Following a series of successful conferences in recent years, transform! europe’s member organisation Center for Marxist Studies (CMS) hosts the Marx22 international conference, focusing on primitive accumulation.
The Marx22 international conference takes place from 28-30 October 2022 in Stockholm.
Why did capitalism emerge, and why does it persist? Marx argued that an understanding of capitalism’s blood-soaked prehistory is necessary if we want to understand and change the system. In the present era, when everything – from health care and water to our emotions and outer space – is rapidly transforming into commodities, it is more important than ever to think through the processes of capital accumulation.
For capitalism to exist at all, a class of people must be separated from the means of production and forced to sell their labor power in exchange for wages. But such a working class does not appear out of nothing – it must itself be created. The historical processes that gave rise to our modern class societies were accompanied, every step of the way, by violence and repression against those who resisted proletarianization and the plundering of the commons. Karl Marx called this process “primitive accumulation,” and he described capital coming into the world as “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.”
Within the Marxist tradition, the concept of “primitive accumulation” has been used in two different ways. First, the term has been used to delineate a historical period that provided the conditions for the capitalist mode of production to emerge. Second, “primitive accumulation” has been used to name the ongoing processes through which capital creates new markets, expands to new spheres of life, and reinvents itself by incorporating new resources.
Human trafficking, the commodification of water, and the grand plans of Silicon Valley moguls to colonize Mars are only a few examples of how our bodies, life-worlds, and surroundings are incorporated into capital’s process of accumulation. How can we understand these processes? And what can we do to limit and roll back the expansion of capital’s rule?
Interpretation: English, some of the sessions will be held in Swedish
Organisers:
Programme
Please find here the preliminary programme schedule of the conference.
Friday, 28 Oct 2022
17:00–20:00 (CET): Marx22 Public Event
Informal mixer at the venue restaurant/pub.
Book reading by poet, playwright and critic Athena Farrokhzad
Saturday, 29 Oct 2022
10:00-10:30 (CET): Welcome Address
The organisers
Location: Zäta
10:30–12:00 (CET): Keynote 1
Is globalization really over? Mutations of capitalism in an age of pandemic and war.
Sandro Mezzadra
Location: Zäta
12:00–14:00 (CET): Parallel sessions:
Hur tar vi hyreskampen vidare?
Aktivister från Alla ska bo kvar, Allt åt alla och Ort till ort. Moderatorer: Maria Wallstam & Ilhan Kellecioglu
Location: Hjärtat
Efter den ursprungliga ackumulationen – erkännandet som upprättelse.
Magnus Hörnqvist, Johan Lindgren med flera. Moderator: Shabane Barot. Arr: Fronesis.
Location: Kata
Om kapitalismens politisk-rättsliga former och innehåll
David Jivegård, Hugo Lundberg, Hedvig Lärka, Carl Wilén. Moderator: Vanja Carlsson. Arr: Fronesis.
Location: Palme
Digital Capitalism: From Disciplinary Regime to Surveillance Capitalism. How Digitalization is Changing the Nature of Labor Exploitation.
transform! Europe
Location: Sandler
Extraktion
Tidningen Brand
Location: Per Albin
12:00–12:30 (CET): The privatisation of the commons
Erik Hallberg & Lars Nyström
Location: Branting
12:30–13:00 (CET): Den ursprungliga ackumulationens plats i Kapitalet
Anders Ramsay
Location: Branting
13:00–13:30 (CET): The legal and social production of difference
Olivia Maury
Location: Branting
13:30–14:00 (CET): Primitive accumulation in ”post-socialist” capitalism
Gavin Rae
Location: Branting
14:00–15:30 (CET): Keynote 2 – Markets, planning and the politics of human need
Aaron Benanav
Location: Zäta
16:00–17:30 (CET): Parallel sessions:
War, ”Original” Accumulation and Accumulation. Topicality of Rosa Luxemburg’s 1913 Writing ”The Accumulation of Capital” on the Eve of World War I.
Gavin Rae. Arr. !transform europe
Location: Hjärtat
Svensk rasifiering och repression – kolonial politik och/eller klassisk klasspolitik?
Paneldiskussion med Leandro Mulinari, Lina Mohageb & Håkan Blomqvist. Samtalsledare: John Hörnquist
Location: Kata
The history and theory of mute compulsion
Panel discussion with Søren Mau, Carl Cassegård, Lotte Schack och Carl Wilén. Moderator: Evelina Johansson Wilén. Arr: Röda Rummet.
Location: Palme
Offentlig-gemensam samverkan
Podcasten Rekreation
Location: Sandler
16:00–16:30 (CET): Vad kan 1800-talets torparhushåll säga om ursprunglig ackumulation och social reproduktion?
Carolina Uppenberg
Location: Branting
16:30–17:00 (CET): Skolan och klassamhället: Resultat från ett avhandlingsarbete
Tommie Petersson
Location: Branting
Surveillance capitalism and the datafication of Finnish public health infrastructure
Matti Kortesoja
Location: Per Albin
And now digital accumulation!
Carlos Felipe Da Silva Costa
Location: Per Albin
17:00–17:30 (CET): Rapport inifrån ”Hemblahelvetet”: Röster från Hemblas bostäder i Husby, Stockholm
Ilhan Kellecioglu
Location: Branting
Pseudo Subjectification i.e. True Objectification: The Social Credit System As the Means of Power Maintenance and Alienation
Güven Savul
Location: Per Albin
Sunday, 30 Oct
10:00–11:30 (CET): Keynote 3
Location: Zäta
11:30–13:30 (CET): Parallel sessions:
”Expropriating the expropriators”: The past, present and future of a gnomic utterance.
Panel with Cecilia Cavalcante-Schuback, David Payne, Gustav Strandberg, Kim West
Location: Palme
Landsbygder i den globala kapitalismen
Arr: Fronesis
Location: Sandler
The past, present and future of space accumulation
Maria Küchen, Markus Gunneflo & Roman Privalov. Moderator: Majsa Allelin
Location: Zäta
11:30–12:00 (CET): Kapitalism, frihet och alienation
Johan Alfonsson
Location: Branting
Decentralised finance, territorial appropriation and dispossession
Beth Geglia
Location: Per Albin
11:30–12:30 (CET): Climate change as class war: Building socialism on a warming planet
Matthew T. Huber presents his book Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet
Location: Kata
12:00–12:30 (CET): Spridningen av managementidéer inom staten under andra världskriget
Tony Kenttä
Location: Branting
The gilded genesis of structuralism and contemprorary discourse theory
Tor Hammer
Location: Per Albin
12:30–13:00 (CET): Hur går vänstern vidare när alla människor är auktoritära?
Mats Deland
Location: Branting
Accumulation because we do not trust humanity
Carlos Felipe Da Silva Costa
Location: Per Albin
12:30–13:30 (CET): Cybernetic planning and climate change reversal
Tomas Härdin & David Zachariah
Location: Kata
13:30–15:00 (CET): Parallel sessions:
Caliban and the Witch 20 år
Allt åt Alla Kvinnofront
Location: Hjärtat
Det gäller att både tolka och förändra världen
Samtal om tre böcker om klimat och kapitalism av och med Herman Geijer, Rikard Hjorth Warlenius, Ståle Holgersen. Moderator: Shabane Barot
Location: Kata
Den multipolära världens framväxt – början till slutet för kapitalismens underliggande ursprungliga ackumulation?
Mathias Wåg, John Hörnqvist & Fransisco Contreras
Location: Palme
Militanta undersökningar – eller den vetenskapliga socialismen i det 21:a århundradet
Allt åt alla Göteborg
Location: Sandler
13:30–14:00 (CET): Racism, capitalism, and primitive accumulation
Viola Bao
Location: Branting
Expropriating hydrocarbons in the 21st century: Lessons from history
Matthew T. Huber
Location: Per Albin
14:00–14:30 (CET): About the totally expropriated capital and value producing plantation unfree labour
Krista Lillemets
Location: Branting
Rationalisering och nedskärning i statsförvaltningen under andra världskriget
Tony Kenttä
Location: Per Albin
14:30–15:00 (CET): Det profitabla våldet och dess ideologi
Puya Yekerusta
Location: Branting
15:00–16:30 (CET): Keynote 4 – Imperialism and capital’s ”historic mission”
Vivek Chibber
Location: Zäta