Marxism 2008 is a five-day festival taking place in london at the start of July. Based around a series of debates, film screenings, gigs, theatre and exhibitions, the event engages with cultural and social issues as well as the overtly political or theoretical.
the website link's here and the programme's pretty good at laying everything out across the various venues. i'm currently in the process of putting together a list of interesting looking debates and working out whether it's worth £45 (though there are loads of discounts for students etc). anyone else interested?
I notice it's hosted
by Shaun Wright-Phillips. Good for him! Will his dad be providing the entertainment?
actually
both he and ian will be doing 'keep-uppy' for 6 hours to mark their solidarity with migrant workers from lithuania.
if you find that entertaining.
will be be wearing a beret?
My boyfriend said something about this
I think i might go
It looks potentially interesting
but I'm gonna give it a miss as it's organised by the SWP.
hah..
good to see that the sectarian squabbling amongst the Left is still cripplingly strong.
for the record i understand your general dislike but i don't understand how it invalidates the festival as a whole given that most of the speakers and debate leaders aren't SWP officers but scholars and activists in their own right.
To be honest I'm just jaded with the left as a whole at the moment.
And think attending this will just further my discomfort (I'm basically pro-Euston Manifesto, which probably in itself implies my position and what my fundamental dissatisfaction is).
Plus I sort of disagree with the entire concept. The thing with Marxism is that it's essentially an ecomomic theory put forward by a 19th century economist. And whilst it's got a lot to admire I also think it's massively over-used and too often people apply Marxist theory to non-economic areas and add their own biases because it just doesn't really fit.
I think my basic conclusion is that Marxism is to the left what the Bible is to Christians - a useful text but one that's too often distorted by people pursuing their own ends.
i think the reason marxism is still used as the banner
for events of this nature is because it was the theory that provided people with a sound critical perspective from which to scutinise the relationships of power and influence in society. it was a paradigm shift both in the history of idea but also in the personal experience of most of the people who will attend the festival. the principles maybe economic but their impact goes far beyond that. it's more revealing than anything that it was the public that voted marx the most influential *philosopher* of all time in the radio 4 competition.
the fact that people aren't able to completely move on from this point is a problem, i admit, but marxism is still the most powerful touchstone available for progressive politics. the problem is that there's no second step.
people absorb a critical awareness of economics and then either assume that it is to comprehensive and controlling to be changed, or they assume that the theory that gave them this awareness is the best method to changing the system, which it probably isn't.
regardless, i do see why attending an SWP event is going to irritate you on a basic level - it probably will do me - but i'm still hopeful that the educational and discursive aspect of the event will supercede the trumpeting of ideological obsessions. but then i've been hoping that of the SWP for a long time now...
ZOMGOODNESS
Paul LIBERAL HAWK ins
DID
YOU
SEE
WHAT
I
DID
THERE?
Um, sorry to be pedantic
But the reason Marxism is "applied to non-economic areas" is that, according to Marxism, economics governs everything. It's the converse of Hegel - material development and technological progress determines the structures of society. Hence looking at the economic base of a situation can, in theory, illuminate the political, social, and legal structures which arise out of them.
My major problem with Marxism is the revolutionary aspect. It's such an all-encompassing explanation of humanity, but its actual components (ideologies, exploitation, dialectical progress, the base and superstructure) are so subtle it's incredibly easy to misinterpret. Not that I think I have the final say on Marxism, of course, I'm just a lowly Philosophy undergraduate, but there's a point where you move from describing the past to predicting the future where things start to get a little tenuous. I mean, Marx was remarkably on the ball with much of what he wrote, even today - but when he actually tried to force the changes he predicted (like with the publication of the Communist Manifesto) he found himself out of his depth.
I find it a bit incorrect to think of Marxism as a 'revolutionary' idea, in the sense that it's an idea that can change society - all it says is that this is what has come before, this is why, and this is where it's leading. None of Marx's work is hugely specific on the micro level, merely the macro, so people were (and are) so caught up in the whole inexorable procession of human society bettering itself that they never really managed to find out exactly how that new society would look like...
marxism
may not provide a very effective model for enacting revolution, but it was/is a revolutionary idea capable of radically altering the perspective of people that encounter it.
I am going to attend.
I'm going to shout lots of slogans.
cool
i was waiting for the Nihilism Festival..
but noone could be arsed to set it up.
*tumbleweed*
Sounds like the Apathy Festival..
nobody turned up.
...
Typical proto-fascist reactionary mockist argument. When the revolution comes, etc etc