “educator”), and what forms of pedagogy may best overturn exclusionary hierarchies which are firmly grounded in many institutions of education. Within the current capitalist climate, how can how can we push back against increasingly commodified and abstracted forms of education and actively imagine just alternatives?

This panel is meant to give an overview of the Red Wedge project as a whole, as we move towards formulating and producing a Popular Avant-Garde. In cultural production, The real expands beyond the confines of reality. That this intellectual, emotional and social interaction plays a central role in human existence speaks to our own capability to conceive of the world as more than just what we see in front of us, that is to say, another world is possible. A popular avant-garde, first and foremost, regards this as its starting point for understanding human creativity. It is both a critical framework for approaching art and an artistic praxis that deliberately foregrounds’ the human capacity to collectively remake and repurpose. On this panel, Red Wedge editor Alexander Billet will be presenting his updated theorization of the Popular Avant Garde. Social theorist and author Holly Lewis will engage with the possibility of utopian fiction as part of such a project. Finally, the historical social theorist Neil Davidson, a past Deutscher prize winner, will be presenting on the use of Leon Trotsky’s theory of Uneven and Combined Development to analyse cultural production.

Shake the City: Experimental Theses on Space and Time, Music and Crisis

Alexander Billet, Red Wedge Magazine (Syracuse, États-Unis)

When space is transformed, so is time. The reverse is also true. When a crowd asserts its collective will onto a public space, the tempo and rhythm of that space is similarly reshaped. This has implications for musical creation, particularly if we frame music’s definition as an aestheticization of time (which we should). As capital’s domination of public space and time is challenged, so is our relationship with composed rhythm and sonic dynamics. Using John Berger’s “The Nature of Mass Demonstrations” as a starting point, combining Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, and Mark Abel’s work on the nature of “groove music,” this paper will explore how the return of “spatial politics” has resonated into the aesthetics of song-making through the relationship between recent protest movements and musical expression. Particular attention will be paid to hip-hop and Black Lives Matter, the 2010 UK student rebellion and grime music. The intent will be to illustrated how the figurative and literal reclamation of time in turn necessitates the reclamation of physical space from the manipulations and subjugations of neoliberalism.

Is a Utopian Materialist Fiction Possible?

Holly Lewis, Texas State University (San Marcos, États-Unis)

It is common knowledge that Marx’s work was a scientific response to the utopianism of early socialists such as the Saint Simon, who wished to construct a voluntarist society based on heteronormative dyads, or Charles Fourier, who imagined a psychedelic future where the heavens would be so pleased by human solidarity that they would turn the seas to lemonade. The Marxian scientific project, by contrast, described the real world and therefore required reasoned predictions about the capitalist society and the possibilities of life under socialism. However, while the Marxian economist must make accurate calculations to convince others (under capitalist rule) and provide for all (under socialist rule), strict adherence to the scientific realism of the Marxist framework as an engine of predictive power need not be the imaginative horizon for Marxists who are not scientists proper. I would argue that the lack of dreaming in modern Marxist circles has restricted energy and imagination. As a result popular anti-capitalist dreaming tends towards either a generalized escapism with occasional political nods (Netflix and chill…) or dystopian fictions that project the present into the future (i.e. The Hunger Games, Carpenter’s They Live, District 9, Junot Diaz’s “Monstro”). By contrast, anti-capitalist literature of the Russian Revolution included dystopian predictions but also had a clear scientific utopian bent (i.e. the work of Lunacharsky, Bogdanov, Gastev) distinct from Fourier-style phantasmagoria.Ultimately, the line of questioning in this paper boils down to: “how can we reconcile utopian dreaming with historical materialism?” I think the question is urgent in light of the resurgence of fascist dreaming in the West. The paper will examine various fictions, touch upon the work of Ernst Bloch, and contain some material from my newest book project, The Struggle for Utopia.

Uneven and Combined Development and the Emergence of Modernism

Neil Davidson, University of Glasgow (Glasgow, Royaumes-Unis)

Since the academic discovery of uneven and combined development (UCD) in the 1990s it has been deployed, with varying degrees of success, in a number of disciplinary fields, including International Relations, Historical Sociology and World Literature. Yet, of all the areas not directly concerned with the conditions for Permanent Revolution, the one in which it offers the most the most useful framework for analysis is perhaps the least expected: the emergence of Modernism as a cultural form. Although several authors, including Anderson and Jameson, have come close to deploying UCD in their discussions of this subject, none have done so with explicit reference to Trotsky’s concept.This paper will therefore attempt to show how the interpenetration of what Trotsky calls ‘the archaic and the contemporary’ attendant on the eruption of capitalist modernity, above all industrialisation and urbanisation, helped produce the experiences which shape Modernism. In particular it will explain why England – the one major country to undergo a relatively prolonged and gradual transition to capitalism – had one of the least important native Modernisms, and why countries with quite different political trajectories like Italy and Russia could nevertheless produce very similar art practices in the form of Futurism and Constructivism.

Grieving empire: Affect aliens and aesthetic catharsis

Rachel da Silva Gorman, York University (Toronto, Canada)

The global aftermath of Brexit and the 2016 U.S. election has drawn world’s attention to the mass mobilization of white affects toward the preservation, consolidation, and reproduction of white supremacy and patriarchy. These affects are perhaps the unnamed emotions of the genocidal impulse, as seen in the endlessly looping spectacle of the murder of unarmed Black men and boys. At the same time, the work of surviving white supremacy is periodically revealed in the moments when it can be named as such. For Black, Indigenous and people of color, the labor of narrating our distress becomes a tricky business. In a world of neoliberal health logics and terrorist assemblages, there is no room for articulating the harms of racism and colonialism, except through diagnostics that relocate white supremacist affect in the affected communities—residential school syndrome, and other labels that adhere as effectively as certain racialized affects do (for example, “hate” in Haritaworn’s Queer Lovers and Hateful Others). This paper draws on curatorial research into aesthetic modes of rejecting postcolonial catharsis in which we are asked to pity, and then purge our knowledge of, imperialism’s victims. The research led to a six-artist exhibition Grieving Empire at A Space Gallery in Toronto, including two Montréal-based artists. I argue that the works animate an aesthetics of revolutionary grieving that demand we “apprehend the policies creating unlivable, ungrievable conditions” (Byrd, Transit of Empire, p. 38). The artists anchor their work in their bodies, on the land, and in unfolding transit and return in order to reveal the violence of the settler colonial state, its imperialist adventures, and its proxy wars. The artists engage in the work of grieving and historicizing contemporary violence through dance, animation, testimony, and repetition, drawing our attention to the body caught by borders, institutions, and war.

A Museum of Capitalism

Sophia DiMatteo, University of California Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, États-Unis)

A Museum of Capitalism is a traveling exhibition meant to counter the popular colonial traditions of display and knowledge. The Museum investigates what it might be like to look back on capitalism and the museum form from a post-capitalist society– a context highly critical of the constructs of race, gender, and economics under capitalism, a perspective from which capitalism appears as absurd and violent as it really is.A collection is somewhere between order and disorder, arranging the world in specific ways. Originating as “cabinets of curiosities,” museum collections inherently participate in colonialism, taking objects from people and displaying them in a way that showcases them as other and exotic. In this way, museums are actually critical agents in reproducing colonial violence and sustaining it across time well after the colonial moment. Our project aims to flip this mode of display back onto western colonial power, presenting western objects as distant and strange. Set in the present moment, A Museum of Capitalism exists in an alternate reality, imposing an imagined post-capitalist lens on the present moment. By traveling across time and space, the Museum intervenes with the current spatial and pedagogical methods of normalizing capitalism, creating a space for critical and strategic conversations with people. While putting capitalism in the past by making it the subject of a historical museum, we do not fill out the details of the post-capitalist reality. This is intentional, as there is still much thinking and imagining to be done. We aim not for contrived discussion based within imagined limits of possibility, but to bring people a new reality with an open platform to be creative both with their imagining of the transition out of capitalism as well as the form of a post-capitalist life and society.

Rethinking the lumpenproletariat: Undoing invisibility as an instrument of capitalist exploitation

Jessica Copley, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

In Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel Cosmopolis, a financial executive traverses New York in a limousine in search of a haircut, while anti-capitalist protests rage outside. Devoid of affect, the novel repeatedly insists on capital’s hegemony of the visible as means of sustaining the moral right to financial hegemony over those it dispossesses; connecting sanitization with security, DeLillo proffers a critique that shows how the wilful blindness of capitalist violence prevents its un-seen victims from contesting its logic and provokes the question of how all that is obscured from this visual field – that which is revolting – might also become a source of revolt. In this vein, I propose to return to the thorny question of the lumpenproletariat in order to firstly elaborate a critique of this hegemony of the visible, before asking how a forcible re-injection of the lumpen into this visual field might in turn provoke a disruption of its economic structure. After firstly addressing the relationship between the novel’s infamous refrain “a rat became the unit of currency” and its source, Zbigniew Herbert’s “Poem from a Besieged City”, I will then look at Fanon’s analysis of the rat as a source of anti-colonial disruption before discussing the representation of the lumpen today and its intersections with questions of race, class and gender.

Atemporal Times: Neurosis, Enlightenment, and the End of Postmodernism

Kara Abdolmaleki, University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada)

Atemporality, as American novelist Bruce Sterling defines it, “is a problem in the philosophy of history,” meaning that after the advent of the network as a mode of communication and a mediator between us and the outside world, the history of ideas has entered some uncharted territory. A clear sign of this wonderment is the historical disorientation that plagues our post-postmodern age. Almost all scholars agree that the postmodern age is, by any definition, over; what they cannot agree on is what to call the current era. What is the next grand narrative? Or is it possible for another grand narrative to dominate the network of vast, poorly organized data, where no single authority exists? This has prompted some to announce the beginning of the end for capitalism and call for contemplation upon viable alternatives to it. This sense of transition is perhaps the result of the realization that as a result of a postmodern revisiting, unsettling, undermining of our modern values and structures, we sense a respite from ideology. This paper is a word of caution against that assumption. As Slavoj Zizek notes, ideology permeates our lives most when we feel we have finally stepped outside of it. The word of caution is that although, at this historical moment, the burden of ideology feels much lighter, there are modernist neurotic tendencies and instrumental rationalities that have remained unscathed by postmodern interrogation; they dictate our view of history and reinforce our false belief in the idea of progress. Without a thorough revisiting of these fundamental ideological dogmas, which sit at the heart of current technology, it would not be easy to speak of a great transition.

Nicola Moore, University of California Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, États-Unis)

Holding up Half the Sky: Women Combatants in the Maoist Movement in India

Bijayani Mishra, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, Inde)

All through the history of revolutionary upsurges women have actively taken up various roles. They have forgone the traditional assigned roles of wives, mothers and sisters and have assumed leadership roles, going beyond just rendering support to male combatants. In the different liberation wars of Africa, Latin America and Asia women have proved to be brave fighters. Women fought with valor and zeal in order to match the men force, wore identical combat uniforms and received equivalent military and technical trainings. The Maoist movement in India has attracted a number of women cadres, over the years. Women combatants have outnumbered their male counter-parts in some of the crucial military operations. The Maoists’ publication titled “Women martyrs of the Indian Revolution” (2006) highlights that, “women from the most oppressed sections, join in large numbers”. Both young girls and grown up women of different ages actively participate in the Maoist movement. They have proved themselves as professional fighters in the Peoples’ War and a few have attained crucial leadership positions at various levels. Besides direct military roles, they have engaged themselves as propagandists, organizers, espionage workers, logistics suppliers, nurses and cultural activists, as cadre managers and as human shield to combatants. For those in prison, they are visitors and vital source of inspiration. They also act as sympathizers for martyrs’ households. This study will make an attempt to address the agency and motivations of women that led them to make a decision of joining the movement and will also focus on the debates regarding how women’s experiences in the movement changed their viewpoints regarding gender discourses in the society. It will also explore the challenges faced by women combatants in the movement and ex-combatants when they try to integrate into the larger society.

FROM ‘COMPANY RAJ’ TO GLOBAL GOVERNANCE VIA INDIRECT RULE

Radha D’Souza, University of Westminster (Londres, Grande-Bretagne)

The international legal order is constituted by the interplay of two types of sovereignties: the territorial sovereignty of states and the non-territorial sovereignty of corporations. With the exception of a small nascent body of scholarship on corporate sovereignty the vast literature on sovereignty focuses overwhelmingly on territorial sovereignty of nation-states. So much so that sovereignty has come to mean state sovereignty. Consequently, the interplay of the two types of sovereignties – one territorial and the other non-territorial – and their relations of cooperation and conflict is fetishized in the international order. Colonial governance demonstrates a distinct and unique interplay of corporate/non-territorial sovereignties and state/territorial sovereignties that provide important insights into the legal and institutional infrastructures for governance in the post-World War II world order. This presentation examines the interrelationships between global corporations, the modern Westphalian state and colonialism. “Company Raj”, as the East India company rule was called, was a particular type of relationship between European trading corporations, capitalist states and native rulers formed by what in present-day globalisation-speak is called public-contracting, profit-sharing and public-private-partnerships. Unlike the Dutch, French, Spanish and Portuguese trading corporations, where the colonial enterprise was either state-owned or a public-private partnership, British colonialism was from its inception a private enterprise embedded in public contracts. Contracting out colonial governance to a trading corporation entailed extended chains of legal relationships between the Crown and the corporation on the one hand and the corporation and native rulers on the other. This presentation contextualises the metamorphoses in four foundational concepts in the contemporary international law: sovereignty, trusteeship, paramountcy and subsidiarity from Company Raj to the UN system. It draws on the metamorphoses to comment on the failure of the Left critique to pay attention to law and governance, ‘the nitty-gritty’ of colonialism and imperialism today. The failure has left a wide gap between the ideological critique of contemporary imperialism and political practices for radical social change.

Barricading ‘Hindutva Capital’: Student Movements and ideas of Dissent and resistance in Contemporary India

himadri Sekhar Mistri, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, Inde)

Sub-theme: Facing neoliberal governementsContentious nature of Indian student movements has roots in its colonial history. But the nature of contention has changed over the period of time. For contemporary student movements, one of the main challenge comes from rise of right wing Hindutva politics; whose political ideology seeks legitimacy from Hindu theology and celebrate hierarchical exclusionary system like ‘Varna and Caste’; in collaboration with neoliberal ruling elites, pose challenge the very fundamental of Indian democracy. Neoliberal policies, which advocates privatization of education and delegitimize students as ‘political entity’ help to further consolidate Hindu hierarchy; as in a privatized education system students from lower class and lower caste are denied entry because of their economic inability. The very ‘Indian dichotomy’, ruling elite sense of India as ‘Technological Powerhouse” and growing Student unrests in leading Universities increasingly confront each other and questions the current political establishment and their policies. This paper conceptualizes the idea of dissent and how dissent transforms into the process of resistance, in context of Student movements in Indian Higher educational Institutions and while doing so, also focuses the historical transition of student movements in India and how that transition affected present day motives of movements. To understand these, paper explores relations among religion, society and capital and how capital’s effort to normalize non-democratic, exclusionary practices to maximize its profit is facing resistance in Indian campuses in terms of method and practices of movements. Finally, the paper also finds the impact that student movements’ create in national politics in respect to policy formulation and to do that how it integrates itself with larger society. The paper will particularly focuses on anti-privatization movements in education and students activism on ‘enacting Rohit Act’ (Rohit Vemula, an ‘untouchable’ student committed suicide in campus) to protect the students from marginalized and weaker communities.

Pour plusieurs observateurs, les déploiements et exercices militaires des forces armées étatsuniennes avec leurs alliés en Europe et en Asie, sous la justification de contrer «l’expansionnisme russe et chinois», révèlent le début de la fin de l’impérialisme américain. Pour d’autres, il s’agit tout simplement d’une continuité, ayant qui plus est l’objectif de garder la mainmise sur des pays qui pourraient se distancier des États-Unis. D’un autre côté, les expéditions étatsuniennes en Afrique apparaissent comme le signe d’un redéploiement de celui-ci, surtout après l’échec des expéditions irakienne, libyenne et syrienne. Entre crise, fin et continuité, notre volonté est d’explorer les diverses pistes nous permettant de penser une reformulation du projet impérialiste étatsuniens.

Benoît Coutu, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Distorted by war – the political, economic and social impacts of permanent militarism in the U.S.

Paul Kellogg, Athabasca University (Athabasca, Canada)

An exceptional commitment to ‘permanent militarism’ has profoundly negative implications politically, economically and socially for the United States. This permanent militarism has important implications for Canada.For three-generations, the United States has been committed to sustaining a massive permanent military establishment – accounting for nearly half of the world’s military spending. Proponents of Pentagon spending tout the economic spin-offs – the jobs and investment – which they argue flow from military procurement. However, these spinoffs come at a price.1.In terms of politics, the maintenance of a warfare state corrodes public finances. 2.In terms of economics, the very large role of the Pentagon as a consumer of manufacturing products and technological expertise, distorts corporate culture in the U.S., creating long-term dependency on war-procurement in key industries.3.The social impacts are harder to quantify but are perhaps the most important. Distorted by war in its public policy, the U.S. is also distorted by gun violence in its everyday life.This analysis is immediately relevant for Canada. The U.S. Department of Commerce has slapped massive duties on exports of Bombardier airplanes, siding with Boeing in a complaint filed against Bombardier. But Boeing is one of the key aerospace players that only exists because of the half-hidden government subsidy to its business arising from dependence on Pentagon contracts.

A Marxist Analysis of War As A Disability-Production Mechanism: Imperialism, Nationalism, and Processes of Disablement in the Iranian and Kurdish War Survivors

Sona Kazemi, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

This article is a summary of two intertwined parts of a much larger project, which studied war and the resulting production of disabled bodies, analyzed in a dialectical (i.e., not linear, oppositional, binary, idealist, or mechanical) and historical materialist (DHM) framework. This article comprises a summarized report of the analysis of a case study, which studied the processes and relations of disablement in the Kurdish (e.g., Halabja) and Iranian (e.g., Nesar Direh, Zardeh, Baneh, and Sardasht) survivors of the Iran-Iraq war, in which chemical weapons were used. This article provides a comprehensive DHM analysis of the case study, organized in two parts: (1) ‘processes of disablement’ that are carried out through (2) ‘social relations’. Processes included production of disability, as well as perpetuation of disablement, as a gendered and classed socially-organized condition. The processes and relations are linked with each other dialectically. This means that they are intertwined – not easy to be dissected, because relations carry out processes, and processes, in turn, (re)produce relations. Through the original project which is partially reflected in this paper, I studied the global context of capitalist economy, patriarchy, and the imperialist politics of the U.S. and Europe in the Middle East to understand how disabled bodies are generated through armed conflicts sustained by imperialist, patriarchal, sectarian, jihadist, and nationalist social relations (always gendered, raced, and classed). My standpoint, as a war-survivor Middle Eastern woman, is informed by a critical analysis of the current geopolitics, examined in the context of the war in order to defetishize the concept of disability further in the field toward an active revolutionary knowledge and praxis.

Lenin Theory of Imperialism Then and Now

Paramjit Singh, Panjab University (Chandigarh, Inde)

After 100 years of its publication, Lenin’s theory of imperialism is still relevant for understanding the logic of capitalist accumulation at world scale. From the very beginning, due to its very nature, capitalism is a world-wide phenomenon. Lenin highlighted the global character of capitalism during the late 19th and beginning of 20th century. The concentration and centralisation of industrial capital on the one hand and banking capital on the other had resulted in the rise of finance capital. During that phase the concentration and centralisation of capital reached to its higher levels that necessitated the need for export of capital. The emergence of finance capital along with the growth of monopolies and export of capital was characterised by Lenin as imperialism. The characteristic which were highlighted by the Lenin in his theory of imperialism requires update and revision in order to understand the imperialistic characteristics of contemporary capitalism. This paper is an attempt to look into the contemporary phase of capitalism and its imperialistic nature. For that purpose, the present paper is divided into three parts. The first part highlights difference between the finance capitalism of Lenin’s time and the emergence of financialisation of accumulation during present times. The second part examines the Lenin thesis of export of capital and the present phase of globalisation of capital. The third part highlights the process of proletarianisation of southern labour as a consequence of the accumulation at world scale that was not directly addressed by Lenin in his theory. The concluding part compares the crisis of capitalism and the possibilities of decay of capitalism in Lenin’s analysis and present times.

Inderjeet Singh, Punjabi University (Patiala, Inde)

Historic Bloc in Crisis? The impact of the Trump Presidency on the historic bloc of neoliberalism

Yiming He, York University (Toronto, Canada)

The election of Donald Trump to the US presidency in 2016 has many implications for international politics and for the future of the global balance of power. The trend in scholarship thus far as been an over-emphasis on Trump’s statements and policies on NATO, free trade, and economic protectionism as indicators of shifting American commitment to the liberal international order. This state-centric approach focuses primarily on American’s material capabilities, and the shifting balance of power from the West to the East. However, in doing so, it neglects the power of social and class forces within the United States and its impact on the international order led by the United States. Using a Gramscian approach, particularly Gramsci’s concept of the historic bloc, I will analyze the composition of both the Democratic and Republican parties, and explain how the social and class forces within both parties effect American’s ability to maintain its dominant position within international politics. By applying the Gramscian approach, I will demonstrate that although the historical bloc of neoliberalism, which was reconstituted in the 1970s, is unravelling in both parties, American’s dominant position within the world order is not in immediate crisis. In addition, by using Gramsci, I will highlight some of the preconditions that can lead to the end of the neoliberal historical bloc, and how (a potential) new (capitalist) historical bloc may be reconstituted, both within the United States and within the global order.

La révolution syrienne est devenue un point de désaccord principal opposant différentes tendances de la gauche internationale. Alors que certains groupes ont soutenu la lutte héroïque des Syriens sans hésitation, nombreux sont ceux qui l’ont trahis. Beaucoup d’intellectuels de gauche ont même refusé de montrer de l’empathie envers la population syrienne qui se bat contre la dictature alors qu’ils l’ont fait volontiers pour les sociétés tunisienne et égyptienne. Pire encore, certains n’ont pas hésité à soutenir la barbarie du régime syrien sous prétexte que ce dernier s’opposait à un prétendu complot impérialiste. En réalité, ces derniers ont tout fait pour appuyer les forces qui voulaient barrer, par tous les moyens, la route aux Syriens qui se sont soulevés contre une dictature qui règne par la force et la terreur depuis presque cinquante ans. Au nom de l’anti-impérialisme, ils ont légitimé leur opposition à la lutte populaire pour la liberté, la dignité, et la justice. Ce panel propose une grille de lecture pour comprendre les luttes de base contre le régime d’Assad ainsi que leur impactes sur les réalités géopolitiques, sociales, et culturelles en Syrie et dans la région. Les panélistes analyseront les expériences des réfugiés syriens vivant au Canada et en Allemagne ainsi que les décisions politiques prise en conséquence par ces gouvernements. Les présentateurs discuteront également les luttes des Kurdes Syriens. Le panel proposera des outils analytiques pour appréhender la complexité de la révolte syrienne et les stratégies à adopter pour faire un front éthique et politique aux impérialismes pluriels.

Yasser Munif, Emerson College (Boston, USA)

Oula Hajjar, Tadamon! (Montréal, Canada)

Joseph Daher, Syria Freedom Forever (Lausanne, Suisse)

Ashley Smith, International Socialist Organization (Burlington, USA)

Marx après Lénine / Marx after Lenin

This panel explores the theoretical productivity and political potential of a return to Marx after Lenin, drawing attention to key questions and concepts between their thought that continue to animate our present, but that are often obscured by radical analyses of the present conjuncture that exclude Lenin’s analysis of imperialism. How does Lenin’s analysis of the present situation, as well as his analysis of imperialism and revolution, necessarily relate back to Marx’s method in Capital? How does our analysis of the present situation today require a methodological division of labour (“levels of analysis”) between Marx and Lenin? How must “historical and dialectical materialism” be advanced today by a return to Marx after Lenin?

Marx, Lenin and the Historical Geography of Imperialism

Kanishka Goonewardena, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

Was there or could there ever be capitalism without imperialism? And: could there be a theory of capitalism without a concept of imperialism? This presentation brings Lenin to bear on Marx by way of these two historical and theoretical questions, so as to highlight the necessity of reading Marx, who spoke of so-called original accumulation and colonialism while outlining the ‘laws of motion’ of capital, through Lenin, the theoretician of imperialism in the conjuncture of the First World War. In so doing, it will also sketch the outlines of a historical geography of the concept of imperialism since Lenin, in order to explicate the nature of contemporary relations between imperialism and capitalism.

Capitalist Crisis: Marx avec Sade, Lenin avec Freud

Ken Kawashima, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

In Marx’s analysis of the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production, crisis represents capital’s “repetition compulsion”. Crisis recalls the accidental and traumatic origins of capitalism, but in the inverted form of “excess capital alongside surplus populations,” or “poverty in the midst of wealth.” The inversion of these origins is never fully complete in history, however. Rather, it is constantly attended by perversion, especially in the stage of imperialism, which repeats the traumatic origins of capitalism in the colonies, culminating in war. Marxism must subvert these forms of perversion, disclosed in capital’s “primitive accumulation,” as well as in the repetition compulsion of crisis in the stage of imperialism. Thus, we consider Marx avec Sade and Lenin avec Freud.

À Venir

Sandeep Banerjee, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

Nous souhaitons explorer les contradictions du régime économique qui se déploie depuis une trentaine d’années au Québec et au Canada comme dans les pays anglo-saxons, et qui est marqué par la financiarisation de l’épargne et de la consommation des ménages. Pour ce faire, nous nous intéresserons à la dynamique entre la dimension idéologique du capitalisme et la condition économique des salariés. Nous examinerons d’abord les plus récentes données sur l’endettement des ménages au Canada. Ensuite, nous nous intéresserons aux discours qui légitiment le recours au crédit et aux véhicules financiers d’épargne et de placement. Nous verrons notamment la place qu’occupe le risque dans le rapport au crédit. Finalement, nous mettrons en lumière les limites tant économique qu’écologique de ce régime.

Julia Posca, Institut de recherche et d’informations socio-économiques (IRIS) (Montréal, Canada)

Youth’s Subjectivity Today: Neoliberal Residues and Prospects for Emancipation

Onur Kapdan, UC Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA, États-Unis)

This presentation offers a critical appraisal of the youth’s radical subjectivity in the light of the post-2008 wave of protests and uprising. Their important role in the events, particularly those who had lacked prior political engagement, requires activists and scholars to engage with the youth as a subjectivity-in-itself, which parallels but also intersects with class, race, and gender. Drawing from my dissertation research, this presentation argues youth’s unique position for processes of capitalist reproduction (victims but also agents for the future) indicates weaker alienation and a closeness to radical imagination (to one’s self as Marx put it) as well as technological savvy. As the post-2008 wave has shown communication, playfulness, new technologies, and proto-communard tendencies constitute the youth’s emancipatory potential. On the other hand, any serious engagement with the youth’s subjectivity today need to acknowledge the incompleteness of these contestations and the contradictory generational politics. The youth’s contestation was, on the whole, confused and oscillated between alter-capitalist and anti-capitalist dispositions. In some cases, the youth’s subjectivity has also opened way for offensives from the right as in the case of re-emergence of fascism in the US, the military rule in Egypt, or the parliamentary coup in Brazil. These confusions demonstrate the presence of residues of neoliberalism in the youth’s subjectivity, which have commodified and individualized demands for autonomy, creativity, and liberation while delegitimizing organized ideological politics. The presentation concludes by suggesting re-articulating a humanist critique of alienation under capitalism in addition to the structuralist critique of exploitation may allow the left to capture the emancipatory potential of the youth.

Flesh without blood: A political economy of youth in capitalism

Diandra Oliver, Simon Fraser University / Space Collective (Canada)

As the global financial crisis of 2008 bled into the debt crisis in the Eurozone, and as neoliberal capitalism continues to leave us for dead, young people are disproportionately cast from the economy, the result being nothing less than a calamity. The ensuing economic insecurity of young people takes shape in an unfolding struggle for agency and life. Rooted in a deep intersectional discourse, this presentation considers the emergent opportunity we have to re-ask, and re-position, what Piketty (2013) refers to as “flesh and blood” citizens—namely youth—at the centre of our analysis. A political-economic analysis that puts the agency of youth at its axis can illuminate the diverse ways youth navigate a financial crisis that, for many, has no start or end date. The presentation works through some of the questions we may begin to ask from this new position: how is the category of youth constituted by youths’ relationship to capitalism and crisis? What does a young person’s unaccounted for economic situation look like across multiple intersectional identities, and how can political economy be used as a tool to reconsider our commitment to radical solutions? This presentation aims to breathe life into the political economy of financial crisis by challenging the very grown-up assumption that the experience and wisdom of adults can tell us best about young people’s current situation. Arguing that the agency of youth in capitalism is an integral lens that we have a responsibility to attend to, the presentation calls on political economy to wriggle free of some of its adult comforts so that we stop capitalism from destroying everything we love.

Christophe Aguiton, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (Paris, France)

Raphael Canet, Université d’Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada)

Isabelle L’Héritier, Greenpeace (Montréal, Canada)

Animation: Pierre Beaudet

This third panel in the « Precarious Accumulation serie » will consider: The current contours of neoliberalism;The ramifications of the turn to right-wing populism, symbolized for instance by Trump and Brexit;The uneven impact of both – contemporary neoliberalism and First World populism – on development prospects outside the core of the system »

Sune Sandbeck, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Niko Block, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Animation: Susan Spronk

Forgotten Factories: From England’s Workhouse to Amazon’s Warehouse

Lucas Pinheiro, University of Chicago (Chicago, États-Unis)

Where is the factory today? In the industrialized world, the answer seems to be increasingly “nowhere.” Since the 1970s, a wave of deindustrialization swept the industrialized world as factories relocated to developing economies in search of lower production costs. In this familiar narrative, factories in affluent countries were unseated by a thriving high-tech service sector. Today, we are led to believe, the factory appears to have finally disappeared. But if this is the case then why are legions of people still paid precariously by companies such as Google and Amazon to perform menial and repetitive tasks for longer and longer hours? Why are over 100,000 Internet workers worldwide tethered to assembly lines, confined in giant warehouses, and reined by strict managerial control? In answering these questions, this presentation tells a new story about the past and present of the factory system before and after the apogee of industrial modernity (1830s-1970s). The factory, I argue, has been fomenting in the background of modern Western institutions and discourses since the seventeenth century. It has been tucked away in workhouses, workshops, ship decks, sugar plantations, click-farms, and distribution centers where peasants, artisans, sailors, slaves, and tech workers were brought to heel by capital’s reconfiguration of the social world long before the rise and well after the fall of industrial manufacturing. In recovering these forgotten histories of factory labor, I reimagine the factory as a physical and conceptual form of capitalist production whose organization of work predates and outlasts industrial capitalism. By reconstructing the emergence of the factory system in the British Empire (1692-1807) as well as its concealed reincarnation at Google and Amazon, I advance an alternative account of capitalist modernity through the factory’s pre-industrial dawn and postindustrial afterlife, unraveling in turn the paralyzing impasses the factory continues to impose on economic life.

Relics of Trade Liberalisation: Visually Mapping the Shannon Free Zone

Patrick Brodie, Concordia University (Montréal, Canada)

Established in 1959 to attract foreign and regional investment, the Shannon Free Zone in County Clare, Ireland claims to be the world’s first free trade zone. While now a free trade zone in name only, its model of the special economic zone (SEZ)—a sequestered space of territorial and financial exception—has been exported and implemented across the world. Driven by a motivation to document and visualize financialized spaces like the Shannon Free Zone, we embarked on a multi-media research-creation project aiming to “cognitively map” the abstract flows of capital through the area. Given the Shannon Free Zone’s historical status as an early template for SEZ development and management, recording the space “deep maps” by documenting, visualizing, and archiving material infrastructures of globalized trade and finance capital. While it provided a material and managerial template for free trade zone governance, Shannon did not become Dubai. The space contains traces of this unrealized potentiality, especially under its current re-development, but one must account for the Republic of Ireland’s unique political and economic context when discussing and representing its present, past, and future state, especially in terms of re-configurations of work and protest. Confronting the institutional methodologies that drive emergent research-creation practices, our presentation asks key questions: How can we visualize the zones in which logistical networks and financial speculation come into contact in order to extricate their concrete entanglements? Where does on-the-ground research-creation fit into complex systems of governance and critique, design and disruption? It is impossible to impose dialectical oppositions to everyday contingency, social practices, relations, intimacies, and experiences. This presentation aims to interrogate how ethnographies of capitalism enter the lived experience of both the environments observed and the researchers involved. Any imagination of future politics must account for what it is like to live and work within these ruins of capitalist development.

Patrick Brian Smith, Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema (Montréal, Canada)

La lecture économique de la crise financière de 2008 et de ces conséquences se divise sur deux échelles : 1) loin d’encadrer davantage la finance, les nouveaux modes de régulation mis en place ont plutôt normalisé des pratiques financières risquées qui étaient au cœur même du déclenchement de la précédente crise; 2) Pour le Canada, on remarque un développement accru des activités spéculatives vers deux valeurs-refuges que sont l’immobilier et les ressources naturelles. La lecture politique de la crise financière est quant à elle marquée par un renouvellement d’intérêt pour le populisme, comme catégorie d’appréhension des polarisations sociales. L’intérêt de notre démarche se situe dans une visée plus large d’articulation des multiples dimensions d’une crise sous le mode capitaliste de production par l’intégration de discours répondant à des paradigmes différents, voire divergents, qui nous mènerait vers une théorie de la praxis en moment de crise.

Audrey Laurin-Lamothe, Université du Québec en Outaouais (Gatineau, Canada)

Mathieu Perron-Dufour, Université du Québec en Outaouais (Hull, Canada)

Nous sommes loin du contexte des grandes mobilisations altermondialistes du début du siècle. Les mobilisations sont faibles contre les négociations sur l’ALÉNA ou la rencontre du G7 en juin. Pourtant cette rencontre marquera certainement la conjoncture alors que Donald Trump tente de confirmer l’hégémonie américaine au sein de ces pays les mieux nantis de la planète. Comment les mouvements sociaux peuvent-ils renouveler les concertations et les mobilisations plus politiques des organisations sociales contre la nouvelle offensive néolibérale ? À partir des expériences d’ici et d’ailleurs, l’objectif de la discussion vise à circonscrire les conditions de la relance des mobilisations et de l’action politique des mouvements sociaux.

Dominique Daigneault, présidente du Conseil central du Montréal métropolitain (CSN) (Montréal, Canada)

Véronique Laflamme, FRAPRU (Québec, Canada)

Christophe Aguiton, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (Paris, France)

Claude Vaillancourt, Attac-Québec (Montréal, Canada)

Animation: Ronald Cameron

Notre époque est traversée par de profonds bouleversements, à la fois environnementaux, économiques et sociaux. Devant cela, l’horizon et les chemins de l’émancipation demeurent difficiles à tracer. Deux penseurs nous semblent particulièrement pertinents pour alimenter notre réflexion, en l’occurrence Antonio Gramsci et Nicos Poulantzas. Ces deux théoriciens ont tenté d’expliquer la défaite des mouvements socialistes de la première moitié du siècle dernier – alors que les mouvements populaires montaient, selon l’expression consacrée, «à l’assaut du ciel». En mobilisant leurs concepts (hégémonie, révolution passive, guerre de position, etc.) et leurs conceptions respectives de l’État, la société civile, etc., nous tenterons d’analyser cet héritage et surtout, d’amorcer une discussion sur les stratégies de transition qui s’offrent à nous.

Emanuel Guay, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

Emanuel Guay, pour sa part, partagera des réflexions sur les possibilités de concilier socialisme et démocratie tout en allant au-delà du modèle social-démocrate, en comparant notamment Gramsci et Poulantzas sur la question de la transition démocratique vers le socialisme. Comment réfléchir politiquement la social-démocratie ? Quels liens met-elle en lumière entre les réformes immédiates et l’horizon révolutionnaire ? Comment une convergence des forces social-démocrates et socialistes pourrait contribuer au recul de l’offensive néolibérale aujourd’hui, puis au dépassement du capitalisme à plus long terme ?

Maristella Svampa, Universidad Nacional de La Plata (La Plata, Argentine)

Maristella Svampa discutera, en s’inspirant des idées de Gramsci et Poulantzas, de l’expérience très riche de l’Argentine des dernières années à travers l’essor des mouvements populaires, la mise en place puis le déclin de gouvernements dits progressistes et les perspectives actuelles de reconstruction d’un pôle stratégique à travers les luttes éco-territoriales. »

Religious Populism in the Neoliberal Age

Efe Peker, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

The development of neoliberalism since the 1980s has been investigated extensively within the critical social sciences. Parallel in time with the rise of neoliberalism, another well-documented tendency has been the “going public” of religions around the world, where they began taking an increasingly visible role in social and political life. Yet the two phenomena, scrutinized above all by political sociology and the sociology of religion, respectively, have been studied in virtual isolation from each other. Whereas political sociology largely neglected the empirical examination of contemporary religions, the sociology of religion failed to incorporate structural analyses and went on to treat religion frequently as an independent variable. To contribute to bridging the gap between the social scientific understanding of neoliberalism and religions, this paper proposes a research agenda that situates the global religious revivalism of the last few decades in the context of geographically specific neoliberal transformations. More particularly, the aim here is to identify the various ways in which religion has been utilised as a source of populist politics legitimating and underpinning neoliberalism. Through a cross-religious and cross-regional comparative framework that features examples from the US, Québec and Canada, France, Turkey, India, and Eastern Europe, the paper outlines how religious institutions, doctrines, and social groups may interact with sociopolitical power in the neoliberal age.

Althusser sur la transformation révolutionnaire : Une reconstruction de sa théorie suivie d’une critique.

William Lewis, Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY, États-Unis)

Au fond, l’intérêt d’Althusser pour l’État et pour ses lois était motivé par une question. Cette question est de savoir si un état peut être transformé à l’intérieur et par ses propres moyens même si cet état est construit pour ne servir que les intérêts d’une classe sociale spécifique. C’est-à-dire, est-il possible de modifier l’état pour qu’il puisse servir les intérêts d’une autre classe ou même, d’une façon plus démocratique, pour qu’il puisse servir les intérêts et besoins de tous ses sujets ? Selon Althusser, la difficulté de cette question réside dans le fait que la tradition marxiste ne nous a fourni presque aucun conseil sur ce sujet. « Dans tout ce que Marx nous a laissé » Althusser écrivait en 1978, « il y a très peu de chose sur ce qu’il appelait la ‘superstructure’— savoir le droit, l’État, et les ‘formes idéologiques.’ [e]t la tradition marxiste n’a rien ajouté à ce que Marx nous a laissé. » Pour Althusser, pour fournir une réponse à cette question, on doit faire fond sur plusieurs indices que Marx et la tradition marxiste nous ont légués. Heureusement, Althusser a eu pour répondre à cette question sa profonde connaissance de l’histoire de la philosophie politique et ses théories de l’état de Machiavel à Gramsci. En plus, il a pu profiter de ses propres concepts et de ses analyses des relations causales qui tiennent aux différents niveaux des pratiques humaines qui constituent la totalité socio-économique. Si nous lisons ensemble les arguments qu’Althusser formait de ces éléments, nous pouvons construire une théorie althussérienne de l’Etat, de la loi, et de la transformation possible de tous les deux. La construction de cette théorie ou, pour être plus précis, la reconstruction raisonnable de cette théorie ainsi que son critique sont les objectifs principaux de mon intervention ici proposée.

Animation: Pierre Beaudet

The oldest political dispute inside the U.S. Left is not going away anytime soon. Revelations about the DNC’s rigging of the Democratic Party primary for Hillary Clinton and the local victories of socialists in the November 2017 elections have added fuel to the fire of that age-old question: How should socialists and the labor movement confront the two-party system? This panel seeks to take a fresh look at this controversial question by critically examining past and present attempts to promote independent working-class political action in the face of the anti-democratic U.S. political regime.

The Teacher Rebellions and Electoral Politics

Eric Blanc, New York University (New York, États-Unis)

What is the Nature of the US Political Regime?

Chris Maisano, Democratic Socialists of America, Jacobin Magazine (Brooklyn, NY, États-Unis)

Bernie Sanders and the Socialist Left

Meagan Day, Jacobin Magazine (New York, États-Unis)

Can the Left Take Over the Democratic Party?

Neal Meyer, NYC DSA Steering Committee (New York, États-Unis)

La technocratie d’« extrême-centre », bien en scelle à la tête des gouvernements néolibéraux des dernières décennies a récemment été débordée sur sa droite (extrême-droite populiste) et sur sa gauche (partis de la gauche radicale) dans différents pays occidentaux. Ce panel se penchera sur les leçons des expériences historiques et récentes de la gauche radicale gouvernementale afin d’explorer les défis que pose la possibilité réelle de prise du pouvoir par certains partis de « gauche de la gauche » à court et à plus long terme. Nous nous pencherons d’abord sur le contexte de l’économie politique actuelle et les défis qu’il pose pour un gouvernement proposant une rupture avec le néolibéralisme et/ou le capitalisme. Ceci impliquera notamment de se pencher sur les possibilités d’agir « à l’intérieur et contre l’État ». L’expérience en Grèce du gouvernement anti-austérité de Syriza, marquée par sa capitulation face à la « troïka », sera ensuite analysée afin d’en tirer les enseignements appropriés. Enfin, nous aborderons les enjeux liés à la préparation à la prise du pouvoir et l’implantation d’un programme rompant avec l’austérité néolibérale tels qu’ils sont actuellement posés au sein du Parti travailliste sous la direction de Jeremy Corbyn.

Xavier Lafrance, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Alexandre Lemay-Roche, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Christian Pépin, York University (Toronto, Canada)

René Rojas, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (New York, États-Unis)

Il ne peut y avoir de véritable transition sans une évaluation critique des contributions des partis politiques de gauche. Ce panel sera l’occasion pour des partis de la gauche radicale de se rencontrer et de partager leurs expériences et leurs programmes sur la Grande Transition. En particulier, les militants et les représentants seront invités à étoffer leurs politiques spécifiques sur la lutte contre la crise écologique avec une perspective de gauche. Bien qu’intéressants et stimulants, les concepts tels que « la juste transition » ou « l’écosocialisme » sont insuffisants sans des politiques clairement définies. Quels sont les principaux éléments d’une transition écologique et démocratique juste? Quelles pourraient être les priorités d’un premier gouvernement écosocialiste? Comment pouvons-nous aborder le changement climatique dans une perspective de justice internationale? Comment pouvons-nous réduire la surproduction et la consommation de masse? Comment pouvons-nous assurer la conversion des industries polluantes et créer des emplois de qualité pour les travailleurs? Mais également, quelles sont les stratégies pour réaliser ces politiques? Sur quels alliés pouvons-nous compter? Quels sont les obstacles à surmonter sur le chemin de cette nouvelle société?

Roger Rashi, Collectif la Grande transition (Montréal, Québec)

Hendrik Davi, France Insoumise, CGT (France)

Lorenz Gösta Beutin, Die Linke (Hamburg, Allemagne)

Alejandra Zaga Mendes, Québec solidaire (Montréal, Canada)

Talíria Petrone, Partido Socialismo e Liberdade (Rio de Janeiro, Brésil)

Bolivarian Revolution as Social Revolution

Jeremiah Gaster, York University (Toronto, Canada)

I will examine the uniqueness of the Bolivarian Revolution (BR) as a revolution.  I will do so by examining the BR as a specific form of a revolution, a social revolution.  If Skocpol (1979) writes that social revolutions are the moment when “… rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below” then I will utilize the BR to argue that rather social revolutions are not simply the moment when the elites (either “political” or “ruling” accommodate the masses and respond to them (as if they could do otherwise) but rather are the moment when the masses are in control of the political community, (See, e.g.;(Skocpol, 1979); (Wootton, 1986); (Wolin, 1996a); (Davidson, 2015). The BR is a complex process that can be specifically dated to the political crises touched off by the Caracazo in February 1989.  This presentation will trace out some of these processes, but will also as part of its examination of the social revolution focus on the features of both dual power, and the creation of new institutions (See, e.g, (Zúquete, 2008); (McCoy, 2004a); (Lopez Maya, 2005); (Ciccariello-Maher, 2007); (Hawkins, 2006); (Gibbs, 2006); (Fernandes, 2007)).  The BR is complex, and not only is it ambiguous, but it has no clear outcome as of yet, but there are positive signs in how the BR has been able to foster some institutional forms that have radically altered the political community and have the potential to further alter the political community.  Such institutional forms as community councils, misiones, communes, communal kitchens, etc., have been able to enact radical social policies, centred along not only “community participation” but also community “protagonism”.  That is, as a social revolution the BR is itself a life-changing experience for the people who have inserted themselves as the political community.

State-Civil Society Relations and the Decline of the Venezuelan Left

Kristin Ciupa, York University (Toronto, Canada)

The decline in oil prices and worsening socio-economic conditions, divisions within the Venezuelan left and a resurgence of the right-wing opposition, have all contributed to the decline of the left in Venezuela. This presentation explores the decline of the Venezuelan left through an analysis of rentier capitalism, and its impact on the state and social relations. Chavez’s election, and the government’s greatest challenges to the rentier capitalist model in the 2000s, were driven by widespread anti-neoliberalism and popular support for the Bolivarian government. Despite attempts at productive diversification and decentralization of power, however, the government maintained control over the oil sector and oil rents. Extensive rent distribution schemes when oil prices were high, including preferential currency rates, state subsidies and cheap imports, reinforced rentier social relations, consumption and a clientelistic relationship between the state and its supporters by widening the scope of dependence on oil rents. Further, the incorporation of social movements into the state apparatus through institutionalized forms of political participation has led to the demobilization of some of the most radical currents of the Bolivarian project, as they have become dependent upon state funding and support.To explain the decline of the left and the resurgence of the Venezuelan right, this presentation theorizes the relationship between class struggle, reform and social change; as well as of the limitations on the capitalist state to alter the conditions of rentier capitalism and achieve socialism. It argues that popular support served to radicalize and redirect the focus of the Bolivarian government’s rent distribution program towards creating a socialized economy and bettering the conditions of the country’s most marginalized sectors. However, overreliance on, and concentration of power in, the state to lead a project of socialist transformation ultimately served to reinforce oil dependence and rentier social relations.

À venir

Eva María, International Socialist Organization (Portland, États-Unis)

Crimes of Empire: On Anti-Colonial Criminology

Jeff Shantz, Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Surrey, Canada)

In the current period of struggle in which Indigenous communities and movements are impelling a re-thinking of settler colonial states, land claims, and sovereignty as well as re-asserting Indigenous forms of governance and community it is crucial that social sciences such as criminology acknowledge and confront their own colonial histories as well as learning from the perspectives of Indigenous and anti-colonial scholars, thinkers, and activists. A discipline that claims to be concerned about and serious about issues of crime cannot avoid the severe crimes of colonial states, which the discipline has too long taken for granted as purveyors of justice, and the role of criminology in legitimizing often criminal state institutions and practices. Drawing on a range of anti-colonial theories this paper poses a rethinking of social science and notions of justice within the context of settler colonial states like Canada (and its academic institutions). Sub-theme: Imperialism and Colonialism

Blockades, Anti-Capitalism, and Deference to Indigenous Law

Bradley Por, McGill University, Faculty of Law (Montréal, Canada)

My doctoral research looks at Indigenous blockades in Canada as sources of law. While the state distinguishes between ‘peaceful protest’ and ‘illegal behaviour’ to justify removing blockaders with the ‘rule of law,’ Indigenous people on blockades are clear that they have legal duties to protect their land and water and are acting out of necessity. They say it is the Settler state which is violating the ‘rule of law’ when it disrespects nation-to-nation relationships by intruding on First Peoples’ lands and criminalizing their resistance. When Indigenous blockaders are treated as outlaws, the state asserts domination. Blockades show that this state domination is also capitalist domination. Settlers receiving the messages of blockades do not need to pick sides to see that the state’s deployment of the ‘rule of law’ principle legitimates First Peoples who support capitalist development through resource extraction and outlaws those who oppose it. My presentation will argue that bridge building between anti-capitalist and anti-colonial resistance should be centered on Settler deference to Indigenous law. Indigenous resistance is not necessarily anti-capitalist, but blockades make clear that Indigenous law is frequently in contention with dominant modes of capitalist development, especially that of resource extraction. Anti-capitalist Settlers can put decolonization first, and reinforce the blocking of capitalist expansion, by embracing Indigenous blockades as sources of law, opposing their criminalization by the state, and lending support on blockaders’ terms. Deference to Indigenous law prevents the reproduction of colonial relations by anti-capitalist movements, and transcends resistance by supporting the resurgence of Indigenous nations.

Murderous capitalism and the settler colonial war on rebel bodies: Indigenous women on the front lines in British Columbia

Julie Tomiak, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada)

The systemic nature of genocidal violence against Indigenous women, as subjects that capitalism seeks to destroy, not only highlights the necropolitical dimensions of positioning Indigenous bodies as “in the way of development” and as obstacles to capitalist accumulation (Mbembe 2003; Razack 2015, 2012), but also draws attention to the power of Indigenous resistance and resurgence, with Indigenous women on the front lines of struggles against settler capitalism and for land and life. We frame violence against Indigenous women within the historical context of capitalism’s attack on women and Indigenous peoples, through an investigation of processes of enclosure in contemporary British Columbia. Drawing on feminist Marxist and Indigenous political economy perspectives (Coulthard 2014; Federici 2004; Kuokkanen 2008; Luxemburg 1913; Manuel and Derrickson 2015), we examine the prevalence of structural and physical violence, including high numbers of missing and murdered Indigenous women, in relation to the intensification of accumulation by dispossession in a place where land and title issues remain unsettled. Applicable subthemes in the ‘Imperialism and Colonialism’ stream include ‘Capitalism against Indigenous forms of life’ and ‘Anti-colonial struggles’; we note that it also fits the ‘racism and antiracism’ subtheme of ‘Capitalism and contemporary forms of oppression’ and, broadly, ‘Understanding the political economy of capitalism’.

Justin Paulson, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada)

This panel will offer a range of perspectives on the historical legacy and actuality of the Black Panther Party, the black-led revolutionary organization at the center of the broader political insurgency which swept the United States in the late 1960s to early 1970s. Each presentation will investigate aspects of the Panthers’ theoretical, social, and political practice, both in the Party’s home base of Oakland but also other regional chapters. Of particular relevance to the conference theme of socialist transition will be: considerations on the BPP’s survival programs and their challenge to, and interaction with, federal social welfare initiatives like the War on Poverty; the Panthers’ attempts at institution-building and pedagogical activities in Oakland with the Oakland Community School; the class analysis advanced by Party theorists, especially their understanding of the relationship between the lumpenproletariat and the broader working class, as well as the possibilities of coalitional, cross-racial politics; and the reverberations of the analysis and practical experiences of the Party for thinking through the coherence, causality, and orientation of strategy and its place in class struggle. This panel aims to chart the most valuable and relevant insights from the Panthers’ political history and tactics for today.

Dave Mesing, Viewpoint Magazine (Villanova, USA)

Andrew Anastasi, City University of New York, Viewpoint Magazine (New York, USA)

Rosa Petterson, ()

Ben Mabie, Viewpoint Magazine (Villanova, USA)

Race and Anti-Capitalist Logics: Between Aimé Césaire and Alain Badiou

Elisabeth Paquette, University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Charlotte, NC, États-Unis)

For Alain Badiou, emancipation occurs when that which inexists in a state (or is not counted by a state) can gain existence through a change in the ordering logic of a state. In order to achieve such a revolutionary change, it becomes necessary to base emancipatory ideas on something that exceeds the logic of the state. For Badiou, political truths such as justice and equality are what exceed the logic of a state, and political identities such as race and gender are not. There is thus a conflict between truth (justice and equality) and identity (race and gender). In light of the juxtaposition between identity and truth, Badiou claims that any theory of emancipation and politics must be premised on what he calls an “indifference to difference” (2001, 27). Given that race is excluded from his theorization of emancipation, and that all politics must be emancipatory, it follows that race is excluded from politics on his view. As such, my project aims to explore the implications of this view for critical race theory and decolonial thought.Specifically, I begin with a critique of the concept of “identity” that is provided by Badiou through the work of Kathryn Gines, W. E. B. Du Bois, Lucius T. Outlaw Jr., Chike Jeffers, and most importantly Aimé Césaire (an Afro-Caribbean Marxist and poet). Drawing from historic and current debates regarding the importance of the “conservation of races,” I argue that the conception of identity utilized by Badiou does not allow for what Gines calls a positive account of racial identity. In addition, drawing from Outlaw’s On Race and Philosophy (1996), I argue that a positive conception of race is necessary for a theory of emancipation that does not fall into patterns of Eurocentrism.

Fanon’s critique of colonial reification

Kasim Tirmizey, Concordia University (Montréal, Canada)

This presentation develops upon Frantz Fanon’s insights on colonialism as a process of reification of subjected peoples and spaces. Fanon famously argued for the need to “stretch” Marxism in the colonial context. In this vein, Fanon extended the Marxist concept of reification to incorporate the role of colonialism and racialization in transforming social relations and co-constituting capitalism. For Fanon, the colonial condition is lived at the level of immediacy as a reified world. Fanon critiqued certain forms of native politics as being false forms of decolonization to the extent that they were re-casting colonial reification. This presentation extends Fanon’s critique of colonial reification and native politics through a comparative analysis of social movements in colonial India and Algeria, and settler-colonial Canada. The presentation concludes with some notes on how anti-colonial movements contribute to critiques of colonialism and capitalism in the process of struggling against reification.

Western and especially American imperialism has whipped up Islamophobia to justify their conquest and domination of the Middle East. The Western ruling classes have also used this ideology domestically to scapegoat Muslims and Islam as a threat to be policed by their states. Some on the left have adapted to this demonization of Muslims in the name of secularism and feminism, going so far as to endorse right wing calls for banning Muslim women from wearing the veil. This panel will reject such arguments and argue for the left to challenge Islamophobia, oppose both the imposition and forced removal of the veil as sexist, and argue that only on this basis can solidarity be built for a principle struggle against imperialism and the oppression of women.

Khury Petersen-Smith, International Socialist Organization (New -York, USA)

Nikolas Barry-Shaw, Auteur et militant de Québec solidaire (Montréal, Canada)

Bochra Manaï, chercheure (Montréal, Canada)

Anas Bouslikhane, Solidarité sans frontières (Montréal, Canada)

“Aujourd’hui, plus encore peut-être que le Vietnam, la Palestine se trouve au coeur de la concurrence inter-impérialiste des pays qui se sont enrichis à même le pillage et l’escalavage forcés des pays dits du ‘tiers monde’, cet immense bidonville multinational qui couvre les trois quarts de la planète et dont fait partie aussi le Québec . . . Le rôle du Canada, comme fidèle agent et porte-parole de Washington, doit être manifestement dénoncé . . . .” -Charles Gagnon & Pierre Vallières, “Pour un front commun Québec–Palestine” (1969)Palestine is a site of ceaseless, and ominously escalating, colonial violence. Complicity in this violence has long been a marker of Canada’s relationship with U.S.-led empire. Alignment with U.S.–Israeli brutality remains an enduring feature of imperial politics in Canada despite changes in government; it is maintained under Justin Trudeau’s premiership as it was under Stephen Harper’s, and as it had been during the first “Trudeau era”. While the Palestinian challenge to empire has long been a symbol for popular struggles across the Third World, in Canada it was until recently a contentious issue even on the anti-war left. Over the past decade, however, Palestine solidarity has attracted widened support from social movements across the Canadian state. This panel reflects on local histories of Palestine solidarity and how they can be strengthened. Emphasis is placed on Québec, where a contradictory historical identification with the Third World opened unique space for oppositional politics on Palestine. Vallières, quoted above, himself later conceded that Québec forms part of “the privileged west”; and the imperatives of Indigenous, migrant rights, and wider anti-racist struggles demand clarity on this issue. Political contradictions and strategic opportunities alike need serious attention if we are to develop a principled, coordinated, and effective challenge to Canadian policy on Palestine.

Dan Freeman-Maloy, University of Exeter (Montréal, Canada)

Houda Asal, EHESS (Montréal, Canada)

Mostafa Henaway, Immigrant Workers Center (Montréal, Canada)

Le développement ubristique des sociétés capitalistes nécessite dès maintenant la critique et l’enveloppement par la rationalité des Premiers peuples, pour lui poser des limites; rationalité qui est depuis longtemps invalidée par la rationalité occidentale, dans sa prétention épistémo-centrique à l' »universel ». C’est-à-dire que ceux portant des finalités qui leur sont propres et n’ayant jamais cessé, en dépit de l’obstruction coloniale, de propulser et de diriger librement leurs canots, uetshit takuaimatishun, en vertu de celles-ci, sont mûrs d’expérience et de pensées pour remettre radicalement en cause l’Institution imaginaire capitaliste; puisqu’elle les dévore comme le Léviathan, par des politiques d’assimilation, par la dépossession illégitime et la destruction de leurs territoires ancestraux, par les nouveaux stratagèmes de « négociations territoriales » et de « réconciliation » avec l’État, puis d' »intégration » à la société capitaliste, dans le but de les digérer.
La Prophétie anishnabe des 7 Feux enseigne qu’au temps du 7e Feu, l’homme occidental devra choisir entre la voie de la technologie ou celle de la spiritualité. Si l’on interroge la signification philosophique de ce récit pour la rendre accessible à sa raison, ces choix sont de poursuivre sur la voie de l’expansion illimitée de la maîtrise irrationnelle et de la possession totale de la nature, ou la recherche d’un nouveau rapport de sens à la condition humaine, l’humilité envers plus grand que soi, un « sens de la terre »; le respect d’Assi et de tout ce qui l’habite. Le 7e Feu se définit en tant que complexité de la crise planétaire: crise environnementale et humanitaire globale, alors que les industries ont des impacts sur l’eau, la terre, l’air, et que la terre contaminée empoisonne l’eau, que l’eau contaminée empoisonne la terre, et nos corps, comme l’ensemble du vivant. Devons-nous nous laisser aliéner par l’Institution imaginaire capitaliste, ou bifurquer sur une nouvelle voie?
Au germe de l’Institution imaginaire capitaliste, y aurait-il un rapport pessimiste à la condition humaine et à l’existence; un sens générateur et subconscient du projet de conquête et de reconstruction du monde; la promesse d’une vie plus longue, plus agréable et plus puissante; le rêve de l’immortalité et du Paradis perdus? La “concurrence” serait-elle l”état de guerre” de chacun contre chacun, le conflit entre les désirs de puissance motivés par l’angoisse de mort individuelle, catalysés par l’Institution imaginaire capitaliste dans sa lutte contre la nature? Considérant la rupture du sens religieux à la condition humaine, conséquence du procès de laïcisation des derniers siècles, se pourrait-il que l’incapacité des sociétés capitalistes à régler par délibération politique les problèmes sociaux et environnementaux qu’elles provoquent, en poursuivant l’expansion illimitée, soit leur incapacité à traiter l’angoisse de mort; une fuite en avant de la mort, vers la mort ?
Comment le développement économique affecte-t-il les Premiers Peuples? Qu’est-ce que signifie la réconciliation, alors que les tensions s’amplifient entre tous et chacun; alors que les grandes corporations transnationales sont avides des ressources naturelles, et qu’elles éventrent les territoires ancestraux avec la complicité des gouvernements pour les extraire? Qu’est-ce que le respect de la Terre, entre humains et envers l’ensemble du vivant? Comment régénérer les traditions et les droits coutumiers des Premiers peuples? Pourquoi reconnaitre la valeur de leurs récits, comme connaissances de sens et de savoir-vivre? Quelles sont les relations entre la reconnaissance bio- cosmique de la condition humaine, la conscience écologique, la responsabilité et l’auto-limitation du pouvoir technique sur la nature? Comment réunir nos énergies pour créer une voie de la transition vers l’autonomie des individus et des peuples? Quelle peut être une autre voie vers le 8e Feu?
Ce que nous proposons est une interrogation critique du projet d’expansion illimitée de la maîtrise irrationnelle et de la possession totale de la nature, par le Progrès d’un savoir instrumental, à partir de la reconnaissance explicite de la condition humaine. Alors que les “transhumanistes” phantasment de s’en émanciper par la technologie, de créer une intelligence et une force robotique supérieures qui soient à leur service, de voyager en dehors du monde à travers des “hyper-réalités” numériques, ou de coloniser Mars pour échapper à la crise planétaire, d’autres incarnent la résistance et oeuvrent à la création de nouvelles voies de transition. Voilà la densité du thème le 7e Feu, auquel nous vous invitons à participer pour réfléchir ensemble, puis énoncer des propositions d’alternatives démocratiques à l’Institution imaginaire capitaliste. Partager la parole, la donner et la recevoir en la forme d’un cercle, nous importe plus que faire des monologues de doctes.

Pascale-Youkali Ménard, Eeyou (Eastmain, Eeyou Istchee)

Jonathan Thisselmagan Schuld, Ilnu du Pekuakami (Mashteuiatsh, Nitassinan)

Michael Paul Cleary, Ilnu du Pekuakami (Mashteuiatsh, Nitassinan)

Pierre Mouterde, Cégep de Limoilou (Québec, Canada)

Pascale Dufour, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Bernard Rioux, (Québec, Canada)

Marc Pomerleau, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Animation: Pierre Beaudet

The Great Recession and subsequent global slump have provoked a hegemonic crisis for the ruling classes in nation states throughout the world system. As states lose their legitimacy, nations within them and or oppressed by them have demanded the right to self-determination and independence. This panel will explore why and how the radical left should support these struggles in Québec, Catalonia, and Scotland.

Benoit Renaud, Québec solidaire (Gatineau, Canada)

Neil Davidson, Radical Independence Campaign (Glasgow, UK)

Eva María, International Socialist Organization (USA)

Jean-Charles PIétacho, Chef d’Ekuanitshit, nation Innue ()

Le lien entre la tradition, la culture et les mouvements de résistance autochtones

Tania Larivière, Université Laval/militante anishnabe de culture eeyou ()

Le parcours d’une nouvelle militante autochtone: expériences de la Marche de Stop oléoduc Outaouais (2016) et de La Marche des Peuples pour la Terre-Mère (2017)

Daphné-Anne Olépika Takpanie, Militante Inuk (Iqaluit, Canada)

Animation: Geneviève Beaudet

13th: Slavery, Prisons, Race and Capitalism in the US

Geert Dhondt, John Jay College, City University of New York (New York, NY, États-Unis)

The 13th amendment abolished slavery in the US, except as a punishment for a crime. This has led to an analysis of prisons today as a continuation of slavery. This presentation will first lay out the popular, theoretical, and empirical arguments used to justify this position. Then it will critique those arguments and discuss how they obscure the role of prisons and race in Neoliberal Capitalism in the US.

Two capitalist forms instituted in Mexico: prison at work and work in prison

Federico Pablo Vázquez García, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Puebla, Mexique)

The purpose of this presentation is to present the institutionalization and systematization of the prison sentence, with a sociological and juridical approach, from the revision of the Mexican Constitutions, from the 19th century to the present, taking as a conceptual basis prison in relation to work. We seek to respond what for the prison? how useful is prison? how is prison institutionalized in the Mexican Constitution? The prison is an institution. It’s a device of power to discipline the body at work, it’s a capitalist way to reproduce the social relations of production, from the workforce presented at work as a means of regeneration, readaptation and social reintegration. When the prison was born, it was a factory and the factory was a prison. Today, it reproduces the vital minimum of contemporary society and society is that prison that lives with the vital minimum derived from institutionalized labor flexibility. Attending the liberal, social and neoliberal states, prison disciplined the body of the individual, prison made it productive. Currently, individual returns to his state of freedom, but in competition and greater barbarism.

Claudia Juárez Jaimes, (Mexique)

“Being a woman in number 5” Kurdish Women Political Prisoners in the Turkish Military Prison in Diyarbakır, 1980-1983

Berivan Sarikaya, University of Toronto/OISE (Toronto, Canada)

Through the study of Kurdish women’s struggle and resistance, specifically with their incarceration in Diyarbakir Military Prison (DMP), this presentation explores the role of incarcerated women in Kurdish Movement, offering an alternative knowledge to both the male-dominated canonical approach and the feminist approach to Kurdish women’s movement. Beyond the mass participation of women in armed struggle starting in 1990s, women’s resistance in DMP between 1980 and 1983 constitutes the focus of this study which has not been yet documented. Kurdish resistance history remains incomplete and gendered without the acknowledgement of women political prisoners’ experience, since their stories and voices represent the indispensable part of transformative power of the Kurdish movement. While not aiming to reproduce scholarly knowledge of oppression and violence, this study has an emphasis on resistance, political consciousness, and transformations of self and society experienced and transmitted by Kurdish women political prisoners. Intended to critically examine prison as a site of movement building, and particularly how women political prisoners have played a key transformative role in shaping the Kurdish political movement, I use reflexive/relational method to move beyond the immediate experience, and to develop an understanding of how this experience was organized through social relations and forms of consciousness. This methodology helps to make ethical sense of the accounts I have witnessed, collected, read and analyzed. As a former political prisoner myself, my scholarly approach in this research aligns with critical Marxist-Feminist perspective. My thesis is that without tracing the experiences of Kurdish women prisoners of DMP, it is impossible to understand the contemporary dynamics of Kurdish women’s movement.

Emigdio Bernardo Simón, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (Puebla, Mexique)

Uneven Development and Contemporary Anti-Capitalism

Robert Latham, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Uneven and combined development remains crucial for understanding the continued widening and deepening of capitalism. However, the nature of the heterogeneous and uneven development of contemporary capitalism, especially since the 1970s, makes problematic the characterization of capitalist totality, as a coherent stage and as a singular, albeit uneven, combination. This complicates the successful pursuit of anti-capitalism, which now requires varied but interrelated responses at all scales and involving a range of approaches, from local community activism and non-capitalist alternatives to mass Leninist-inspired parties and an international socialist movement. Thus, a far more uneven anti-capitalism is appropriate; and a single, overarching anti-capitalist process such as Permanent Revolution may not be the only or way forward. This is not an argument for a post-Marxist horizontal heterogeneity; but rather an exploration of the reasons and possibilities for a dialectical anti-capitalism, where beneficial encounters occur across the arc of anti-capitalism, within which proletariat mobilization remains a central component. Such confluence offers one starting point for contending with the perennial duality of reform and revolution, manifest today in the either/or of an anti-capitalism of total revolution and an agonistic, fractional post-Marxist politics working to reduce oppression and hardship within capitalism.

Gramsci on the Frontier: the contest for hegemony in northwestern Pakistan, 1968-1977

Noaman Ali, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

Antonio Gramsci’s work has been put to considerable use in nuancing the Marxist analysis of state power. However, it is easy to forget that his analysis of hegemony meant to pose the strategic questions of consent and coercion for revolutionaries vying for power. In so doing, Gramsci examined the question of building a united front of different social classes and groups under the leadership of the proletariat to forge a hegemonic alliance that could disrupt and counter the alliances of ruling classes. In 1970s Pakistan, the Mazdoor Kisan Party (MKP), a Marxist-Leninist organization, faced the same question as it sought to forge a hegemonic alliance of workers and peasants. The MKP is best known for the breadth, depth and efficacy of the peasant movement it led in the 1970s in the North-West Frontier Province. Yet, the success of the movement led to a deep debate about the multi-class composition of the peasantry, contradictions between workers and peasants, and how different class interests translated into differing political interests in the specific conjuncture. Indeed, despite its incredible mobilization of peasants, the MKP was outmaneuvered by the ruling alliance embodied by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). By conceding the demands of the peasant movement, the PPP co-opted sections of the peasantry, disrupting the MKP’s leadership. The struggle over the peasantry between the MKP and the PPP raises questions about the form and content of the category of the subaltern, raising important challenges for projects of building hegemonic alliances. This presentation examines the contradictions in the MKP’s project and seeks to extract their lessons for revolutionaries seeking to pull together different constituencies into a coherent anti-capitalist project.

Everyday Encounters with the Power and the 2011 Egyptian Subalterns

Ivana Bevilacqua, SOAS – School of Oriental and African Studies (Londres, Grande-Bretagne)

This presentation investigates the key role played by the Egyptian urban subalterns in the events which have unfolded since 2011. It argues that mobilisations sparked as a result of spatialised forms of everyday interaction between popular forces and practices of government. Such everyday encounters with the power were extremely formative of political subjectivities, so that by 2011 a cultural milieu of previous experiences, external observations, success, defeat, and repression, all provided a conspicuous repertoire of collective actions. Despite claims on ‘spontaneous mobilisations’ or ‘bourgeois-democratic revolutions’ what the Uprisings have actually enabled is the emancipatory imaginary of a new self-relief and lasting order, rooted on grassroots structures of cooperation and solidarity, no-more compressed by the regime. For instance, to understand the powerful role of the youth and ultra in mobilising against governmental agencies, we should take into account the background of sentiments against the police – embodying an institution of everyday government – which triggered the symbolic attack of symbols of state authority. It was by gathering in everyday forms resistance and in public spaces that bodies congregated to reclaim ‘the common’. Although nowadays Egypt is under a worse dictatorship than before its uprising, it is too early to judge the outcome. Indeed, the revolutionary process is far from over, but it has strikingly provided a repertoire of alternative narratives, imagination, and practices, which could sustain future resistance and might still prevail in the long-term.

Welfare as Counter-Hegemony: Hamas and Hezbollah in Civil Society

Shehnoor Khurram, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Who would have thought that religion, once termed by Karl Marx the ‘opiate of the masses’, would one day characterize the most militant of class-based, anti-capitalist political movements? Islamists have succeeded where most Marxists and secular reformers have failed. Islamic demagogues, charged with resentment toward the national bourgeoisie, have prompted the most appealing, mobilizing and radicalizing movements among the masses of the poor, using religious vernacular to convey revolutionary ideals. By forcefully and effectively confronting enemies, such as imperialism, neocolonialism, and economic globalization, they also have addressed the chronic historical sense of humiliation facing Muslim societies. The argument proposed is twofold: first, it will posit that political Islam is not a spontaneous spiritual rebirth of a messianic nature concerned simply with issues of doctrine and faith. Rather, it is a counter-hegemonic force that has arisen out of the turmoil and disarray of constant political and economic crises in the post-Cold War era. I will examine Hamas and Hezbollah, arguing that these organizations use Islam as a revolutionary ideology to attack, criticize, and de-legitimize the bourgeoisie and the power structure upon which their authority and legitimacy are based. Further, these groups have been able to provide the marginalized and alienated masses with an opposition force capable of articulating their grievances and dissatisfaction with the secular regimes. I will contend that political Islam must be re-conceptualized through a historical materialist lens, as being shaped by the dialectic realities of survival and resistance within the context of the various forms of oppression that operate materially and discursively throughout the Muslim world. Second, using a Gramscian framework, it will examine how Islamist movements mobilize the masses to resist neoliberal globalization. Particularly, I will argue that the legitimacy of modern, capitalist states is founded on a social contract between the state and its citizenry. The former is responsible for fulfilling the survival needs of the latter; in return, compliance is expected from the citizens. However, globalization generates weak regimes in the Muslim world that are unable to provide the quotidian needs of its populations, causing the social contract to disintegrate. This leads to the citizens’ estrangement from the state, producing power vacuums. Islamists attain legitimacy in civil society by creating alternative avenues of political participation and communal identity, especially through their provisioning of welfare. In turn, they develop lasting loyalties that that they use to mobilize the masses to resist the various forms of oppression they face.

Les ZAD (Zones à défendre): utopies, hétérotopies et communalisme libertaire

Jerome Pelenc, Université libre de Bruxelles (Bruxelles, Belgique)

Les ZAD (Zone à défendre) font parties d’un mouvement social de résistance contre les grands projets dits « inutiles et imposés » (aéroport, ligne à grande vitesse, barrage, maxi-prison, etc.). Les ZAD se créent à travers l’occupation illégale de terrains sur lesquels sont prévus de grandes infrastructures. Il s’agit de lutter contre l’infrastructure elle-même et le monde capitaliste qu’elle représente en proposant d’autres manières de vivre. La première ZAD a été crée en France en 2009 à Notre-Dames-Des-Landes. Plusieurs se créeront ensuite. En résumé, une ZAD est un territoire où des personnes décident de se passer des institutions pour construire leurs vies et où peuvent s’expérimenter des relations humaines hors de l’argent, de la hiérarchie, de l’utilitarisme. On qualifie souvent les ZAD « d’utopies concrètes », mais tant du point de vue analytique, que stratégique, il nous paraît plus pertinent de penser les ZAD en termes d’hétérotopie. Contrairement à l’utopie (a-topos, qui n’a pas de lieu), l’hétérotopie (hétéro-topos), selon Foucault, est ce lieu « absolument autre », qui existe quelque part, ici et maintenant, à travers une utilisation différente de l’espace. Dans cet communication nous proposons d’analyser le potentiel révolutionnaire des ZAD à travers la notion d’hétérotopie. Les ZAD—ces espaces hétérotopiques—sont autant de brèches, pour reprendre le terme de John Holloway, dans le capitalisme. En bloquant directement sur le territoire les développements locaux du capital, les ZAD produisent des contre-espaces communs et alternatifs et ce tant sur le plan matériel que symbolique. L’imaginaire qui irrigue les ZAD n’est pas sans rappeler celui de la Commune de Paris de 1871 et celui du communisme libertaire formulé à la fin du 19ème siècle par les penseurs anarchistes (Kropotkine, etc.) puis mis en pratique par les anarchistes espagnols en 1936 ou plus récemment le communalisme libertaire formulé par Murray Bookchin.

Violence et contestation sociale: Le respect de la diversité des tactiques en tant que norme organisationnelle antiautoritaire.

Vincent Beaulieu, Université de Sherbrooke (Sherbrooke, Canada)

Le débat sur l’usage de la violence est omniprésent dans la contestation sociale; on le retrouve dans les multiples définitions de la désobéissance civile, et il apparait également dans les mobilisations anticapitalistes, féministes, environnementalistes, altermondialistes, de décolonisation, des droits civiques, contre les déploiements militaires, etc. Le respect de la diversité des tactiques se présente comme une alternative à ce débat et prône une solidarité dans la multiplicité des méthodes, violentes ou non. Cette stratégie est présente dans certains milieux militants, plus particulièrement dans les réseaux anti-autoritaire, en tant que norme organisationnelle visant des évènements spécifiques ou des mouvements plus larges. Le respect de la diversité des tactiques n’est pas une solution miracle au sens où cette norme ne prétend pas enrayer toutes formes de conflit aux sein des groupes contestataires; il s’agit plutôt d’une attitude visant la reconnaissance mutuelle des différents acteurs comme étant les parties essentielles d’une lutte globale vers un changement systémique. Ce sujet est au cœur des discussions concernant la convergence des fronts et constitue une forme organisationnelle de la résistance. La présentation retrace l’historique de la norme et présente les balises qui la circonscrivent dans son contexte anti-autoritaire.

The „Solidarity Academies“ Movement in Turkey: Emergent Practices of Resistance and Commoning

Esra Erdem, Alice Salomon University (Berlin, Allemagne)

This presentation reflects on the emergent „Solidarity Academies“ movement in Turkey as an unique experience of collective self-organisation and resistance by scholar-activists in the face of a massive crackdown on academic freedoms. Since early 2016, leftist students and scholars, including the signatories of a petition by the network Academics of Peace, have faced myriad forms of persecution, such as disciplinary measures by university administrations, dismissals, criminal charges, travel bans, detentions, denial of social security benefits, and hate speech in the media. In the face of this onslaught, the Academics for Peace network has developed a wide range of practices of resistance and networks of im/material solidarity. Perhaps the most impressive response, however, has been the organisation of « Solidarity Academies » in several cities. Based on interviews, the presentation shows that these alternative spaces embrace and enact critical academic thinking at a time when this is becoming virtually impossible at Turkish universities. By engaging with civil society and the public at large, they create new forms of knowledge commons all over the country. Against the onslaught of neoliberal restructuring experienced in higher education worldwide, the « Solidarity Academies » demonstrate how non-hierarchical, collective forms of self-organisation by academics can inform new emancipatory visions of university. The different concepts informing individual « Solidarity Academies », ranging from the improvised character of a street university to the formal structure of an educational cooperative, show how collective knowledge production and dissemination can constitute locally variegated acts of resistance. Challenges identified in the presentation include the financial precariousness of « Solidarity Academies », repression by state authorities, and the struggle against internalised norms of hierarchy engrained in traditional academia.

Academics for Peace in Turkey: Resisting through Solidarity Academies

Caglar Dolek, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada)

The case of the Academics for Peace in Turkey has already become an international phenomenon representing a paradigmatic example for devastating consequences of neoliberal authoritarianism in the contemporary world. Since the declaration of Peace Petition in January 2016 calling for the state to end violence against the Kurdish people, the government responded to an exercise of freedom of expression through multiple strategies of suppression, including dismissals and suspensions from duty, disciplinary and criminal investigations, travel bans, police interrogations, detentions, imprisonment, mobbing, and intimidationUnder these circumstances, the dissident academics in Turkey have begun to engage in novel practices of academic production to nourish alternative forms of praxis for the sake of collective processes of knowledge production for and with people. Exemplified with over a dozen of solidarity academies, street academics and course cooperatives, these alternative practices not only represent a significant form of resistance against the repressive state strategies, but also present new potentialities for alternative and collective organization of public knowledge through emancipatory practices. Therefore, these particular experiences have much to offer as an alternative model that poses a fundamental question against the neoliberal academia. In this presentation, we aim to open a discussion on the experience of solidarity academies in Turkey with a quest to think about alternative, collective and progressive forms of knowledge production. We do think that this quest is of urgent importance within the context of deepening crises of global capitalism, which has resurfaced inherently violent and repressive nature of the capitalist states across the globe. Therefore, the case of Turkey does not constitute a narrow example from a peripheral setting, but may offer a broader alternative for emancipatory politics of the left today.

Emek Durmusoglu, INRS (Montréal, Canada)

Une perspective rurale du municipale comme espace de transformation politique

Mathieu Labelle, Centre de recherche sur les politiques et le développement social de l’Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Pour cette présentation, je mobiliserais les conclusions de mon mémoire de maîtrise afin de discuter de la perspective d’une radicalisation de la démocratie locale en contexte rural. Formellement, ce mémoire analyse la manière dont une autonomie locale plus ou moins prononcée des collectivités rurales influence les capacités de développement de leurs réseaux d’actions publiques. À l’origine, ce projet de recherche a émané de réflexions à propos de municipalisme libertaire, de communalisme et autres autogouvernances locales, mais aussi à propos des enjeux de diffusion des savoirs et de l’efficacité de l’action publique démocratique. La volonté ultime, et politique, de la recherche était de « tester » certaines conditions de possibilité d’une transition post-capitaliste et post-étatiste par une radicalisation de la démocratie municipale, non pas dans les grands centres urbains, mais au sein de ce que l’on conçoit souvent comme le terreau des manifestations conservatrices. La démarche s’est avérée résolument (auto-)critique dans la mesure où elle devait mettre à l’épreuve plusieurs convictions, si l’on admet que les tendances anarchisantes de la gouvernance posent des enjeux humains fondamentaux, tant du point de vue de la relation au pouvoir (ou à la puissance) que pour l’efficacité de l’activité productive et d’une allocation équitable des ressources. De même, afin d’illustrer le propos et pour lancer la discussion sur les formes d’engagement et leurs limites, je terminerais la présentation en utilisant en exemples les deux tendances de mon engagement politique. L’une d’elles est une volonté de transformation sociale entre autres par la formation d’une association communautaire et la mise en place de projets collectifs. L’autre se situe au niveau de recherches pour Québec solidaire sur une fiscalité municipale autonome et équitable ainsi que sur les conditions d’un virage délibératif et participatif de la démocratie locale.

Transition pour des villes neutres en carbone: Le travail institutionnel des mouvements sociaux pour la transformation urbaine

Joseph EL-Khoury, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Les villes occupent une position centrale et essentielles à la mise en actions des objectifs de l’Accord de Paris COP21 (Bulkeley, 2015), qui fixe l’objectif d’un monde neutre en carbone d’ici 2050 (Unfccc, 2015) . Le projet est une recherche participative au sein de la Coalition Climat Montréal , une organisation de la société civile regroupant plus de soixante groupes et communautés. Basé sur la théorie des Sustainability Transitions , le projet de recherche consiste à identifier qui sont les acteurs impliqués dans la transition écologique à Montréal, quelles sont les caractéristiques de leurs relations de pouvoir multi-acteurs, comment ces relations de pouvoir évoluent, et comment le pouvoir et les acteurs sont encadrés et contestés à de nombreux niveaux de logiques institutionnelles (Avellino Et Wittmayer, 2016). Le défis est de mieux comprendre les tensions entre gouvernance démocratique et les changements radicaux jugées nécessaires à la transition, ou comment les nouveaux comportements sociaux et les nouvelles politiques luttent et rivalisent avec les « régimes » sociotechniques dominants qui existent déjà (Stirling, 2011). Le véritable potentiel des villes face aux changements climatiques n’est pas de se conformer aux cadres et aux modes de fonctionnement existants au sein des institutions internationales de la politique climatique, mais d’éclairer comment d’autres voies sont possibles (Bulkeley, 2015).Le visé appliqué du projet de recherche est de contribuer à éclairer la pratique des initiatives citoyennes de transition à Montréal, dans le but de les rendre plus effectives (Markard, Raven et Truffer, 2012).

Dystopian urban development in Central Chile and emergence of resistances

Diego Polanco, Univeristy of Massachusets, Amherst (Amherst, MA, États-Unis)

Socio-environmental conflicts in Chile have emerged systematically due natural resource industrialization during the post-dictatorship period (1990 onwards). Displacement of communities in the big-north pushed by the mining industry, red tide produced by the salmon industry in the south, and serious health issues for the poor because massive pollution produced by the energy sector in several cities of the country. However, the emergence of socio-environmental conflicts initiated by real estate capital is a rare phenomenon. Following Harvey´s theorization of the urban process, I analyze the extended urbanization of Chile’s metropolitan area and socio-environmental consequences of second ownerships in the central coast edge as a mechanism of accumulation by dispossession, considering both economic and ideological aspects. I argue that second ownership projected as urban utopias – amenities of the urban in a natural setting – are ideological artifacts hiding dystopian developments for the environment, national archaeological heritage and local communities. From this theoretical departure, I analyze the emergence and strategies, of « Protege Los Molles » a social movement aiming to protect a natural common of national relevance which has been successful so far in its task. This conflict shows that local communities can play an important part in national politics in order to resist and maybe fulfill aims locally but not for broader social change. However, to bring to the fore successful local practices of resistance allow us to have a bigger toolkit to mobilize, resist and organize.

Bringing Vision into Reality: Exploring how the Right to the City is adjudicated in Toronto

Jon Careless, York University (Toronto, Canada)

The great French Marxist Philosopher Henri Lefebvre is often credited with popularizing the notion of ‘the right to the city’ (RTTC), that is the right to determine the course of neighborhood change. Lefebvre himself articulated this right as possessing a two-sided objective, at once a cry and a demand. The former denotes the right to acquire the necessities of life: food, water, shelter and the freedom to think and express oneself creatively and with joy. The latter is a demand for a sense of connection that is lost in the present but that can be re-attained in the future. The connection is found when the rural communal way of living becomes bonded with the individual self-expression of the city inhabitant. This presentation will examine the struggle over the RTTC within Toronto amongst various social forces, including community organizers, others associated with the interests of the capitalist class, civil society generally, and the state itself which acts as a mediating force that helps adjudicate this right between interested parties. Specifically, I will be examining how the RTTC becomes politicized, that is, engaged with the state. It is only by either engaging with a state that is cooperative or by working towards dissolving an obstructive state that community organizers can realize alternative visions for urban living that are anti-capitalist in orientation. One may be inclined to assume the state tends to adjudicate the RTTC in favor of the capitalist class wherein resources are monopolized. What I’m interested in looking at, though, are those instances where the state has helped realize counter-hegemonic interests associated with community organizers. If such instances can be identified, I will investigate whether the objectives of these activists remain subject to being compromised by the state. This presentation is intended to contribute to my eventual dissertation.

Commoning property in the City: Building power in Point St. Charles

Anna Kruzynski, Concordia University (Montréal, Canada)

Gentrification is today recognized as a global force affecting urban communities across the world. As neoliberal and urban revitalization policies and practices contribute to increased capital flows, less privileged populations are displaced. At the heart this phenomenon is struggle around property. The analysis herein, following J.K. Gibson-Graham, will demonstrate how a non-capitalocentric framing of property can help open up the horizon of post-capitalist possibilities for fundamental social change. It will do so by bringing to light the existence of a diversity of commons-communities in Point St. Charles who are engaged in the practice of commoning of different types of property. Point St. Charles, a post-industrial, traditionally working-class neighbourhood of Montreal, renowned as a bastion of strength, solidarity and resistance, has managed to slow down the forces of gentrification in ways that adjacent neighbourhoods have not. Well-known, for example, is the successful campaign run by grassroots community organisations in 2006 to stop the plans of a capitalist developer to move the Montreal Casino to Point St. Charles, along with a large-scale international conference center. This presentation proposes to explain this David-and-Goliath phenomenon as resulting, at least in part, from the direct actions of contemporary commons-communities embedded in historical commons. Using three examples of contemporary commons – Le Jardin de la liberté (garden of liberty), a community mural and Building 7 – it’ll be shown how the associated commons-communities are constantly articulating assemblages, or, in other words, bringing into their midst humans and non-human elements that render them more durable, thereby generating power that is sustained over time. Will also be discussed the similarities, differences and complexities of commoning different types of property; in this case a city-owned plot of land, a stock-corporation-owned viaduct and a privately-owned industrial building who’s ownership was transferred to a non-profit organisation after many years of struggle by grassroots organisations

Transition Towns: A Global Social Movement for Transition Takes Root in Canada – Results of a pan-Canadian research study

Blake Poland, University of Toronto (Dalla Lana School of Public Health) (Toronto, Canada)

North America is entering a period of significant change characterized by a changing climate, mounting energy insecurity, unprecedented ecosystem degradation, and widening socioeconomic inequalities. These challenges pose significant concerns for the organization of social life, which some environmental/social movements have taken on with gusto. ‘Transition Towns’ are one such movement that seeks to build community resilience through the re-localization of basic needs while emphasizing opportunities for greater social connectedness and celebration. This place-based approach to sustainability has the potential to address trans-boundary environmental challenges in the context of local assets and opportunities. Our presentation delivers findings from a mixed-methods investigation of the emergence of the Transition movement in Canada. The Transition Emerging Study (TES) employed a ‘practice theory’ perspective to produce a contextualized account of the Transition movement while describing the conditions that support and normalize locally grounded, sustainable and equitable social relations. Specifically, we will: [1] introduce the Transition model, the rationale behind our study, and the study’s theory and methods; and [2] present findings from interviews with movement founders and e-surveys with movement participants, focusing on movement practices and equity considerations. In addition, a local Transition Initiative co-founder will share a local Montreal-area example of movement work in progress, and offer reactions to the research, thereby promoting dialogue between research and practice. By integrating the experiences of our interdisciplinary research team with the lived experience of Transition, we therefore explore how moving beyond disciplinary and social boundaries can offer insight into the power of building resilience through social movements.

With the majority of humanity now living in cities, and 600 urban centres generating 60% of global GDP, cities are pivotal in the modern world. And while national electoral politics tend to be dispiriting, with limited possibility for change, cities and towns are increasingly at the forefront of counter-hegemonic struggles. Solidarity cities, local elections of socialist councillors, and city-based climate justice organizing have made the municipality the key actor of progressive victories in North America since the Trump election. Montreal has long been a hotbed of this kind of creative municipalist activism. From self-organized community clinics, to institutionalized childcare collectives, solidarity city organizing, grassroots democratic student federations, dual-power strategies like neighborhood-level confederation of radical groups resisting gentrification, and the largest cooperative housing and community garden system in North America, Montreal’s municipalist movement represents a model for innovative and inspiring 21st-century activism. With the 2017 victory of Projét Montréal, a progressive municipalist party, new questions arise around how the city’s radical movements interact with them, and what opportunities and challenges this new development presents. The world has been inspired by audacious municipalist models such as of Barcelona en Comú, the global Right to the City movement, Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi, and even democratic confederalism in Kurdish-majority Rojava among many other examples. Can Montreal follow in their footsteps? In this panel discussion, involving seasoned Montreal municipalist activists and an elected official with Projet Montreal, we describe the Montreal municipalist experience, outline some of the theoretical background that can help us understand the new municipalist movements around the world, and discuss what the Projét Montréal victory can mean for radical movements in Montréal going forward. We will also use the space to invite representatives of other municipalist movements and initiate discussion on the potential of radical municipalism throughout North America. / Avec la majorité de l’humanité vivant dans les villes et avec seulement 600 centres urbains générant 60% du PIB global, la crucialité des villes dans le monde moderne est évidente. Tandis que les politiques électorales nationales ont tendance à être décourageantes, offrant peu de possibilités de changements, les villes et leurs quartiers sont de plus en plus au front de la lutte contre-hégémonique. Les villes solidaires, les élections locales de conseillers socialistes et les organisations urbaines pour la justice climatique ont fait de la municipalité une actrice clef des victoires progressistes en Amérique depuis l’élection de Trump. Montréal est depuis longtemps un bastion de ce type d’activisme municipaliste. Des cliniques communautaires autogérées aux institutions collectives de service de garde en passant par les organisations pour une ville solidaire et les confédérations étudiantes démocratiques, les stratégies de double pouvoir telles que les groupes radicaux de résistance contre l’embourgeoisement, le plus grand système coopératif d’habitation et de jardins communautaire en Amérique du Nord, le mouvement municipaliste de Montréal représente un modèle d’activisme innovateur, inspirant du 21ieme siècle.En 2017, avec la victoire de Projet Montréal, un parti municipal à aspiration progressiste, de nouvelles questions se sont posées à propos des interactions entre la mairie et les mouvements municipalistes de la ville, des opportunités et des défis que les nouveaux développements représentent. Le monde entier a été inspiré par des modèles municipalistes audacieux tels que Barcelona en Comú, le mouvement global du droit à la ville, Coopération Jackson à Jackson, Mississipi et le Confédéralisme Démocratique à Rojava. Les mouvements municipaux de Montréal pourront-ils s’inscrire à cette liste de mouvements révolutionnaires? À cette table-ronde, à laquelle participeront des activistes municipalistes d’expériences et un.e élu.e officiel.le de Projet Montréal, nous décrirons l’expérience municipaliste Montréalaise et ferons un survol de certaines notions théoriques qui pourront nous aider à comprendre les nouveaux mouvements municipalistes à travers le monde et les impact possibles que pourrait avoir la victoire de Projet Montréal pour les mouvements radicaux de Montréal. Nous utiliserons également cet espace pour inviter des représentants d’autres mouvements municipalistes et initier une discussion à propos du potentiel du municipalisme libertaire en Amérique du Nord.

Aaron Vansintjan, Réseau d’action municipale (Montréal, Canada)

Craig Sauvé, Projet Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Donald Cuccioletta, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Marie Blais, UQAM (Montréal, Canada)

Animation: Clara-Swan Kennedy

Les syndicats au Québec et partout dans le monde font face à de grands défis. Partout, les politiques dites « austéritaires » imposent des carcans restrictifs. La « réorganisation » des services publics fragilise les conditions de travail (travail à temps partiel, sur appel, temps supplémentaire obligatoire, etc.) des travailleuses et des travailleurs. Alors qu’on privilégie quelques acteurs, comme les médecins et les hauts-dirigeants, nos gouvernements sabrent dans les acquis de la grande masse des gens qui sont pourtant l’épine dorsale du secteur public. Entre-temps, les faiseurs d’opinion, médias et partis de droite en tête, reproduisent un discours hostile, contre les « privilégié-es » du secteur public et les organisations syndicales. Or, les mouvements populaires de soutien aux services publics sont de plus en plus présents, que ce soit pour les services de santé ou de l’éducation.La récente vague de protestation des professionnelles en soins leur a permis de dénoncer leurs conditions de travail insupportables sur la place publique. Mais surtout, leur mobilisation a permis aux syndicats de la FIQ d’établir un rapport de force avec le gouvernement et les employeurs du réseau public de santé pour faire diminuer le temps supplémentaire obligatoire et instaurer des ratios professionnelles en soins/patients sécuritaires. La mobilisation du personnel et des usagers des CPE, à la fois pour imposer une convention qui a de l’allure et également pour préserver l’existence même des CPE, est un autre exemple illustrant des pistes prometteuses. Ici et là, il y a de « petites » batailles qui ne sont pas si petites que cela pour résister, s’organiser, améliorer les prestations et démocratiser les lieux de travail.Parallèlement, des syndicats s’activent pour promouvoir une « grande transition », au-delà d’un système hiérarchique et de plus en plus obsolète qui ne cesse de privatiser, de marchandiser et de creuser les écarts sociaux. Cette « grande transition » sera éventuellement construite autour d’un secteur public agissant comme pivot d’une société plus juste et équitable.

Nancy Bédard, Présidente de la Fédération interprofessionnelle de la santé ()

Dominique Daigneault, Conseil Central CSN (Montréal, Canada)

Sébastien Robert, Syndicaliste et chargé de cours (Beloeil, Canada)

Animation: Pierre Beaudet

Building Power Requires Understanding How to Analyze Power Structures, Our and the OppositionsGood strategy depends on good power structure analysis. In this session, McAlevey will introduce a method of power structure analysis she’s been using successfully in big and small campaigns for over 30 years. This is not a skills session, that would take several days, but it is an overview and introduction of the core concepts and methods.

Jane McAlevey, Consultante syndicale (États-Unis)

Thomas Collombat, Université du Québec en Outaouais (Hull, Canada)

Manon Perron, Centrale des Syndicats Nationaux (CSN) (Montréal, Canada)

Amélie N’Guyen, Centre international de solidarité ouvrière (CISO) (Montréal, Canada)

Christophe Aguiton, Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (Paris, France)

Katherine Nastovski, McMaster University (Hamilton, ON, Canada)

Animation: Pierre Beaudet

Governments and bosses across North America continue their offensive against unions, compelling them to adopt concessionary contracts or busting them. The old model of business unionism, in which union leaders hoped to achieve a partnership with their government and private sector bosses in the interests of their members, has utterly failed to defend let alone revive the union movement. An alternative would be to revive the radical tradition of rank-and-file unionism to defend their members, fight for better contracts, and turn unions into leading organizations of a broader class struggle for all those oppressed and exploited. How to confront the labor bureaucracy to achieve this? What are the successful examples of the rank and file strategy? What is the importance and limits of a combative and broad union movement in a strategy for global radical social changes?

Alain Savard, Lutte Commune (Montréal, Canada)

Charlie Post, City University of New York (New York, USA)

Amy Muldoon, Socialist Worker (New York, USA)

Suzanne MacNeil, Halifax-Darmouth and District Labour Council (Halifax, Canada)

Changing Structures, Structuring Change: The Rise of Social Justice Unionism in the Milwaukee Teachers’ Union

Eleni Schirmer, UW-Madison (Madison, USA)

In the past decade, swelling economic crises have compressed public institutions with crushing force, prompting intense debate about their value. This conflict was acutely dramatized in Wisconsin in 2011, when the Legislature imposed startlingly severe limits on the public sector unions. These changes, known as Act 10, particularly affected public education workers – who comprise over sixty percent of the state’s public-sector employees – and public education institutions: they enabled the largest cuts to public education funding in Wisconsin history and radically expanded the private school choice movement. What’s more, Act 10 legitimized a long-building ideological narrative that asserts that organized public workers, especially educators, are responsible for the state’s economic difficulties. Following Wisconsin’s Act 10, other states have unfurled similar laws and a pending U.S. Supreme Court case threatens to turn Wisconsin- style labor restrictions into national law. As Wisconsin’s labor policy may become the nation’s, this paper examines how the state’s largest union, Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, managed not only to survive, but to become an unexpected leader in social movements to fortify public education, reversing its previous legacy of inactivity. Thus, this research explores the unsteady role of the Milwaukee teachers’ union in the city’s shifting political economy. This paper examines two dimensions. First, I look historically at MTEA’s recalcitrant responses to the budding social movements in the mid 1960s and 1970s, especially Milwaukee’s civil rights movements and the statewide labor movement, to examine how the union’s actions contributed to the subsequent movement for “school choice” that emerged in the 1990s in Milwaukee Milwaukee’s voucher program –the nation’s first – was catalyzed by Milwaukee’s civil rights actors, and has since merged with broader anti-labor movements. Second, I look at contemporary struggles of MTEA to resist further educational privatization and racial segregation, mobilizing as a social justice union. This research reframes the role of public sector unions in an increasingly privatized economy.

Animation: Todd Gordon

Syndicalisme des Mouvements Sociaux et Anti-Systémisme: Leçons du Syndicalisme Anti-Apartheid Sud-Africain

Chrislain Eric Kenfack, York University (Toronto, Canada)

L’une des plus grandes réussites du capitalisme, malheureuseument, est d’avoir pu créer des fractures profondes: Fracture entre l’homme et la nature; fracture entre les travailleurs, les processus de production et la gestion des retombés de leur production; fracture entre les travailleurs et leurs commaunautés entre autres. Ces fractures, faut-il le noter, ont le mérite de permettre au capital de mieux exploiter chacune de ses victimes isolément, et de continuer, sans obstacles majeures, sa marche socio-environementalement destructive d’accumulation capitaliste. De nos jours, à cause de cela, la société semble profondément convaincue de deux choses: 1) Le système capitaliste est invincible; 2) Il n’existe pas d’alternatives fiables à un tel système destructeur. Face à une telle situation, il est plus que importanmt de compter sur les forces exogènes et endogènes capables de lutter contre le capital de façon durable et efficace. Parmi ces forces, nous avons surtout les travailleurs dont la contribution dans les cycles d’exploitation, production et distribution est fondamental pour la survie du capital et du capitalisme. Autrement dit, le capitalisme ne sera jamais vaincu sans l’action des travailleurs et surtout des syndicats. D’où l’urgence d’une re-fondation du syndicalisme pour le rendre plus inclusif d’autres mouvements/reclammations sociaux, environementaux et communautaires anti-capitalistes. Des exemples venant de certains pays du Sud global comme le Brésil, les Philippines, la Corée du Sud et l’Afrique du Sud entre autres sont édifiants et peuvent servir de point de départ pour la renaissance du syndicalisme. ainsi, situé dans le cadre global des luttes anti-hémoniques contre le capitalisme, et en tant que mouvement social et résistance par le bas, cette communication s’inspirera spécifiquement du rôle qu’a joué le syndicalisme des mouvements sociaux Sud Africain avec une convergence des différents fronts et secteurs dans la chutte de l’apartheid, pour postuler les bases d’une refondation du syndicalisme aujourd’hui.

Solidarity and Conflict in the Cream City: The dynamics of militant interracial unionism in Milwaukee

Michael Billeaux, University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI, États-Unis)

This talk is about the dynamics of militant interracial unionism from the Great Depression to the Civil Rights era. On a more mournful note it is about the harrowing defeat for the project of interracial class formation suffered in this period, through the lens of one urban theater of class conflict in the United States. During the Great Depression, the intensification of class struggle and the growing influence of left-wing politics established pockets of thoroughgoing interracial unionism in Milwaukee, most visibly and earliest in the ILA 815. The opening up of more industrial employment opportunities for Blacks during and immediately after the war would present more opportunities for the emergence of interracial unionism. Bringing four other local unions into comparison – UAW 248, UE 1111, USW 1173, and DALU 19806 – I account for the differences in racial dynamics across these locals based on the characteristics of the employers, the respective union structures, and the internal factional battles within the unions; the latter, of course, are closely tied to ‘external’ factors, affected by the broader political ecology of the Milwaukee scene. I then track the decline of interracial unionism in the city as more conservative political tendencies within the labor movement as well as organized capitalists marginalized left-wing tendencies and whittled away rank-and-file shop floor power. Into the 1950s and early 60s, I trace the small but significant organizations keeping the working-class struggle against racism alive until the Civil Rights Movement finally came to Milwaukee.

Resistance to Revolution: Lessons from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers for 21st Century Transformation

Walda Katz-Fishman, Howard University, Project South (Washington, DC, États-Unis)

We analyze race, class, and black labor within the current political moment. The whole world is in transition and embodies an irreversible capitalist crisis, intensifying state violence, white supremacy, xenophobia, patriarchy, ecocide, political polarity, and struggle from below. The 2017 Trump presidency ushered in an intensification of the polarization of wealth and poverty, democracy for billionaire capitalists, and developing fascism for the masses. Forces of resistance, and revolution are rising up. Black workers at the point of production in the 1960s are today at the point of dispossession, state violence, and ecological crisis. They are a conscious and powerful force within today’s multiracial, multinational, multigendered class struggle for humanity and the planet.Through video from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) media and education project, we share lessons for a new generation of movement actors rooted in decades of political practice and theoretical study of former members of the LRBW in the Revolutionary Union Movement organizations (RUMs) in the Detroit plants for auto and related industries and their communities, from 1968 to 1970. Their lives and practice – many still engaged in class struggle – provide a focus on black workers in relation to shifts in capitalist production, the state, and the revolutionary process (www.revolutionaryblackworkers.org). A critical overarching lesson is “it’s easy to be a revolutionary in revolutionary times, but it takes theory to be a revolutionary in ebb times.” An essential question is how much power will labor have when labor is in competition with robots? Today a new class created by labor replacing technology is developing outside of capitalist class relations that requires the abolition of private property and reorganization of society. It’s imperative that today’s movement develop a vision and strategy, including theoretical education, to inform political practice in relation to the revolutionary process in the 21st century.

Jerome Scott, Project South: Institute for the Elimination of Poverty & Genocide (États-Unis)

The ‘capital as power’ approach (CasP) offers a radical alternative to both liberal and Marxist political economies. In this approach, capital is viewed not as a productive economic entity, but as the central power institution of capitalist society at large, while capitalism as a whole is seen not as mode of production and consumption, but as a mode of power. The presentation highlights the main features of CasP, contrasts it with liberalism and Marxism, and outlines some of its key findings and research programs.

Jonathan Nitzan, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Shimshon Bichler, (Israel)

Insane forms’: Essence, appearance, and the fetishes of interest-bearing capital

Peter Braun, University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada)

This presentation examines the connection between Marx’s theory of fetishism and his theory of interest-bearing capital. Although fetishism occupies an important place in the history of marxist thought, it is only recently that commentators have begun to examine the role that this concept plays in the second and third volumes of Capital. This presentation builds on some of this more recent work. I argue that Marx’s theory of fetishism is rooted in the distinction that he draws between essence and appearance, or the whole and its parts. In developing this argument, I appeal to an analogy that Marx deploys in ‘Wage Labour and Capital’: although it appears that the sun moves around the earth, it is of course the reverse that is true. Crucially, this inverted appearance is a product of our particular standpoint within the solar system. From our earthly perspective, there is no other way in which these planetary movements can appear. I argue that the same principle is at work in Marx’s discussion of productive profit, commercial profit, interest and rent. Strange ideas about accumulation are promoted when that process is seen from the standpoint associated with these different fractions of capital. I develop this argument by examining the standpoint of interest-bearing capital. It is the standpoint that the lender occupies within the overall accumulation process, I argue, that encourages them to think of money as something that grows automatically and of its own accord. I conclude this presentation by examining the works of some mainstream economists and social theorists in the period leading up to the 2007-’08 financial crisis. I show that, like the ‘vulgar political economists’ that Marx critiqued in Capital, these authors are beholden to many of the same fetish ideas that are promoted from the standpoint of interest-bearing capital.

Transcendental materialism: philosophical foundations for Capital

Gabrielle Magro, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Value, its detractors say, is not an empirical concept; it is, therefore, metaphysical. I concur that value is not an empirical concept, but I contend that it is not thereby metaphysical, for to say so much would presume an empiricist theory of knowledge, which Marx railed against at every turn. Marx held that capitalism has a structure, a logic—the embryonic form of which is value. Value articulates the relation between theory and practice at the fundamental, i.e. epistemological, level. It is in terms of value that we must understand capitalism systemically, and how it is to be overcome (if, indeed, at all). Marx was not an empiricist, but neither was he a dogmatic rationalist. The subtitle of Capital is A Critique of Political Economy. It is, most fundamentally, a critique of the labor theory of value of the classical political economists (CPE). Marx’s critique of the CPE, I contend, is akin to Kant’s critique of the dogmatic rationalists in his Critique of Pure Reason. Kant identifies metaphysics at the level of form, not content, and the essence of his contention against the dogmatic metaphysicians is that they make illegitimate use of the categories. Like the rationalists, Kant himself holds the categories as constitutive of knowledge, but only when used legitimately. Kant is a critical (and not a dogmatic) rationalist. The categories are transcendental, and have rules for legitimate usage: this is, to me, the essence of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. It is my conviction that Marx’s category of value, which is the fundamental category of Marx’s Capital, ought to be understood as a transcendental category in a very precise Kantian sense, and his fundamental critical claim against the CPE can productively be construed as an illegitimate use of this form. In this paper, I present the reading of Kant which furnishes the Kantian sense intended. The position tentatively outlined can be called transcendental materialism, which ought to be regarded as a radicalization of Kant, and it is my conviction that it is the necessary philosophical foundation of Capital.

Marx’s Exploitation Theory and the Principle of Self-Ownership: A Critique of G. A. Cohen.

Satoshi Matsui, Senshu University (Tokyo, Japon)

The exploitation theory occupies a central position in Marx’s theoretical system. Gerald A. Cohen, however, found that a bourgeois principle of justice lurks in Marx’s exploitation theory, and argued that Marxists should reject this principle. Why should Marxists accept the self-ownership principle in the exploitation theory, even though they deny it in the alienation theory? According to historical materialism, bourgeois consciousness and institutions correspond to the capitalist economy. Marxists who criticize capitalist society have bourgeois consciousness and act in this system. Thus, criticism and opposition to the exploitation must be based on the bourgeois principle of self-ownership. Cohen denies the self-ownership principle that exists in Marx’s exploitation theory, because if this principle is approved, inequality must then arise due to differences in internal assets as talents. Cohen’s greatest concern in the exploitation theory is radicalization of egalitarianism. He considers it impossible to overcome the circumstances of justice and seeks a society in which people’s rights are equally respected. Although Marx uses an idea of equality in the exploitation theory, the communism he pursues is not a society where external assets are equally distributed, but the one where they are socialized. Cohen rejects only the self-ownership principle as bourgeois, trying to radicalize egalitarian justice. In the end, however, he complies with the bourgeois framework because he attempts to observe egalitarian justice. Marx’s theory of exploitation presupposes both the self-ownership principle and egalitarian justice, but the communism that he envisions is a society that can overcome both of them. Marxist theory of exploitation should be bourgeois because it is based on historical materialism. This gradualist way of internally criticizing capitalism makes it possible to achieve the radical goal of overcoming the circumstances of justice.

This panel will offer an introductory overview of political Marxism or Capital-centric Marxism. It will present the emergence of political Marxism in relation to the original contribution of Brenner and Wood to the debate on the transition to capitalism. It will also underline the differences between this approach and other forms of Marxism and will discuss how Capital-centric Marxism has informed a renewed conception of historical materialism. Much of the panel will also be dedicated to exploring how, in spite of common assertions of the contrary, political Marxism can offer a promising framework to study the co-constitution of capitalist exploitation and of different forms of domination and oppression. We will discuss how this framework can help us to understand how the dynamics of capitalism produce and reproduce race as an ideological and social category. Finally, we will present how political Marxism can be critically used as a point of departure to analyse social reproduction and gender oppression under capitalism.

Xavier Lafrance, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Charles Post, City University of New York (New York, USA)

Nicole Leach, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Envisioning the Transcendence of Capitalist Value Production

Peter Hudis, Oakton Community College (Des Plaines, IL, États-Unis)

One of the most critical, if under-theorized, dimensions of developing a viable concept of a post-capitalist society concerns the necessity of breaking from the capitalist law of value. The drive to augment value and surplus value as ends-in-themselves is clearly a defining feature of contemporary society, as can be seen from its dramatic impact on social relations, cultural formations, and our relationship with nature. What is far less clear, however, are the conditions for the possibility of transcending value production. This is due, at least in part, to the failure of twentieth century revolutions and social movements to effectively challenge and uproot value production. Although many studies have emerged in recent years that explore the contours of a possible post-capitalist society, the specific social relations and formations that are needed to overcome the subsumption of human relations by the drive to augment value is often unaddressed. This presentation will seek to challenge such an approach by exploring how a re-examination of Marx’s critique of political economy reveals both the conditions that make value production possible and the form of social relations that would represent its supersession. Taking off from my book Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism, I will show that Marx’s critique of the logic of capital—as well as his conception of its abolition in a socialist or communist society—extends much further than simply specifying the abolition of private property and “anarchic” exchange relations. Instead, Marx pinpoints a specific modality of time—the dominance of abstract universal law time—as central to the logic of capital, and its replacement by an alternative mode of time-determination as central to any effective exist from capitalism. By taking off from his insights on these issues in light of present-day realities, we can make needed progress, in developing a viable alternative to capitalism.

Conceptualizing the Future: Marx’s Value Theory and the Debate on Markets and Planning

Jason Schulman, Lehman College, City University of New York (New York, NY, États-Unis)

Marx’s writings, particularly “Critique of the Gotha Program,” posit a vision of socialist production and distribution in which abstract labor – the homogenization of labor-power – has been overcome, and (initially) mass-produced items are “priced” via computation of the labor-time embodied in each product, with remuneration via labor-tokens such that one hour of actual labor is exchanged for items produced in the same amount of time. But to implement Marx’s scheme today would incentivize increased individual labor time (problematic, given endemic unemployment, and antithetical to full human self-development) and because in this sense it mimics the capitalist work incentive it would drive a tendency to ecologically-harmful “growth.” Yet an alternative to capitalism remains necessary given the system’s inevitable propensity towards crisis due to the tendency of the rate to fall as capital investment grows more quickly than the only source of value for the capitalist system as a whole – labor – as well as its role in creating an accelerating global warming crisis which will likely lead to the breakdown of the system itself and certain death for many the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. This presentation will discuss the visions of socialist production – of democratic planning – which have been put forth by various authors as alternatives to capitalism and so-called market socialism, which cannot work because it rests on the illusion that the functionality of market forces can be separated from their alienating and derationalizing qualities. It will then make an assessment of these suggestions for the future society. [3.2. Creative Utopias for the 21st Century]

La valeur chez Marx : entre substance et médiation

Éric N. Duhaime, Université du Québec à Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Si la valeur constitue, aux yeux de Marx lui-même, un des concepts les plus névralgiques du premier livre du Capital, la signification et le statut qui lui sont propres peuvent toutefois paraître ambigus. Définie par Marx comme « temps de travail socialement nécessaire », plusieurs ont interprété la valeur comme étant une « substance », soit comme une pure dépense d’énergie vitale, alors que d’autres ont plutôt insisté sur le rôle qu’elle joue en tant que « médiation », soit comme catégorie effective qui encadre et régule les pratiques sociales. Prenant position pour la seconde interprétation, nous chercherons à montrer que la valeur relève pour Marx d’un quadruple procès d’abstraction. En ce sens, la valeur constitue une catégorie abstraite, laquelle renvoie précisément à cette idée de « dépense » d’énergie comme travail indifférencié, épuré de tout contenu et de toute dimension qualitative, et donc réduit à sa plus simple expression. Cela dit, la valeur n’en demeure pas moins une catégorie qui comporte pour Marx une « validité sociale » et qui, à ce titre, encadre et régule les pratiques sociales d’échange et de production, agissant ainsi comme une médiation sociale. C’est donc à l’éclaircissement du statut ambigu du concept de valeur chez Marx que sera consacrée notre communication.

The current conjuncture offers the radical left new opportunities but also poses serious challenges. We face, on the one hand, the ongoing global crisis of capitalism, low-levels of working-class self-organization, and the electoral successes of right-wing populism and the growth of fascism. On the other hand, we have also witnessed the popularity of the likes of Corbyn, Sanders and Mélenchon in the electoral realm, an openness to socialism amongst new generations of activists, and the growth organizations of the socialist left. This session will address the state of global capitalism a decade removed from the financial crash, the nature and character of the right’s response to the crisis, and key tasks for organized socialists as we seek to rebuild our forces and offer a liberatory vision for the planet’s future.

Safa Chebbi, Alternatives (Montréal, Canada)

David McNally, York University, Toronto New Socialists (Toronto, Canada)

Ella Mahony, Democratic Socialists of America (New York, USA)

Ashley Smith, International Socialist Organization (Burlington, USA)

Animation: Todd Gordon

Catalonia vs. the Spanish State: What lessons for socialists in Quebec and Canada?

Richard Fidler, CAP – Nouveaux Cahiers du Socialisme (Ottawa, Canada)

All social revolutions in the 20th century were national in form; the successful ones — Russia (1917), China (1940), Vietnam and Yugoslavia (1945), and Cuba (1959) — managed to unite the majority of the politically active population around a strategy for national emancipation that combined the struggle against national and colonial oppression with a program aimed at ending capitalist exploitation. Today the territorial integrity and internal stability of some major imperialist powers are being challenged by national and indigenous minorities within the state mobilizing in opposition to central state structures and policies that deny them recognition as nations and limit their right to self-determination. However, these struggles are not, in most cases, led by parties with an anticapitalist program and strategy.The Catalan people’s staunch resistance to the Spanish state’s current attempt to suppress their long-standing movement for national autonomy or independence is being watched closely by Québécois seeking similar objectives in opposition to the undemocratic structure and institutions of the Canadian state.What lessons can socialists in Quebec — and Canada — learn from the epic confrontation in Catalonia and the Spanish state, where a relatively strong socialist historical legacy informs the thinking of some of the foremost activists in the Catalan national movement?

Penser un indépendantisme émancipateur

Eric Martin, Cégep Édouard-Montpetit (Longueuil, Canada)

Loin d’être dépassée, l’idée de souveraineté est de retour à l’avant-scène. Mais plutôt que d’abandonner ce « retour » de la nation aux mains des populismes de droite, il est grand temps de réarticuler question sociale et question nationale dans une perspective émancipatrice. En revisitant les écrits des Aquin, Vadeboncoeur, Dumont, Rioux, du Front de libération des femmes et de Parti pris, réactualiser le slogan des années 1960-1970 «Socialisme et indépendance». Socialisme au sens de démocratisation de l’économie, mais aussi d’une société orientée vers la justice et le bien commun. Indépendance parce qu’aucun projet à visée émancipatrice ne peut être mis en place tant que subsiste le carcan colonial et impérial du fédéralisme canadien sur les Québécois.es et les Autochtones. Un pays en commun propose de renouer avec un «socialisme d’ici», pour sortir du dialogue de sourds entre inclusifs et nationalistes conservateurs et enraciner au Québec un véritable projet de souveraineté républicain et écosocialiste.

Combattre le populisme de droite : l’exemple de la radio-poubelle de Québec

Sébastien Bouchard, Québec solidaire (Québec, Canada)

Le populisme de droite est en croissance au Québec et en Occident. La construction de la gauche implique de cerner la spécificité du populisme de droite et les stratégies à mettre en place pour le combattre. Pour ce faire, cette conférence propose une analyse marxiste du phénomène de la radio poubelle de Québec. Les questions des classes sociales, du féminisme, de l’écologie, du racisme ainsi que les enjeux urbains et générationnels sont abordés. On y fait aussi les distinctions nécessaires entre le populisme de droite et l’extrême-droite.

Right-Wing Populism and the Impasse of Left Politics in Canada

Murray Cooke, York University (Toronto, Montréal)

We’re living in a populist moment. The American presidential election cycle of 2016 witnessed the rise of Left-wing populism in the form of the Bernie Sanders campaign, but culminated in the shocking victory of the Right-wing populist Donald Trump over the establishment Democrat, Hilary Clinton. In Europe, Left-wing populists such as Syriza and Podemos have raised (and dashed) hopes, while Right-wing populism seems a threat in country after country. The UK has experienced both the Brexit vote and the rise of Jeremy Corbyn.In Canada, populism arguably doesn’t have the same contemporary prominence on either the Left or the Right. Yet, since the rise of the Preston Manning and the Reform Party in the early 1990s, the Left in Canada has been confronted by the recurring challenge of right-wing populism. From Ralph Klein and Mike Harris through Mario Dumont and Rob Ford, right-wing populists have gained public prominence, shaped the political agenda and undermined the base of Left-wing politics in Canada. For the most part, particularly in the electoral realm, the Left in Canada has responded by adapting to the shift to the Right, rather than challenging it. Left-wing populism has been largely absent. In this context, even more radical and extreme Right-wing populism appears to be growing. All of this leads to important questions. How should we define and understand “populism”? What is the relationship between Right-wing populism and impasse of Left-wing politics in Canada? Is there potential for a renewed Left-wing populism in Canada and is that the best way to confront and defeat Right-wing populism?

World Market, Patterns of Accumulation, and State Forms: The Political Economy of the Latin American Left

Jeffery R Webber, Queen Mary University of London (London, UK)

This paper provides a synoptic assessment of the political economy of the Left turn in Latin America in the twenty-first century. First, it charts the broad trajectory of Latin America’s political economy in relation to trends in the world market and the international division of labour between 1980 and 2017. Second, it shifts scales of analysis to characterize and periodize the specific patterns of accumulation in three countries of special importance within the wider Left turn: Brazil (2002-2017); (b) Argentina (2003-2017); and Venezuela (1999-2017). Third, it characterizes the particular changes in state form that accompanied the Left turn (and its present crisis) in each of these three cases, pointing to the structural limits of these experiments and the contradictions which are therefore coming to the fore as the great recession of 2008 makes its delayed landing on the shores of Latin America and the Right regains lost ground.

The Mexican Labyrinth: Class, Indigenous Struggles and the Popular

Colin Mooers, Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada)

This paper discusses the complex dynamics of popular and indigenous struggles in the context of the Mexican presidential elections set to take place in June, 2018. While there has been a resurgence of left populism in the person of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and his party, Movimiento Regeneracion National (Morena), currently leading in national opinion polls, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) in conjunction with the National Indigenous Congress are running their own indigenous candidate, Maria de Jesus Patricio Martinez. While divisions between the indigenous and the non-indigenous Left in Mexico are nothing new, these fractures point to a deeper political and theoretical problem having to do with how class, nation and ‘the popular’ are framed in relation to indigenous struggles. This paper will interrogate the concept of ‘the popular’ from two angles: first, in relation to changes in class composition caused by neoliberalism and secondly through an assessment of recent attempts to ‘decolonize’ the category of ‘the people’ (Ciccariello-Maher 2017) as part of a larger Latin American revolutionary project.

Le capital contre la révolution citoyenne : Stratégies des conglomérats nationaux pour faire face au gouvernement de gauche en Équateur

Thomas Chiasson-LeBel, University de la Californie à Santa Cruz ()

Le gouvernement de gauche dirigé par le parti Alianza País en Équateur (2007 — ) s’est montré très critique envers le pouvoir économique et politique des conglomérats nationaux. Certains de ses documents officiels parlent même de socialisme comme horizon politique pour le pays. Néanmoins, sous la gouverne de ce parti, plusieurs conglomérats nationaux ont renforcé leur position en augmentant la part de la production qu’ils contrôlent, leurs profits, et plus récemment, leur influence politique. Comment expliquer que des groupes économiques améliorent leur situation malgré un gouvernement qui les vilipende ?Les conglomérats (grupos económicos) sont des groupes d’entreprises distinctes soumises au contrôle centralisé d’acteurs nationaux souvent unis par des liens familiaux. En Équateur, la somme des revenus des 215 groupes économiques correspondait à près de 60 % du PIB en 2016. Alors que certains conglomérats adoptaient des stratégies ostentatoires visant à remplacer le gouvernement de gauche, d’autres cherchaient plutôt à exercer une influence idéologique et sociale plus subtile afin de construire un environnement favorable à leur stratégie d’accumulation. L’économie politique culturelle critique (EPCC) offre des outils intéressants pour intégrer les facteurs non économiques dans l’analyse du capitalisme et des stratégies des élites économiques pour influencer le pouvoir politique. S’inspirant de cette approche, cet article compare différentes stratégies de groupes économiques pour mieux identifier celles qui parviennent à influencer la société et le gouvernement qui s’affichait pourtant méfiants à leur égard.

Return of the State in Ecuador: Confrontations within the political analysis of a decade (2006-2016)

Jorge Vasquez, University of Massachusetts-Amherst (Amherst, USA)

This paper will discuss three different tendencies that the ‘Return of the State’ receives in recent Latin American political sociology, focusing in the case of Ecuador. First, we will point how « The Return of the State » gained relevance as an object of study due to the changes implemented by several governments in the region since 2002. Then, we will point how in the analysis that has been carried out in the political sociology of Ecuador, such ‘Return of the State’ receives three tendencies of explanation: the post-neoliberal (hegemony building, universalization, popular support), The Cesarist (restructuring of economic elites, criminalization of protest, deactivation of social movements), The Populist (presidentialism, manipulation of civil society). Finally, the paper will discuss the limitations of such explanatory tendencies, purposing a different approach regarding to the historical meaning of populism and a way to understand the analysis of the tension between State and social movements within one of the countries that makes part of the “pink tide”.

Serge Halimi, Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris, France)

Bhaskar Sunkara, Jacobin Magazine (New York, NY, États-Unis)

Basic income: a neoliberal road to socialism

Samuel Bagg, McGill University – Research Group on Constitutional Studies (Montréal, Canada)

As the idea of an unconditional basic income has grown in popularity among bastions of the neoliberal establishment such as libertarian economists and technology CEOs, many on the left who were initially been attracted to the idea have begun to doubt their support. As a result, just as mainstream outlets begin to take the idea seriously, left publications such as Boston Review, Dissent, and Jacobin have responded by questioning its radical bona fides, worrying that it will stall or unravel other left initiatives. This is understandable, I argue in this presentation, but it is also a mistake. Surely some of its new supporters hope that an unconditional basic income will prevent a more serious reckoning with the social upheaval caused by capitalist development, but socialists have good reason to believe that, in the long run, at least, they are wrong. And thus, we have good reason to support a UBI—even, contrary to a common intuition on the left, if it is at first quite modest. After all, the genius of a UBI, in the minds of its early left supporters, was precisely that it represented a “capitalist road to communism”; or, to update Van Parijs and Van der Veen’s 1986 manifesto for the world of today, a neoliberal road to socialism. In this presentation, I will argue that socialists should embrace the UBI’s appeal to a broad range of economic and political actors, rather than turning up their noses. Even a modest UBI such as that favored by, say, Elon Musk, would, I argue, become a trojan horse for socialism, providing radicals with both the conceptual and the institutional framework they need to achieve much more radical redistribution and restructuring of political economy.

Basic Income Guarantees and Feminist Support from the Perspective of John Stuart Mill

Sarah Small, Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO, États-Unis)

Prominent nineteenth century economist and women’s rights activist John Stuart Mill was among the first economists to support basic income guarantees. Though he did not use the term ‘basic income guarantee’, Mill proposed that a portion of the economic gains from a community ought to be distributed equally to every member of the society for their subsistence, regardless of their ability to work. The remaining gains, he proposed, should be distributed in a free market system to “labour, capital, and talent.” This paper unpacks Mill’s arguments for basic income guarantees, and uses points from Mill’s feminist works to further support the implementation of basic income guarantees. These feminist arguments are then examined using more recent, empirical evidence. Ultimately, this paper shows that Millian feminist arguments for basic income guarantees hold up under empirical scrutiny, are applicable to the modern world, and could be used in future works to support the implementation of basic income guarantees.

Universally Basic: An Ethical Case for Universal Basic Income

Edward Teather-Posadas, Colorado State University (Fort Collins, CO, États-Unis)

Radical issues require a radical solution. If we are to combat the widening inequalities in our current economic paradigm, revolutionary thought is needed. We can find one such source of revolutionary change within the call for a universal basic income (UBI). While often deemed a utopian fantasy, a UBI now lies within our grasp. We need only to make the moral and ethical choice to embrace it. Defenses of a UBI have come from every political quarter, from the staunchest libertarians to the most egalitarian liberals. Here is presented an argument for UBI based upon a recognition of the dignity of the human condition. Drawing upon the work of a diverse cast of thinkers from Adam Smith and Martha Nussbaum to Paul Goodman and John Kenneth Galbraith, amongst others, UBI can be shown to support a level of universal basic human dignity that allows for an agency and a capacity for a wide-range of capabilities, otherwise stifled in our current socio-economic regime.

Que penser du revenu de base ?

Ambre Fourrier, HEC Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

La vieille idée d’un revenu inconditionnel d’existence fait un retour en force et semble séduire à droite comme à gauche. Souvent présentée comme un moyen de résoudre entre autres les problèmes de précarité et de chômage, elle est aussi mise de l’avant par certains comme voie de sortie du capitalisme. Mais qu’en est-il vraiment ? Qu’avons-nous à gagner ou à perdre collectivement dans la mise en place du revenu de base ?Plus que jamais ici, « le diable est dans les détails! », comme disait Nietzsche. Lorsque l’on commence à regarder de près cette idée simple, on découvre en fait une infinité de formules possibles. Il y a en effet de multiples manières d’appréhender des dimensions telles que l’inconditionnalité, l’universalité ou un montant « suffisant ». Comment alors se repérer dans ce foisonnement de propositions ? A partir de deux dimensions que sont l’inconditionnalité et le montant proposé, nous avons identifié quatre grandes approches du « revenu de base », caractérisées par des modes de fonctionnement et des justifications idéologiques bien distinctes.En prenant appui sur certaines expérimentations concrètes et sur notre typologie, nous discuterons des enjeux du revenu de base en termes de liberté, d’égalité et de soutenabilité. Nous verrons que cette politique publique peut être aussi bien un piège néolibéral qu’un possible moyen d’émancipation collectif.

L’allocation universelle comme outil d’émancipation sociale ?

Quentin Guatieri, Université de Montréal et Université Paris VIII (Montréal, Canada)

Longtemps limitée au débat intellectuel et qualifiée d’utopie, l’idée d’une allocation universelle (aussi nommée revenu de base, revenu universel ou encore revenu minimum garanti) a bénéficié depuis la crise économique et financière de 2008 d’un débat d’idées inédit dans l’espace public et la sphère politique. Des expérimentations sont ainsi en cours ou prévues en Finlande, au Canada ou encore aux Pays-Bas.Outil d’émancipation et de justice social pour les uns, cheval de Troie du libéralisme pour d’autres, le concept de l’allocation universelle s’inscrit dans un contexte de hausse des inégalités, d’un taux de chômage rarement à la baisse et de nouvelles formes de précarité. L’idée peu à peu sorti du débat théorie et académique dans le débat pour s’installer dans le débat politique, porté par des acteurs divers et d’idéologies variées.Il est proposé ici de s’interroger sur la façon dont l’allocation universelle (sous la forme d’un revenu versé à tous les citoyens et sans contrepartie) se présente comme un projet de société alternatif. Lutte contre la pauvreté, redéfinition de la place du travail dans la vie de chacun, outil d’adaptation à l’automatisation, lutte contre l’aliénation… Les enjeux sont multiples.L’objectif est ainsi plus de discuter de l’allocation universelle en tant que forme d’alternative possible au capitalisme, souvent qualifiée d’utopie, plutôt que de convaincre à tout prix du bien-fondé du concept.

La mobilisation des travailleurs dans l’économie solidaire au Brésil

Carole Yerochewski, GIREPS / Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Cette communication vise à instaurer un débat sur ce qu’on appelle des alternatives économiques, à partir d’une réflexion théorique qui intègre la question des rapports sociaux de classe, de sexe et de race, et à partir d’une étude de cas menée sur la mobilisation des travailleurs dans l’économie solidaire brésilienne. Ces travailleurs sont notamment les travailleurs informels, qui ont été longtemps rendu invisibles, car non considérés comme faisant partie du « prolétariat ». Ces travailleurs et surtout travailleuses sont cependant au coeur des rapports sociaux d’exploitation, de domination et d’oppression, et leurs pratiques collectives s’avèrent porteuses d’une radicale remise en cause de la marchandisation capitaliste, pour autant qu’ils puissent exprimer leurs besoins et aspirations dans le cadre d’interactions à différentes échelles et lieux d’action collective. C’est du moins ce que montre cette étude de cas effectuée au cours d’un séjour au Brésil et s’appuyant sur une cinquantaine d’entretiens, divers documents et certaines observations directes.

Makers of Their Own History: Argentina’s Worker-Recuperated Enterprises and the Political Economy of the Working Class

Marcelo Vieta, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

This presentation highlights my ethnographic and political economic work with Argentina’s empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (worker-recuperated enterprises, or ERTs), soon to be published as a book in Brill’s Historical Materialism series. It explores ERT workers’ self-directed actions from a “political economy of the working class” approach (Marx, 1978). Within a conjuncture of neoliberal crisis at the turn of the millennium when traditional union tactics proved toothless, and drawing on a long-tradition of working-class self activity in Argentina, some workers took matters into their own hands by occupying and self-managing capitalist workplaces as worker cooperatives. Today, more almost 400 ERTs exist in Argentina involving around 16,000 workers. ERTs, I argue, are one more historical manifestation of how “class happens” in “human relationships…as a result of common experiences” against and beyond capital (Thompson, 2001, p. 3). They are a part of an oft forgotten vein of bottom-up working-class self-activity coursing through the history of the capitalist era. In the process of remaking their working lives in response to neoliberal crisis resonating on shop floors, ERT workers live out their “own history” (p. 5), recuperating their workplaces and their class consciousness immanently within struggle. They remind us how, from the standpoint of labour, resistance and alternatives to capital can and often do emerge from within exploitative labour processes (Vieta, 2012). ERT protagonists recuperate forms of associated labour and social production grounded in cooperation (rather than competition) and the production of social (rather than private) wealth. They redesign their labour processes along directly democratic lines. They engage in community-led revitalization that sees them open their shops to community cultural centres, free health clinics, and popular education schools. In short, ERT protagonists recuperate working class self-activity by prefiguratively re-embedding the economic spheres of life back into the social needs of human beings and communities. Subtheme: Profoundly democratic businesses and organizations.

The political formation of a community and its subjects: ethnography of a cooperative of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil

Dan Furukawa Marques, CEMS – EHESS (Paris, France)

In Brazil the Cooperatives of Agricultural Production (CPA) of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) symbolize a “superior form of cooperation”. For the MST, the Agricultural Cooperative Nova Santa Rita (COOPAN) represents a successful cooperative model whereby “collective work” is rooted in a stable community, marked by a respect for environmental principles of agroecology and sustainable enterprise, and where work and everyday life are enshrined in participatory democracy. Close fieldwork examination, however, reveals the conflictual underpinnings of democratic community building. In what we call a “dialectic of conflict,” social actors in the MST must constantly balance the fragile and shifting line between the individual and the collective, horizontality and verticality, politics and economics. Grounded in a three-year ethnographic study and theoretically inspired by the political works of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude Lefort, Hannah Arendt, and Karl Marx our study investigates the construction of this community by theorizing some of the important linkages between the political institutions of MST cooperatives and the formation of its subjects. In doing so, we try to seize the different forms and transformation of the political. Put another way, we explore how social links, feelings of belonging, practices and norms are built in order to understand how political experiences of subjects participate in instituting a social order around a common political project, in permanent construction.

This panel discusses how we can connect the left vision of a post-capitalist society to the reality we find ourselves in. Confronted with the curtailment of democratic freedoms—through the emergence of “illiberal democracies” and the upsurge of the far right—we argue for the need to expand political and social rights. What are concrete strategies of participatory movements that allow people to shape the contours of their society, and what are the obstacles? If the pragmatism of a united front approach allows us to reverse fragmentation and push short-term winnable demands, where can this take us in terms of radical change?This panel will have both theory- and practice-focused inputs. Starting with a presentation revolving around the notion of “non-reformist reforms,” we will discuss the need for a united front and for waging a defensive fight and the challenges it can pose to capitalism.

Michael Brie, Fondation Rosa Luxembourg (Berlin, Allemagne)

Ethan Young, Left Labor Project (New-York, USA)

Harmony Goldberg, Grassroots Policy Project ()

Animation: Maria Starzmann

Socialiser le commun

Franck Fischback, Université de Strasbourg (Strasbourg, France)

En réponse à une réalité sociale marquée par l’atomisation et la mise en concurrence des individus, par la privatisation des ressources communes et par l’accaparement des produits du travail social, le commun est pensé comme une alternative consistant essentiellement à (re)communaliser le social : cela peut par exemple consister à faire du commun le cadre à l’intérieur duquel seraient posées et instruites à nouveaux frais les questions du travail, des échanges marchands, de la répartition des richesses – ce qui revient à réinscrire le social à l’intérieur du commun, à la manière dont, chez Hegel, la société civile était insérée au sein de l’Etat. Nous poserons la question de savoir si on ne risque pas d’aboutir par là à une nouvelle forme d’hypostase et d’abstraction de la politique et s’il ne vaudrait pas mieux, à l’inverse, tenter de socialiser le commun en se fondant sur l’idée, marxienne, d’une réappropriation de la dimension du commun par les acteurs sociaux au sein même de leurs rapports du même nom, c’est-à-dire de leurs rapports de travail, de production et d’échanges.

Le gouvernement des communs contre la souveraineté de l’Etat

Pierre Dardot, Université Paris-Nanterre (Paris, France)

Les communs sont avant tout des institutions procédant de pratiques d’autogouvernement. A l’inverse, la souveraineté étatique érige un pouvoir séparé au-dessus de la société. On a ainsi deux logiques : la première, celle des communs, est fondamentalement plurielle et radicalement non centrée, la seconde, celle de la souveraineté, est indissociable de l’unicité d’un centre qui a pour caractère d’être indivisible et absolu. Le gouvernement des communs peut-il alors consister en un exercice direct de la souveraineté du peuple par opposition à la souveraineté de l’Etat ?  Mais peut-on concevoir une telle souveraineté comme entièrement immanente au social ? Etant un autogouvernement, le gouvernement des communs présuppose avant tout que la société se donne des institutions politiques.

Principe du commun et transformation de l’État

Christian Laval, Université Paris-Nanterre (Paris, France)

Le principe du commun permet de concevoir et de proposer une transformation des services publics qui assurerait une cohérence entre leurs finalités collectives, les règles de leur gestion et les procédures démocratiques permettant de décider des orientations de leur activité. Il ne se réduit pas à une manière différente d’utiliser les administrations et les entreprises publiques, il vise à transformer les institutions publiques elles-mêmes en leur donnant des missions et des formes correspondant à leur signification politique la plus profonde : la mise en commun de ressources humaines et matérielles dans une institution dont le gouvernement et l’administration doivent procéder des choix de la société.

Animation: Eric Pineault

Pour un socialisme de marché réellement socialiste : Karl Polanyi et Pierre-Joseph Proudhon contre John Roemer et Alec Nove

Pascal Lebrun, École d’études politiques de l’Université d’Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada)

La déception engendrée par le planisme dans la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle entraine un certain retour au marché au sein de la gauche de l’époque, retour dont le « socialisme de marché » anglo-saxon des années 1970-1980 est sans doute la forme la plus aboutie. Son acceptation de plusieurs concepts de la pensée néoclassique et sa conservation d’aspects institutionnels propres au capitalisme posent cependant problème aux points de vue éthique, théorique et pratique. Après en avoir brièvement présenté les raisons, j’entends argumenter que le cadre théorique formulé par Karl Polanyi est éthiquement et théoriquement plus intéressant pour la gauche radicale cherchant des options de rechange au capitalisme, mais en n’excluant pas toute forme de marché de son projet de société. Je défendrai ensuite les propositions économiques de Pierre-Joseph Proudhon comme offrant un moyen plus intéressant de mettre ce cadre théorique en pratique.Cette proposition ne me semble de prime abord pas cadrer dans aucun des sous-thèmes présentés, mais pourrait peut-être s’inscrire dans celui-ci : « La planification économique et le marché : quels rôles dans une société post-capitaliste ? ».

Actuality of Polanyi’s Project

Michael Brie, Fondation Rosa Luxembourg (Berlin, Allemagne)

Contentious nature of Indian student movements has roots in its colonial history. But the nature of contention has changed over the period of time. For contemporary student movements, one of the main challenge comes from rise of right wing Hindutva politics; whose political ideology seeks legitimacy from Hindu theology and celebrate hierarchical exclusionary system like ‘Varna and Caste’; in collaboration with neoliberal ruling elites, pose challenge the very fundamental of Indian democracy. Neoliberal policies, which advocates privatization of education and delegitimize students as ‘political entity’ help to further consolidate Hindu hierarchy; as in a privatized education system students from lower class and lower caste are denied entry because of their economic inability. The very ‘Indian dichotomy’, ruling elite sense of India as ‘Technological Powerhouse” and growing Student unrests in leading Universities increasingly confront each other and questions the current political establishment and their policies. This paper conceptualizes the idea of dissent and how dissent transforms into the process of resistance, in context of Student movements in Indian Higher educational Institutions and while doing so, also focuses the historical transition of student movements in India and how that transition affected present day motives of movements. To understand these, paper explores relations among religion, society and capital and how capital’s effort to normalize non-democratic, exclusionary practices to maximize its profit is facing resistance in Indian campuses in terms of method and practices of movements. Finally, the paper also finds the impact that student movements’ create in national politics in respect to policy formulation and to do that how it integrates itself with larger society. The paper will particularly focuses on anti-privatization movements in education and students activism on ‘enacting Rohit Act’ (Rohit Vemula, an ‘untouchable’ student committed suicide in campus) to protect the students from marginalized and weaker communities.

À venir

Kari Polanyi Levitt, McGill University (Montréal, Canada)

À venir

Claus Thomasberger, Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin (Berlin, Allemagne)

« Tout projet émancipateur doit prendre en compte les relations de pouvoir qui se trouvent dans les organisations, notamment les entreprises. Une proposition d’économie post-capitaliste implique l’élaboration de nouvelles formes organisationnelles qui remet en question la distribution du pouvoir, non seulement au sein du milieu de travail, mais entre les différentes parties prenantes touchées par l’activité des entreprises. Dans le modèle de la coopérative de travailleurs, le pouvoir est donné aux forces productives des organisations, mais force est de reconnaître qu’il y a beaucoup d’autres parties impliqués dans l’activité économique, beaucoup d’autres intérêts affectés : consommateurs, gestionnaires, fournisseurs, membres de la communauté, etc. Comment traduire l’idéal d’une économie démocratique par une redistribution concrète du pouvoir dans les entreprises? Comment penser une transformation des structures de décision (conseil d’administration, statuts et règlements, haute direction), ainsi que de penser une transformation des pratiques de gestion collective et de collaboration au sein des milieux de travail? Comment “mesurer” la démocratie au sein de diverses organisations (entreprises d’économie sociale, syndicats, coopératives, associations, sociétés d’État…), en proposant des alternatives, réformes structurelles et innovations organisationnelles? Si le dépassement du capitalisme doit toujours viser l’abolition de l’appropriation privée des moyens de production, de la logique d’accumulation et de la rentabilité maximale au profit des actionnaires, l’alternative est-elle forcément “tout le pouvoir aux travailleurs”? Qui devrait hériter du pouvoir économique ainsi récupéré? Et si la réponse était : “une association où le libre épanouissement de chaque partie concernée est la condition du libre épanouissement de toutes”?

Jonathan Durand Folco, IDÉE (Institut pour la démocratie économique), École d’innovation sociale de l’Université Saint-Paul (Montréal, Canada)

Gabriel Monette, Université de Montréal (Montréal, Canada)

Miriam Fahmy, Éditrice et animatrice (Montréal, Canada)

Emancipatory Transitions in Kurdistan and The Prospect of a Radical Democratic Future / Transitions émancipatrices au Kurdistan et la possibilité d’un avenir démocratique radical

We intend to explore and reflect upon various aspects of social and political transformations that the Kurdish regions of Syria and Turkey have been experiencing in recent years. Since the 2011 uprisings in the Middle East, the majority Kurdish populated areas of northern Syria (i.e. Rojava) have led a revolutionary change in the region that promises an emancipatory politics based on democratic self-government, gender liberation, and communal-based restructuring of society. Struck by a long history of colonization and imperialist interventions as well as authoritarianism of modern states, people in Rojava have been developing an alternative to the oppressive and exclusive modern nation-state system in the Middle East. The idea of ‘democratic confederalism,’ developed by Abdullah Ocalan, has been central to the Rojava revolution. It rejects the creation of a new nation-state as a solution to the plights of oppressed and colonized nations, and advocates the formation of confederate structures of democratic self-rule through people’s assemblies and communes that challenge the rule of capital and patriarchy and celebrate the coexistence of ethnicities, religions and languages.Ocalan’s paradigm of ‘democratic confederalism’ has also been the primary source of inspiration for the Kurdish struggle in Turkey. Since the 1999 municipal elections in Turkey and the major victory of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HADEP) in the municipalities of the Kurdish areas, a victory repeated in subsequent elections, the Kurdish freedom movement has been undergoing a strategic shift from rural and armed struggle to civil, participatory, and urban-based strategies of self-determination. The future of the Kurdish movement in both Syria and Turkey and their efforts to further their emancipatory politics toward a radical democratic future faces many challenges and questions. Presenters on this panel aim to discuss different sides of both the Rojava revolution in Syria and the Kurdish freedom movement in Turkey, and unpack some of the challenges and questions that have emerged from this context. This discussion aims to understand the lessons learned from the past and to provide an analysis of possible contributions to the future of emancipatory political struggles in the Middle East and beyond.

Behnam Amini, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Behnam Amini’s presentation will examine the implications of the notion of Democratic Confederalism for the struggles of oppressed nations and social classes against complex formations of colonial, capitalist and patriarchal relations in the context of the modern Middle Eastern state system.

Fouad Oveisy, University of California Irvine (Irvine, USA)

Fouad Oveisy’s presentation discusses the durability of the Rojava Revolution’s practice within the Middle East realpolitik of the neoliberal order. Contesting the recent focus on conceiving « new » political practices, he holds that a transition to post-capitalism is anchored in articulating a strategic ethos for engagement with realpolitik. Fouad reviews leftist post-revolutionary documents and histories, from Robespierre’s engagement with the question of political morality, to Abdullah Ocalan’s reworking of ethnic, religious, and gender contradictions in the region in his manual on democratic confederalism.

Sardar Saadi, University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada)

Sardar Saadi’s presentation examines the rise and repression of the Pro-Kurdish Municipality Movement in Turkey. He will try to shed light on the many challenges the pro-Kurdish municipalities, especially Diyarbakir municipality, have faced in the last two decades, and the ways in which the Kurdish movement has intended to actualize the project of democratic autonomy using municipality and urban spaces.

Gulay Kilicaslan, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Gülay Kilicaslan’s presentation will discuss the Kurdish Question in Turkey by focusing on the antagonistic relation between the political and organizational change of the Kurdish political movement towards a radical democratic future, and AKP government’s policies towards election reversal and the crackdown on Kurdish civil society in relation to its road to regime change.

Hal Draper famously argued that there were two souls of socialism—socialism from above and socialism from below. The dominant tradition of twentieth century socialism was two forms of socialism from above—Stalinism and social democracy. The former discredited socialism by confusing it with one party dictatorships that oppressed the laboring majority. And the latter betrayed the working class by managing the system in various countries during the post war boom and over the last forty years adopting neoliberalism. This panel present the tradition of socialism from below—the idea that only the workers and oppressed people can liberate themselves—as the foundation on which to build revolutionary socialism for the 21st century.

Todd Chretien, International Socialist Organization & New Socialists (Oakland, États-Unis)

David Camfield, University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada)

Animation: Clarice Kuhling

Degrowth is an intellectual current that has come into its own largely in response to the ecological emergency of our time. Building on the work of a wide range of heterodox thinkers, its guiding thesis is the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet. Given that perpetual economic growth is the necessary condition of capitalism, degrowth is objectively an anti-capitalist worldview and is advanced explicitly as such by the movement’s more radical wing, which owes much to the ideas of André Gorz as well as to the work of French critics of development such as Serge Latouche and Gilbert Rist. While it shares considerable intellectual terrain with ecosocialism, degrowth challenges a number of dominant premises of the socialist tradition, notably in its rejection of the technological deus ex machina, its favourable view of decentralization, and its pluralistic conception of the agency of social transformation. This panel aims to examine the distinctive character of degrowth as a body of thought, and to make a case for degrowth as a radical left project indispensable to overcoming the multiple crises we face today as a society and as a species.

Léa Heroux-Mailhot, Hautes Études Commerciales (Montréal, Canada)

Louis Marion, (Montréal, Canada)

Philippe Gauthier, Journaliste (Montréal, Canada)

Bengi Akbulut, Université Concordia (Montréal, Canada)

Andrea Levy, Canadian Dimension et NCS (Montréal, Canada)

Socialism where humans, not money, are central

Anitra Nelson, RMIT University (Melbourne (Victoria), Australie)

Post-capitalists need to challenge economic processes that automatically produce inequality, hierarchical governance and ecological crises, and substitute them with everyday practices and decision-making that focus on fulfilling basic human needs and environmental sustainability. Nonmarket socialism has a varied history and, in its ecosocialist version, a peculiar significance in successfully achieving socialism and planetary environmental sustainability in the 21st century (Nelson and Timmerman 2011). The strategy for establishing such a ‘utopia’ focuses on dispensing with markets, replacing the current monetary principle for economic development with direct democracy exercised on the basis of subsidiarity and local collectively sufficient economies. Such direct democracy has no need for exchange media or measures because contributions to society are based on obligatory work and collective decision-making over what and how much work needs to be done, using collectively identified resources and techniques. This presentation argues that many post-capitalists need to be more aware of the central importance of substituting collective governance for monetary and market processes (Nelson 2016) and that certain existing intentional communities that pursue collective sufficiency, eschew production for trade and engage in nonmonetary exchange networks show that such processes efficiently, effectively and beneficially allow for stewardship functions in healing and maintaining ecological integrity and nature’s bounty, account for resource limits and succeed in fulfilling people’s basic needs.

How to save the environment ‘without planning’

Terry Leahy, University of Newcastle (Newcastle, Australie)

The alienated labour and centralised state management of capitalism propels environmental unsustainability so that the post-capitalist movement faces massive environmental crises and challenges. Within the nonmarket socialist gift economy proposed, decision-making would not only move beyond the democratic façade of capitalism but also operate vastly differently from that in the prototypical centralised state power and planned economies of 20th century socialisms (Leahy, Gift Economy site; Leahy in Nelson and Timmerman 2011).A revolution for post-capitalism would focus on seizing the means of production for use as commons under use-right sharing principles and processes. As in Indigenous cultures there would be ethics and rituals linking us to the natural world. Many Indigenous societies — patchworks of small communities with overlapping territories, trade and exchange, intermarriage and cultures — have had homogeneous de-centralised modes of production involving conflicts, compacts and fluid power dynamics. They have achieved environmental sustainability through indulgent childcare, generous sharing according to need, appropriate technologies and productivity, respecting the limits and potential of nature, and culturally celebrating the natural world.Local decision-making through chains of overlapping compacts would enhance the environment, minimise work and advance nonmarket exchange relationships. International-scale decision-making would be reached via global consultation using scientific study, and outcomes implemented locally by elected volunteers. It is hard to imagine any ways to address the depth and scale of environmental crisis without the development of such a post-capitalist ‘utopia’ (Leahy 2017).

« Full Communism Now! »: Utopia in Socialist Thought and Praxis

Nicole Landry, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada)

A number of major left social movements in recent years have been criticized for a perceived lack of coherently articulated, concrete demands (consider Occupy and Black Lives Matter). While there is and has been a clear, wide-ranging rejection of existing socioeconomic conditions since the 2008 financial crisis, including proliferating criticism of capitalism by name, the broad-based social movements that have arisen in its aftermath have primarily focused on resistance to various injustices, remaining relatively weak on specific visions for a just future. Although such movements employ the language of revolution, they have so far failed to gain real revolutionary momentum or purchase, arguably due at least in part to this weakness. Turning to the utopian tradition, this presentation will engage with the strategically relevant question of visions of the future—specifically of postcapitalist futures—with a view to understanding how utopian thinking may help to channel resistance movements into a positive political program with effective revolutionary potential.Utopia and utopianism have drawn much criticism from the Marxist left as merely abstract idealism, divorced from questions of material reality and agency. Drawing on the work of Ernst Bloch and Fredric Jameson, this presentation will defend a utopianism that is in fact oriented toward concrete political struggle and social transformation. It will explore how the utopian tradition has historically contributed to socialist political theory and practice, as well as how it might do so today. Ultimately, it will argue that we currently find ourselves, in Jameson’s terms, in a context of resurgent “utopian impulse”; what is missing—and necessary—is a correlative renewal of the “utopian program” if we are, as Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin put it, to “rekindle socialism” today.

Socialisme et dialectique au XXIe siècle / Socialism and dialectics in the 21st Century

4 présentations abordant le sujet du socialisme et de la dialectique au XXIe siècle.

Un nécessaire retour à la pensée dialectique

Éric Martin, Cégep Édouard-Montpetit (Longueuil, Canada)

Chez Platon, la naissance de la philosophie coïncide avec celle de la dialectique. Chez Hegel, la dialectique désigne le mouvement par lequel l’Esprit engendre aussi bien l’esprit subjectif que la nature et l’esprit objectif, c’est-à-dire la société et l’État. Chez Marx, la dialectique désigne la méthode d’analyse qui suit pas à pas les conséquences de la médiation des rapports sociaux par le fétichisme marchand et le travail abstrait, aussi bien que le mouvement par lequel le capital engendre ses propres fossoyeurs. La dialectique de l’histoire est bloquée par le maintien dans l’existence d’un mode de production qui empêche le sujet et la communauté d’être « pour soi ». En somme, la pensée dialectique est inséparable du développement de la tradition hégéliano-marxiste et de la théorie critique. Herbert Marcuse disait, dans l’homme unidimensionnel, que la place de la philosophie était menacée dans l’université américaine. Plus précisément, c’est la dialectique qui apparaissait menacée, soit par l’effacement général de la philosophie, ou par la généralisation de courants anti-dialectiques. Déjà, le marxisme traditionnel ou vulgaire avait réduit Marx au rôle d’économiste et évacué le rapport Hegel-Marx. La popularisation des approches analytiques ou déconstructionnistes parachève ce que Deleuze appelait « l’anti-hégélianisme généralisé ». Résultat : on ne trouve plus guère aujourd’hui, même chez les penseurs « critiques » ou « marxiens » de gens pour se réclamer de la dialectique, ce qui est singulier, puisque cette dernière constitue le noyau fondateur de la pensée de Marx. Certaines approches contemporaines, comme la théorie critique de la valeur et la pensée du sociologue Michel Freitag, remettent de l’avant l’importance de la dialectique pour penser le dépassement des contradictions du monde contemporain. Ma présentation vise à montrer l’urgence d’en revenir à la pensée dialectique.

Penser l’Humanité chez Pierre Leroux : une philosophie politique moderne ?

Karine Régimbald, Université d’Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada)

Qui connaît aujourd’hui le philosophe français socialiste Pierre Leroux que Marx, dès 1843, appelait dans une lettre écrite à Ludwig Feuerbach, « le génial Leroux » ? Pierre Leroux, qui ne serait rien de moins que l’inventeur du mot socialisme, était considéré à son époque, entre autres, par George Sand et Lamartine comme le futur « Rousseau du XIXe siècle » (Abensour, 4e de couverture; Tardy, 2017 : 603). Considéré par plusieurs comme le quatrième utopiste socialiste, après Robert Owen, Charles Fourier et Charles-Henry de Saint-Simon, il s’est notamment porté à la défense des communards et a reçu des funérailles officielles sous la Commune. Pourtant, malgré son envergure, et ce, de façon paradoxale, il est tombé dans l’oubli. À suivre le philosophe français Miguel Abensour, Leroux, un personnage qui demeure à ce jour « énigmatique », rien ne justifie que son œuvre soit tombée dans l’oubli. Il offrirait, selon Abensour, une réflexion renouvelée sur les relations entre philosophie politique et socialisme, plus précisément, sur les liens entre politique et émancipation sociale. Notre présentation propose donc de revenir sur la doctrine de l’Humanité présentée par Leroux qui, loin d’être vétuste, permet de penser à nouveaux frais la modernité politique. Plus précisément, selon nous, la philosophie, telle que comprise par Leroux, invite non pas à un retour au socialisme du XIXe siècle, mais constitue plutôt une piste de réflexion, une ouverture possible pour envisager une sortie du capitalisme et de sa logique processuelle. C’est donc d’un point de vue essentiellement philosophique, à partir d’une manière d’habiter le monde sous le signe de l’Humanité, proposée par Leroux, que s’articulera notre présentation.

Théorie critique et socialisme

Nichola Gendreau Richer, Université d’Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada)

La théorie critique a connu de multiples changements d’orientation malgré sa courte existence. La théorie critique a émergé dans les années 1930 lorsque le directeur de l’École de Francfort, Max Horkheimer, a rédigé l’ouvrage Théorie traditionnelle et théorie critique. Horkheimer affirme que le but de la Théorie critique est de « tendre vers un état social sans exploitation ni oppression, dans lequel existe réellement un sujet plus vaste que l’individu » (Horkheimer, 1974 : 79). Ce courant politique semble franchir une nouvelle étape, soit l’union de la Théorie critique et du socialisme. En effet, les derniers travaux d’Axel Honneth portent sur la question de la théorie du socialisme et en proposent de nouvelles fondations plus compatibles avec la réalité du XXIe siècle. En réponse à cet ouvrage, Franck Fischbach a composé une étude intitulée Qu’est-ce qu’un gouvernement socialiste. Il y propose un dialogue entre sa vision du socialisme et celle de Honneth. Nous jugeons fécond d’analyser ce tournant important de la Théorie critique. Pour ce faire, nous proposons une analyse comparative des ouvrages de Honneth et de Fischbach portant sur le socialisme. Dans l’étude de ceux-ci, des thématiques semblent s’imposer. La première est leur compréhension de l’importance du travail dans le capitalisme avancé et dans la construction du socialisme. La deuxième concerne l’importance du marché et de la propriété privée. Finalement, il semble y avoir une division entre les deux auteurs quant à l’importance du droit et de l’État. Grâce à la comparaison de ces deux ouvrages et la mise en rapport avec les postulats initiaux de la Théorie critique, nous pensons pouvoir participer aux réflexions entourant les besoins de rompre avec le capitalisme et de construire un monde réellement social.

Socialisme et perspective décoloniale dialectique dans la pensée féministe québécoise

Samie Pagé-Quirion, Université d’Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada)

Entre le Tigre et l’Euphrate (Mésopotamie) naît le logos désignant une idée de mesure, de langage et de raison. Depuis ce lieu, selon Michel Fattal dans son livre Pour un nouveau langage de la raison : Convergences entre l’Orient et l’Occident (1987), deux sens au logos s’observent; un sens analytique et critique originaire de Platon, Parménide et Aristote, et un autre, plus englobant et synthétique chez Saint Jean, les stoïciens et Héraclite (Fattal, 1987, p.6). Fattal considère que l’Orient a préservé et développé un sens de l’unité et de la communauté du logos, et l’Occident, un sens de la critique et de l’analyse. Aujourd’hui, le déchaînement des désirs individuels engendré par « la guerre de chaos » que mène le capitalisme avancé aux peuples, aux sociétés et aux civilisations force les socialistes à repenser l’unité sociale où il devient impératif d’harmoniser ce double sens au logos. Dans cette optique, la rencontre de l’autre, de l’immigrant, de la différence culturelle et religieuse au Québec vient façonner notre expérience du politique et nous permet d’enrichir notre projet socialiste de ce sens de l’unité à travers un regard critique et analytique. À partir de ce postulat, la pensée décoloniale, imprégnée de la fonction d’unité du logos, n’est pas toujours porteuse d’aplatissement de la réalité, ni de rejet des totalités, mais au contraire d’harmonisation dialectique entre les approches holiste et individualiste. D’ailleurs, les pays périphériques qui expérimentent l’humanisme, la modernité occidentale et le marxisme, en assimilant leurs doctrines, arrivent à exprimer leur subjectivité historique en produisant une compréhension dialectique de la relation entre les sujets individuels et de l’unité sociale. À la fois critique et soucieuse d’une préservation de la différence au sein de l’unité sociale, cette pensée introduit les études féministes au Québec depuis quelque temps. Dans cet exposé, nous étudierons quelques discours féministes traversés par la pensée décoloniale meublant la scène politique québécoise comme un phénomène exprimant à la fois la crise de l’unité sociale et un désir de surmonter les conflits et les paradoxes entre les individus et la société. »

La fin de l’économie

Alain Deneault, Collège international de philosophie à Paris (Montréal, Québec)

L’économie est nécessairement au centre de nos vies, et ce, de manières bien plus diversifiées et fines que nous ont amenés à en prendre conscience les sciences économiques et leurs prétendus experts. C’est à une confiscation des multiples acceptions et significations du mot économie que ces derniers ont procédé depuis plus d’un siècle. La chute annoncée du régime productiviste et les vices logiques de l’idéologie de la croissance exigent que soient recouvrées les significations oubliées ou négligées du terme économie.

Récupérer les socialismes à partir du néolibéralisme: Les marchés anticapitalistes et l’ajustement structurel révolutionnaire

Johanna Bockman, George Mason University (Washington, États-Unis)

Le néolibéralisme est la forme actuelle du capitalisme qui domine nos vies, mais le néolibéralisme contient aussi – du moins en termes de potentiel – des décennies d’expérimentations socialistes et de démocratie radicale. Je m’appuie sur Boltanski et Chiapello (2005) et sur Fraser (2009), qui conçoivent le néolibéralisme comme produit de l’intégration des critiques du capitalisme dans le capitalisme lui-même par les élites comme sources de renouvellement. J’affirme en outre que les élites ont incorporé dans le capitalisme non seulement ses critiques, mais aussi, de manière déformée, des idées, expérimentations et communs socialistes créés par des mouvements socialistes internationaux. Dans ma présentation, je m’appuierai sur le cas de l’ajustement structurel soviétique et yougoslave, qui s’est fondamentalement dissocié de l’ajustement structurel de la Banque mondiale, pour montrer comment l’ajustement structurel de la Banque mondiale a été tant oppressif alors que d’autres ajustements et mondialisations structurels pourraient se révéler être plus libérateurs, et des socialismes récupérables à partir du néolibéralisme.

La liberté en tant que libération des sciences économiques Freedom as Liberation from Economics

Kari Polanyi Levitt, Université McGill (Montréal, Québec)

Le capitalisme moderne se distingue dans la civilisation humaine par le niveau auquel la société est une société de l’économie. Selon Polanyi, dans les civilisations précédentes, le système économique était absorbé ou intriqué dans le système social. Avec la venue du capitalisme industriel s’est produite une inversion de cette relation dans laquelle la société et les institutions sociales servent les nécessités économiques. Les valeurs du marché en termes de relations entre offre et demande déterminent désormais les perceptions des contributions à la société. À l’ère de la mondialisation néolibérale, le financement de l’activité économique a augmenté l’importance de l’argent dans la vie quotidienne.

David McNally, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Bruno Bosteels, Cornell University (Ithaca, USA)

Franck Fischback, Université de Strasbourg (Strasbourg, France)

La fabrication d’un nouvel espace social: Réflections sur les relations entre l’usine et la famille

Himani Bannerji, York University (Toronto, Canada)

Cet article se penche sur le caractère concret du mode de production capitaliste et montre que l’organisation de ce mode est sociale plutôt qu’uniquement économique. Il remet en question le présupposé fréquent selon lequel il y a une différence qualitative entre le lieu de travail et le foyer. Il essaie donc d’aller au-delà d’une pensée binaire en montrant comment “les activités humaines sensibles, la pratique” (Marx) déterminées par le mode de production capitaliste sont foncièrement constitutives du social concret.

Le projet socialiste peut-il passer à côté du féminisme?

Diane Lamoureux, Université Laval (Québec, Canada)

Les sociétés occidentales contemporaines sont structurées autour de trois grands axes de domination : classe, race et sexe. Si l’on poursuit l’objectif de bâtir des sociétés caractérisées par l’égalité, la liberté et la solidarité, on ne peut lutter efficacement pour la justice sociale en laissant de côté l’un de ces grands axes de domination qui s’enchevêtrent dans la vie de plusieurs individus et s’associent à d’autres structures de domination (ex. capacitisme, hétérosexisme). Un projet cohérent de transformation sociale doit donc s’attarder à la matrice de la domination (qui associe, de manière propre à chaque société, ces trois grands systèmes de domination) prise dans son ensemble et non à un seul aspect de celle-ci. Ceci implique non pas une fragmentation des luttes mais une solidarité plus forte puisqu’elle repose sur l’inclusion et la reconnaissance des différences entre opprimé.es et exploité.es.

Pour une politique dé-coloniale

Dalie Giroux, Université d’Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada)

Il s’agira (1) d’identifier quelques lignes de force de l’analyse et des pratiques anticoloniales historiques et contemporaines ; (2) d’évoquer ce que pourrait signifier aujourd’hui une politique dé-coloniale en fonction de ces lignes de force ; (3) d’esquisser une lecture de la situation du Québec/Canada contemporain dans les termes d’une telle politique.

Face aux bouleversements majeurs que connaît actuellement notre environnement, pouvons-nous nous contenter de travailler à une simple conversion de nos modes de production énergétique afin que ceux-ci émettent moins de gaz à effet de serre au risque de nier l’ensemble des impacts qu’auront ces bouleversements sur l’ensemble des sociétés humaines ? Ou devons nous saisir l’occasion sans précédent que nous offre cette transition écologique pour revoir entièrement notre mode de vie et par là même inclure dans nos réflexions et nos actions les perspectives systémiques ? À travers une tentative de réponse à ces questions, nous nous interrogerons aussi sur le rôle que joue actuellement le mouvement environnemental dans ces réflexions en nous appuyant sur des exemples précis de luttes actuelles au Québec.

Maristella Svampa, Universidad Nacional de la Plata (La Plata, Argentine)

The creatures, too, must become free: Planetary Justice and Origins of Biospheric Crisis

Jason W. Moore, Binghamton University (Binghamton, États-Unis)

Luttes et mouvements éco-territoriaux

Anne-Céline Guyon, (Québec)

A la fin d’un cycle progressiste, l’Amérique latine montre un bilan inquiétant: elle continue à être non pas seulement la région la plus inégalitaire de la planète, mais aussi la région avec le plus grand nombre de meurtres de militants environnementaux et les plus grands accaparements de terres.Malgré les rapports tendus entre progressisme et mouvement socio-environementaux, la situation connait aujourd’hui bien de nouvelles inflexions et même un tournant conservateur dans certains pays. Cela dit, l’importance des multiples luttes éco-territoriales en Amérique Latine ne peut pas être niée. Pour réfléchir à ces tendances, nous proposons d’abord de penser ces luttes éco-territoriales dans la région à partir de la convergence entre la matrice indigène communautaire, le langage écologiste et la vision écofeministe, ce qui a donné naissance à un langage de valorisation de la territorialité, qui s’oppose au discours capitaliste dominant.Ensuite, dans la lignée de luttes éco-territoriaux, nous assistons aussi à l’émergence d’une grammaire politique radicale où se développe un versant de la pensée critique latino-américaine qui fait le pari d’une vision post-développementaliste et relationnelle, orientée vers une nouvelle rationalité environnementale. Plusieurs disciplines sont engagées dans cette tendance dans les vingt dernières années : la sociologie des mouvements sociaux, l’écologie politique, l’économie écologiste, l’anthropologie critique, l’agro-écologie et la géographie critique, parmi d’autres.

Depuis qu’une nouvelle vague de contestation a débuté en 2011, les appels à l’horizontalité et à des mouvements sans leaders ont proliféré, accompagnant un discours de rejet des partis et des syndicats. Résultat: il y a confusion concernant le type d’organisation nécessaire pour gagner les luttes les plus dures. McAlevey traitera du rôle central des grèves au 21e siècle, incluant les grèves les plus récentes. Elle soutiendra que pour mener des grèves d’envergure, qui constituent toujours la forme de protestation la plus efficace, il est essentiel d’avoir du leadership, mais surtout d’avoir un leadership démocratique qui reconnaît et valorise la démocratie interne et une participation élevée.

Jane McAlevey, Consultante syndicale (États-Unis)

À venir

Bhaskar Sunkara, Jacobin Magazine (New York, NY, États-Unis)

Identifier, relier, créer!: Promulguer la vie au-delà de “l’économie”

Ethan Miller, Grassroots Economic Organizing (GEO) (États-Unis)

Une composante centrale de toute stratégie politique transformatrice viable au 21e siècle doit être la construction matérielle de nouvelles formes de vie et de subsistance. La critique oppositionnelle ou les rêves utopiques ne peuvent remplacer le travail concret et immédiat visant à réduire la part d’exploitation et d’extraction capitalistes dans nos modes de vie collectifs ainsi que la mise sur pied de communautés libératrices qui soient résilientes face à une instabilité croissante. Mais comment faire ce travail? Comment le penser et l’organiser? Je défendrai tout d’abord que des politiques anticapitalistes se doivent d’être doublement anticapitalistes: contre les pratiques de colonisation et d’accumulation que l’on appelle “capitalisme”, mais aussi contre les mises en récits du capitalisme qui renforcent son pouvoir en invisibilisant et marginalisant ses limites et ses “extérieurs”.Le capitalisme se doit d’être compris non pas comme un système dans lequel nous serions piégé.e.s, mais plutôt comme un processus de colonisation puissant et toujours en réalisation. Ainsi, notre travail commence non pas par de grands appels à “la révolution” (après laquelle nous bâtirons le monde que nous désirons), et non plus par une vision unique du “prochain système”, mais plutôt par une identification et un renforcement systématiques de pratiques postcapitalistes qui sont d’ors et déjà présentes, émergeant de nos communautés. C’est là où le travail d’organisation de l’économie solidaire entre en jeu, en identifiant et reliant ensemble ces éléments en réseaux de pouvoir matériel et organisé. Toutefois, l’idée même de “l’économie” (même dans le cadre d’une “économie alternative”) doit elle aussi être remise en question considérant qu’elle renforce de multiples distinctions conceptuelles (“social”, “environnemental”, “économique”, et “politique”) qui servent d’obstacles au type de liens transversaux que nous devons urgemment mettre en place. J’argumenterai plutôt en faveur de politiques fondées sur la solidarité et visant un mode de vie écologique mettant de l’avant l’éthique et la politique de l’interdépendance tout en amplifiant et reliant des pratiques libératrices de mise en commun radicales-démocratiques face à des forces d’exploitation et d’oppression “dé-communisantes”.

Le commun comme principe stratégique

Pierre Dardot, Université Paris-Nanterre (Paris, France)

Le commun est avant tout un principe politique, celui de l’auto-gouvernement. Mais un tel principe peut-il être en même temps un principe stratégique, c’est-à-dire déterminer une certaine relation des moyens à la fin propre à faciliter la réalisation de la fin?L’émancipation sociale a longtemps figuré le « grand but » auxquels la lutte politique devait être subordonnée à titre de moyen. Entendu comme principe stratégique, le commun remet en cause une telle dissociation : il commande de reconnaître une certaine immanence de la fin à l’activité de mise en œuvre des moyens. Cette exigence vaut de la lutte pour l’émancipation ici et maintenant comme de la transition qui mène au-delà du capitalisme.

Utopie, imagination, pratique : ce que peut encore nous apprendre Mai 68

Christian Laval, Université Paris-Nanterre (Paris, France)

Longtemps, dans le mouvement socialiste, l’utopie a été condamnée au nom de la science. Sur les murs parisiens de 68 on pouvait lire : « soyez réalistes, demandez l’impossible ». Ou, plus directement : « l’imagination au pouvoir !». Avons-nous donc encore quelque chose à apprendre de la dimension utopique de 68 à un moment où l’on ne peut plus croire que le « mouvement réel » de l’histoire conduit nécessairement à la fin du capitalisme ? Aujourd’hui une voie s’ouvre qui, sous des noms différents, cherche à articuler de façon délibérément réaliste utopie et pratique : utopies concrètes, utopies réelles, pratiques utopiques ou préfiguratives, etc. Pis-aller ou nouvelle stratégie ?

À venir

Maude Prud’homme, (Canada)

Repenser le travail et l’économie au-delà du capitalisme

Julia Posca, Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques (IRIS) (Montréal, Canada)

Réfléchir à une sortie du capitalisme nous oblige à penser à la transformation du travail, et aux moyens de passer de l’aliénation à l’émancipation. C’est à cette tâche que nous nous attèlerons dans cette présentation. Le travail est entendu ici au sens large des activités qui concourent à la reproduction des conditions de vie d’une société et de ses membres. Penser un au-delà du capitalisme demande à la fois de prendre en compte la répartition de ces activités, l’organisation de leur mise en œuvre, et les objectifs poursuivis à travers leur réalisation. La constitution d’une économie post-capitaliste requiert quant à elle que ces exigences soient pensées à partir d’une éthique du care alliant soin des autres et de la nature.