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Panel to Facilitated by Mariko Frame, Felix Mantz
In the capitalist world-system core imperial countries maintain hegemony through monopolistic control of finance, natural resources, technology, global military power, ideology, and information/education/psychology. Ecological imperialism and eco-apartheid manifest as widespread economic dispossession, ecological destruction and other global crises, driven by a capitalist world-system built upon a system bent upon continued capital accumulation at all costs. While this has created obscene wealth for the few, billions of the world’s people are excluded from a humane standard of living. Women, Africana peoples, indigenous peoples, the global proletariat, the urban and rural poor, all suffer from an economic system that is deeply racist, patriarchal, stratified, and unsustainable.
But when we talk about the capitalist world-system and ecological imperialism, what really are the core features and structures? This panel brings together scholars and activists to discuss fundamental features of imperialism and global capitalism both at the global level (between Global North and Global South) while also discussing the specifics of class, gender and race. Two panelists will bring their expertise as Africana scholars and activists to interrogate the centrality of race and gender, as well as the significance of Black liberation struggles to resisting ecological imperialism, while the third panelist will overview the more ambiguous and complex position of rising ‘emerging’ economies in Asia from a world-systems and stratification economics approach.
Panelists infos to come.
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Cette conférence vise à dégager, à partir des orientations stratégiques du panel précédent, les modalités organisationnelles et pratiques d’un syndicalisme de mouvement social vert. Cet exercice prendra principalement la forme d’une analyse des avancées et limites politiques d'exemples inspirants de luttes écologistes en milieu de travail au Québec et aux États-Unis. Pour reconvertir écologiquement les grandes industries, comment faire converger les luttes des travailleurs et travailleuses pour de bons emplois garantis, la santé et sécurité au travail et les impératifs écologiques ? Comment impliquer les travailleurs et travailleuses des principaux secteurs polluants dans une lutte pour une transition juste? Comment garantir que la création de nouveaux secteurs verts ne mène pas à des emplois non syndiqués et moins bien rémunérés relativement aux secteurs syndiqués polluants actuels? Quelle stratégie en milieu de travail et quels moyens de pression sont envisageables pour construire un rapport de force à même les entreprises polluantes mais également au sein des secteurs verts? Comment ces luttes doivent-elles s’articuler à un programme de « réformes non-réformistes » visant à garantir une amélioration des conditions de vie face à une insécurité économique et écologique croissante? Cette conférence permettra d'ouvrir la réflexion à l'organisation d'un nouveau front des travailleurs et travailleuses pour la justice climatique et écologique, pavant la voie à une pratique politique écosocialiste.
Panélistes : François Geoffroy, co-porte-parole de Travailleurs et travailleuses pour la justice climatique (TJC); Pierre-Olivier Parent, militant syndical, CSN-Construction; plus à venir.
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Description à venir.
Panel to Guillaume Beaulieu, Justine Grandmont, Marie-Pierre Boucher
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Mattick (1979) describing Marx claimed: “The main task that Marx took on as a revolutionary intellectual...was the task of theory: the elaboration of a set of concepts...that would permit a better comprehension of the struggle between labor and capital. He wanted his work on capitalism to be more accessible to the working class ….The function of theory was to help the movement as a whole clarify its problems and possibilities.” Capital is a challenging text. Yet in that time many of its ideas were translated and transmitted into the consciousness of the working class. How and on what terms can this process begin anew for Marxism today?
Correcting the March of History: Marxism and the struggle for Palestinian liberation - Yara Shoufani. Marxist analysis provides tools that highlight the Palestinian bourgeoisie’s class collaboration with imperialism (e.g., the neoliberal project of the Oslo Accords) and the importance of the Palestinian peasantry and working class in the struggle for national liberation. By using Marxist theory to investigate historic and contemporary conditions, this paper argues we can intervene strategically to pursue a revolutionary path for total liberation.
History's Schools" and Knowledge Production in 21st Century Class Struggles - Nithya Nagarajan. Explores how contemporary class-based social movements turn to "history's schools" (past revolutionary praxis) to develop pedagogical strategies and critical theory for political organization.
‘Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement’ - Raju Das. Discusses what revolutionary theory needs to do/be today, and how it can be developed in the face of the many obstacles to an alternative world.
A Bridge Too Far? Marxist Theory and 21st Century Strategies for Class Struggle - Robert Latham. Explores potential ways of using knowledge generated via academic Marxism for framing especially dialectical strategies in the dynamic of today's advanced capitalism.
Panel to Facilitated by Révolution écosocialiste
La droite québécoise sort renforcée des dernières élections générales. La gauche québécoise, cherchant la respectabilité économique, a misé sur un recentrage de son discours qui n'a pas donné les résultats souhaités. Les luttes écologistes locales et internationales semblent stagner et peinent à orienter la transition vers une sortie du capitalisme. Aujourd'hui, une transition écosocialiste ne pourra pas faire l'économie d'une critique radicale de toute concertation avec le capitalisme. Par conséquent, elle revendique la proposition renouvelée d'une rupture locale et internationale avec ce système.
Ce panel examine les apports concrets du projet écosocialiste et ses limites. Quelles sont les caractéristiques d'une économie écosocialiste et quelle place y occupe la décroissance? Comment promouvoir la démocratie participative dans les sphères sociales, économiques, écologiques? Quelles sont les actions concrètes pour surmonter la lenteur dans la reprise de la mobilisation des mouvements sociaux? Quels sont les obstacles à une convergence anticapitaliste des luttes?
Informations des panélistes à venir.
Discussion to Facilitated by Institut de recherche et d'informations socioéconomiques (IRIS)
Dans le système international actuel, un gouvernement qui ne respecte pas les règles budgétaires ou commerciales s’expose à des conséquences de différentes natures. Il peut voir sa cote de crédit être réduite par les agences de notation. Il peut être amené devant l’Organe de règlement des différends de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce. Il peut être forcé d’appliquer un programme d’ajustement structurel, associé à des mesures d’austérité et à la libéralisation des échanges. Il peut aussi subir des conséquences indirectes, comme un exode des capitaux.
Or, un gouvernement qui souhaite réellement mettre en œuvre un programme de gauche risque fort d’être confronté à ce type de situations. Des mesures pour favoriser l’économie locale dans une perspective écologique pourraient être en conflit avec les accords de libre-échange. Un pays européen qui voudrait améliorer significativement ses programmes sociaux pourrait enfreindre la règle de l’Union européenne qui exige que les États membres limitent leurs déficits annuels à 3% de leur PIB.
En même temps, la pandémie de covid-19 nous a montré que certaines règles apparemment inébranlables pouvaient être suspendues rapidement en situation de crise. La crise climatique forcera sans doute d’autres suspensions des contraintes internationales. Ce panel vise à réfléchir aux écueils et aux possibilités de mise en œuvre d’un programme de gauche dans le contexte international actuel et futur.
Cette table ronde est organisée par l'IRIS.
Panélistes : Alessandra Devulsky, Christian Pépin et Audrey Laurin-Lamothe.
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Michelle Robidoux, une représentante de la gauche canadienne de Toronto, dressera le portrait des luttes dans le ROC et des perspectives d'alliances. Mélissa Mollen Dupuis parlera des préoccupations et aspirations des peuples autochtones. Finalement, André Frappier parlera de la lutte de libération nationale contre l'État impérialiste canadien et de la nécessaire perspective d'alliance avec la classe ouvrière canadienne et avec les peuples autochtones.
Panélistes : Michelle Robidoux, Mélissa Mollen Dupuis, André Frappier
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Depuis que John Bellamy Foster, l’un des principaux théoriciens de l’écosocialisme, publie en 2011 sa critique de la décroissance dans la revue de gauche britannique Red Pepper, une critique qui visait principalement quelques écrits de l’objecteur de la croissance français Serge Latouche, les échanges entre les deux courants de pensée ne furent que sporadiques. Au sein de chacun, une compréhension quelque peu réductionniste des analyses et préceptes de l’autre prédominait. De leur côté, les écosocialistes voyaient dans la décroissance un refus d’affronter la question primordiale du capitalisme et de reconnaitre le rôle incontournable d’une lutte de classe dans construction d’un monde plus sain et viable, tandis que les objecteurs de croissance avaient tendance à rejeter l’écosocialisme comme figé dans un paradigme dépassé et considérer ses défenseurs naïvement optimistes quant aux remèdes technologiques à la dégradation sans fin de l’habitat terrestre.
Toutefois, avec l’aggravation de la catastrophe écologique, on observe de plus en plus d’intérêt pour la décroissance dans certains milieux intellectuels. Cette polarisation stérile semble donc s’estomper peu à peu, permettant ainsi d’ouvrir un espace pour un nouveau dialogue. On entend même parler de ‘décroissance écosocialiste’. Notre panel cherchera à comprendre les opportunités et les limites de cette ouverture. Sans minimiser les divergences philosophiques importantes, nous nous pencherons sur ce qui nous rapproche et les possibilités de conjuguer nos efforts analytiques et programmatiques dans l’intérêt de renforcer et de rallier les forces de changement radical.
Panélistes : Yves-Marie Abraham, Bengi Akbulut, Aaron Vansintjan, Andrea Levy, Louis Marion
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Michael Goldfield (Emeritus Professor Wayne State University): The Limits of White Skin Privilege
The question of alleged “white skin privileges” has become more prominent recently, especially among liberal whites in the United States. It has also received renewed attention by many on the left. This essay will attempt to do four things: First, it will trace the origins of the term and its many variations on the left, taking not just a U.S., but a global perspective. Second, it will try to provide some precision in the use of the term, both internationally, but also with respect to racially dominant workers in the Economically Developed Countries (EDCs). Thirdly, it will examine the nature of these benefits and privileges that dominant workers allegedly receive, the degree to which these benefits function as bribes, and to what degree they provide obstacles to unifying workers internationally, between EDC and LDC workers, and within the EDCs themselves. Fourthly, it will suggest the best strategies for dealing with these issues.
Charles Post (City University of New York): Race and Capitalism: A Necessary or Contingent Relationship?
Anti-racist debate today remains polarized between “class reductionist” (any attempt to address racial disparities reinforces capitalist class relations) and “liberal identity” (disparities in racial representation can be resolved without questioning class inequality) politics. Both positions share a common perspective – racial oppression and class exploitation are the products of distinctive social dynamics whose relationship is historically contingent. This essay is an initial step toward a structurally necessary relationship between capitalism and racial oppression. The essay draws upon on Anwar Shaikh and Howard Botwinick’s elaboration of Marx’s political economy; and Ellen Wood’s analysis of the specificity of capitalism imperialism.
Cedric Johnson (University of Illinois-Chicago): Comments on Goldfield and Post
Panelists : Charles Post, Michael Goldfield
Presentation : Cedric Johnson
Panel to Facilitated by Alternatives RÏSE, Intercoll, FMAS
Activité conjointe Alternatives, RÏSE, Intercoll, FMAS.
Traduction offerte : Anglais/Français/Espagnol
Le combat en éducation aujourd’hui est populaire et citoyen. Il s’agit d’offrir l’accès à des apprentissages qui accentue les prises de conscience collective sur les enjeux multiples des crises et des différents aspects de l’agir citoyen. L’objectif est de réussir à bâtir un plaidoyer pour les autres éducations, suivant l'appel des mouvements en éducation au Forum social mondial de Mexico, à l’intérieur et à l’extérieur de l’école.
Cet atelier présentera pourquoi réunir les collectifs, réseaux et organisations du monde de l’Éducation comme des mouvements sociaux de la planète, à se mobiliser sur un projet de Forum social mondial en éducation (FSMÉ). Il ne s'agit pas de reproduire les conférences officielles de l'UNESCO, mais de proposer une orientation pour le monde de l'éducation, celle de la valorisation de la diversité en éducation, des différentes formes d’apprentissage, du droit à l’éducation tout au long de la vie, de l’éducation populaire et à la citoyenneté. Il sera le forum du droit à une éducation mieux adaptée aux nouvelles réalités des identités croisées des populations de la planète, pour faire face aux défis des crises systémiques qui frappent l’humanité.
Panélistes : Hamouda Soubhi, Conseil international du Forum social mondial (CI FSM), Forum marocain pour des alternatives sociales (FMAS — Maroc) et Alternatives (possiblement en personne) ; Ronald Cameron, RISE — Réseau internationale d’innovation sociale et écologique (Québec) ; Cheima Ben Hmida, Intercoll France) ; Refat Sabah, président du GCE — Global Campaign for Education (mondial) et fondateur du Teacher Creativity Center en Palestin ; Nancy Lizarazo (CLADE) ; Solange Akpo (ANCEFA)
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Une conférence avec Maude Prud’homme et Stephane Gendron
Dans la société moderne et ultra-urbaine, le mode de vie qu’est la ruralité est en voie de disparition et le Québec n’échappe pas à ce phénomène mondial. Cet effacement progressif de la paysannerie est une véritable tragédie qui touche des centaines de municipalités et les gens qui y habitent. La petite mort des régions au profit des villes est bien avancée mais selon Stéphane Gendron, il est encore possible de renaître, occuper nos territoires et y vivre dignement. La militante anarchiste, écologiste et agricultrice Maude Prud’homme s’entretient avec l’ex-maire de la ville de Huntingdon Stephane Gendron afin de discuter de ruralité dans un monde en crise.
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Description à venir.
Panel to Facilitated by Eduardo Carrillo, Pia Garavaglia, Arturo Arriagada, Rafael grohmann, Tatiana Lopez, Alessio Bertolini
This workshop aims to centralise and shed light on different experiences suffered by global south gig economy workers. The Fairwork (FW) project is committed to highlighting best and worst practices in the platform economy. The five Principles of FW were developed through an extensive literature review of published research on job quality, stakeholder meetings involving platform operators, policymakers, trade unions, and academics and in-country meetings with local stakeholders.
By rating gig economy platforms in more than 30 countries across the globe, the FW project aims to improve working conditions of gig workers. As part of its methodology process, FW conducts in depth interviews with gig economy workers to document their experiences and used them as part of the rating process. This workshop proposes to highlight experiences of more than 400 interviews conducted between 2021 and 2022, to workers from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Paraguay. Concretely, a team of principal researchers of such countries will narrate some of the evidence gathered through interviews to reflect on the ways in which gig economy platforms have reconfigure labour rights and, more importantly, how this has affected millions of lives across Latin America. This process also involved interviews to platform managers, who provided their point of view regarding the Fairwork principles as well as the policies in which they incurr to comply with them. Even though most platforms didn't show enough evidence to prove fair practices, this dialogues constitute a fundamental milestone in order to improve working conditions.
Moreover, we expect that the workshop can offer collective discussions to address important policy debates in the region and globally in relation to gig economy regulation. Such discussions will then end with strategisation about the best possible pathways regarding policy- making in this topic, and in a way towards the improvement of workers' rights in the gig economy.
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A kinder, gentler masculinity will not save us: Abolitionist, anticapitalist perspectives on patriarchy
Scott RitchieUnder capitalism, gender and patriarchy are strategically deployed to organize bodies and territories, imbricating cisheteropatriarchy with settler colonialism, white supremacy, empire, and other systems of domination. These processes are strategically obscured to prevent their discernment and to maintain exploitation. In this paper, I focus on the field of masculinity studies, showing how masculinity is used as a ruse to divide and conquer and how masculinity overlaps with other systems of exploitation and oppression.
Within the masculinity studies community—particularly in the U.S.—a large percentage of scholars and activists fall prey to capitalism’s ideology of atomization, drawing upon psychological theories to help change individual men rather than examining and implicating more macro-level structures. I argue that focusing on individual behaviors as the scope of change serves the interests of capital, as it: (a) masks the role of cisheteropatriarchy in inflicting settler colonial genocide in the founding of the U.S.; (b) obscures how men and masculine people are harmed by patriarchy and neoliberal capitalism; (c) ignores detrimental policies and practices enacted at the systemic level (e.g., gender wage gaps, cuts to social services, lack of parental employment leave after childbirth); and (d) eclipses collective movements for social change and calls for redistributive solutions. Instead, those interested in masculinity studies can form alliances with abolitionist, anticapitalist, and eco-socialist feminists who seek to dismantle what bell hooks calls “imperialist, white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy” by fighting for collective liberation through affordable housing, free healthcare and childcare, elimination of gender wage disparity, transformative justice, and mutual aid.
Alienation, Ecology and Sexual Formation
ALAN SEARSThis paper explores the ways the alienation of labour in capitalist societies frames processes of gender and sexual formation. Labour, understood in the broadest sense as life-making, the creative activity of transforming the world around us physically and mentally to get what we want and need, has fundamental erotic dimensions. This broad definition of creative and transformative labour goes far beyond the everyday sense of work in capitalist societies as monetized labour and/or unpaid or poorly paid reproductive work required to sustain ourselves and each other. People realize themselves through individual and collective transformation of their environments, producing things, ideas, relationships and ways of living.
In conditions of alienation, erotic fulfillment is hived off from transformative life-making and channeled into the narrow realm of sexuality defined by a limited repertoire of activities deemed ‘sexual’ and organized around the gendered orientation of desire (e.g. hetero, homo or bi). People increasingly treat their human capacities, including erotic engagement, as alienable property for exchange in market model relationships governed by contract. However, this alienation is never absolute, as human life-making capacities are ultimately inseparable from the creative beings who mobilize their bodies and minds to perform labour. Duress can suppress but not obliterate the creative and transformative character of human life-making. This paper argues for a queer marxism oriented towards overcoming alienation through mass insurgency as a fundamental condition of sexual liberation
Paper Presentation: Theorizing Capital’s Production and Exploitation of Differentiated Subjects
Davide VentroneA major issue in the study of capitalist social relations includes connecting the production of workers’ subjectivity, which comprises forms of consciousness, self-understandings, attitudes, and dispositions, with the capitalist mode of production itself. The question often arises as to whether capitalism produces an overall homogenization or differentiation of workers. Marxian analyses traditionally emphasize the similarities between members of the proletariat, while more contemporary theories of racial capitalism, social reproduction, and labor migration focus on how labor differentiation is crucial to understanding relations of exploitation. Rather than emphasizing one facet, I argue that social homogenization and differentiation of labor can both be accounted for using Marx’s critique of political economy. By employing Marx’s value-theory analysis and synthesizing the abstract and concrete characters of labor, I argue that capital both homogenizes and differentiates labor through the production of numerous subjectivities, i.e., productive subjects. This refers to the process by which the concrete content of embodied social differentiation (by race, gender, ethnicity, citizenship, occupations, skills and so on) develops in dialectical relation with abstract forms of capitalist social relations to produce various productive subjects for capital to exploit. Rather than discrimination being explained as the result of a separate process, I demonstrate how labor differentiation is intimately connected to the development of capital’s exploitation and the division of labor. This theorization will exhibit how the literature on social difference can be synthesized with Marx’s critique of political economy by recognizing homogenization and differentiation as inherently related forces. Ultimately, the goal is to show how systems of exploitation are inseparable and therefore must be analyzed together if they are to be understood at all.
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Revolutionary reparations : An action plan for reparative justice and system change
Description coming soon.
Time Matters: Challenging Post-Marx Marxism's Property Fetish
Time Matters: Challenging Post-Marx Marxism’s Property Fetish
Abstract of Paper by Peter Hudis at 2023 conference Le Grande Transition, Montreal
A major challenge facing revolutionary theory is re-envisioning socialism as a transformation of alienated human relations, as against presuming that annulling bourgeois property rights (either through social democratic legislation or more revolutionary measures) ensures an exit from capitalism. The new English translation of Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program, published by PM Press with a substantial introduction by myself, addresses this by highlighting Marx’s distinction between value and wealth, actual labor time and socially necessary labor time, and abolishing value and surplus value versus their “fair” redistribution. By focusing on the all-important time determination that governs capitalist value production, Marx’s Critique provides direction for contemporary efforts to articulate a viable conception of socialism that overcomes the tendency of many Marxists and non-Marxists alike to prioritize property forms and market relations over social relations of production and reproduction.
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Land-Use and Economic Implications of Terrorists’ Rehabilitation and Reintegration in Northeast Nigeria
Ikem Godspower UjeneAgainst conventional literature, my PhD fieldwork has unearthed striking scenarios of the impact of Nigeria’s ongoing reintegration of Boko Haram (BH) members on land and economic activities. A respondent revealed that;
"We can now access our farmlands, but there is a limit to where we can go. Sometimes you will see the BH members up there looking at you with their guns but won’t attack. They will even greet you but you don’t have to cross the line that they have drawn." KII/2022/Male/Maiduguri/Farmer
Using conflict-sensitivity model (Akinyoade, 2019), these data reveal traces of economic improvements in the study areas. However, evidences of informal affordances of shared spaces (best put ‘shared bushes’) have bifurcated land ownership between government and terrorists in the affected region - a new trajectory on land use in Nigeria. The study was occasioned by the knowledge that life in majority of the BH affected communities is mostly agrarian and economic activities hugely revolve around the allocation and use of land (Adelaja & George, 2019).
Through a cross-sectional design, the study selected 74 research participants from three study areas (Gombe, Maiduguri and Chibok) in northeast. Ex-BH members, IOM, UNICEF, Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Development, Operation Safe Corridor, community/religious leaders, farmers and IDPs formed the study population. Data were gathered through KII, IDI and FGD and were thematically analyzed with the aid of Nvivo software. Verbatim quotations were adopted where necessary.
The limits of "local" resistance to a global food system: A case study of scale, territory, and power in northern Guatemala
Lazar KonfortiSince the turn of the 21st century, the establishment and subsequent expansion of three (agro)extractive industries – sugarcane, oil palm, and nickel mining – in the Polochic valley lowlands of northern Guatemala reduced local indigenous Q’eqchi’ campesino (peasant) communities’ access to farmland. Q’eqchi’ communities and their allies have engaged in various forms of political contestation in “defence of territory” to reclaim land and advance visions of food sovereignty. By 2015, the resistance had led to the retreat of a major sugarcane producer, thus freeing up thousands of hectares for Q’eqchi’ communities to reoccupy. In this conference paper, I present the results of livelihoods surveys conducted shortly after the land occupations. The surveys show that despite discursive overtures to principles of food sovereignty and alternative campesino economies, households with access to land by and large provide cheap labour, cheap wage goods, and cheap commodities (including environmental services) that sustain the national plantation-based agro-export industry and related global circuits of accumulation. The paper goes on to explore the structural economic and political factors that have helped produce this suboptimal outcome. I argue that while campesinos were able to contest property relations and liberate much-needed spaces of social reproduction, the broader structures that shape labour regimes, income distribution, and social reproduction have remained largely intact. This is due to the nature of Guatemala’s elite-dominated political spaces limits the scope and scale of the transformation that can be achieved. Finally, I propose that the long-term goal of sustainable agrarian change will remain conditional on a radical transformation of power relations and political spaces within Guatemala – a transformation that would require rethinking the scale and scope of territorial struggles.
“Barking up the wrong tree”: Informal African indigenous plant nurseries in the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, c.1990 to present
Historically, indigenous plants have held a significant place in the social, environmental and political landscape of African society. Yet, the contributions of plant nurseries operated by black African families remain at the fringes of environmental conversations. By tracing the development of informal African indigenous plant nurseries in the Maluleke conservation area located in the Great Limpopo Trans-frontier Park (GLTP) from around 1990 to the present, this paper demonstrates how plant nurseries are both economic and political hubs, and battlefields of control between the locals and game park authorities. Based on an array of both oral and archival sources from nursery operators, game park officials and tourists, the paper explores the protracted tensions and contestations for resource control – how plants are grown, preserved and distributed. While living in harmony for most parts, the relationship between conservation park authorities and black African nursery operators is taut. By showing how plants encroach boundaries of authority and culture, this paper joins a growing historiographical conversation on resource management, demonstrating how amid increasing economic and anthropogenic hardships in the post-2000 years, more and more African families turned to operate (unregistered) indigenous plant nurseries as a panacea to the crisis. The work shows how growing global medicinal and recreational demand for indigenous plants exposed the local landscape to uncontrolled consumption of different plant varieties and became an alibi for smugglers in the park. This story allows us to explore the shifting battles over resource management and revisit on how ‘small people’ have fought back against hunger.
Shaping a Communitarian Ethos in an Era of Ecological Crisis
David BarkinIn response to the deep social and ecological crisis for which the international community is proving incapable of attenuating, many Peasants and Indigenous peoples in Mexico, and in other parts of the Global South, are transforming their visions of their futures, shaping a new ethos of self-management and conviviality, consistent with a responsible relationship to their territories. From the vantage point of the Global South, these peoples constitute a social and economic force that is altering the social and productive dynamics in many countries, proposing models of organization and building alliances among themselves regionally and internationally to exchange information, develop common strategies, and provide political support. In Mexico, many continue to produce traditional crops, while modifying their techniques to incorporate agroecological experiences from other communities, diversifying output and protecting the environment. Recently, they are enriching local practices with a systematisation of their inherited traditions and cosmologies, creating effective models of social, political and environmental organisation that lend authority to their claims to be able to manage their territories autonomously. There is a growing body of scientific literature that substantiates this capacity, demonstrating that the collective knowledge of the global networks of local communities is more effective in protecting biodiversity and attending to their own basic needs while improving their quality of life than that of societies more fully integrated into the global economy. In conclusion, we describe how these visions are shaping international networks, defining new channels for collaboration, improving the quality of life for people in these communities, while protecting them from the continuing incursions of capital.
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The norms and institutions of representative governance and liberal rights are under increasing pressure from the extreme-right and various forms of authoritarianism. Over the last decade, liberal rule has been destabilized by the political and economic volatility associated with the capitalist crisis beginning in 2007-08, the most serious conflagration in the world-system since the Great Depression. Of course, these proximate catalysts of instability built on decades of intractable neoliberal commitment to market discipline and austerity by states around the world, as well as the unending War on Terror led by the United States and its allies. This interdisciplinary and multinational panel explores the contention that the most salient threat to the liberal-democratic form of rule at present is not fascism per se, but a wider set of anti-democratic phenomena and inclinations. Todd Gordon and Jeff Webber argue that there is an authoritarian disposition at the core of capitalism, a tendency integral to its very nature as a system of exploitation, oppression, and alienation. Robert Knox traces the way in which the authoritarian right has deployed critiques of the rule of law and supranational institutions in response to crises of capitalism. Irina Ceric takes up the related question of how left movements and organizations can respond to invocations of constitutional rights by far-right formations. Adrian Smith considers a far-right plot to overthrow the government of Dominica in the early 1980s as exemplary of both capitalism's authoritarianism and the deployment of rule of law critiques.
Panelists : Irina Ceric, Robert Knox, Adrian Smith, Todd Gordon, Jeff Webber
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The Premise of Organization
Cam WestI would like to present a paper that will be forthcoming in Negation Magazine on contemporary communist organization. Theory/practice and workers/intellectuals are dominant categories within Marxism, and are still used today to describe problems in contemporary politics. After articulating how they have been conceptualized within the Marxist tradition, I show how LouisAlthusser re-conceptualizes the relationship between the former, and how Antonio Gramsci re-conceptualizes intellectuals. I argue that positing the problem of communist politics as solving the relationship between workers and intellectuals masks the real contradiction between leaders and led. One way to overcome this contradiction is by abolishing the division of labor in communist politics. On the one hand, I think it is necessary for organizers and workers to produce theory (and they already do), and for theorists to organize, while on the other, we should at the very least acknowledge the primacy of communist politics in theory. I view theorizing and organizing/practicing politics as being internal to the same process, rather than theorizing as being external to the process. This is the basis for my rejection of the merger thesis–socialism and theorizing are not external to the workers movement. I explore, within the Marxist or communist tradition, visions and practices that seek to abolish the division of labor. This was present in Marx and Lenin, it was embraced by the workerists, it was experimented with in the GPCR, and it was conceptualized by Lazarus. I conclude that the problem of contemporary politics is not activism or something else, but disorganization (the result of the defeat of the left). The goal is to rebuild working class and communist organization, and hopefully in a way that embraces abolishing these divisions of labor or hierarchies within movements.
Reconciling Gramscian Hegemony and Grassroots Democracy
Shannon IkebeIn this paper, I seek to contribute towards an interpretation of Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, by integrating Robert Michels’ theory of oligarchy. Gramsci posits that for the subaltern classes to overcome capitalism, they must build a proletarian party led by a hegemonic leadership, which he considers as necessary to effectively challenge bourgeois hegemony in the civil society and the state.
In Gramsci’s theory, this leadership of organic intellectuals of the working-class should be internally hegemonic as well, since the existing bourgeois hegemony limits spontaneous rank-and-file working-class consciousness. Thus, the leadership should guide and educate the rank-and-file, so that they can be united and effective in the class struggle against the bourgeoisie. In working-class parties, it is imperative that “hegemony will be exercised not by privileged groups but by the progressive elements,” Gramsci emphasizes.
But such an imperative has not been fulfilled in practice. Throughout the history of socialism and social democracy, the leadership of those parties has most often sided with bourgeois hegemony at pivotal moments, saving capitalism in crisis and acting against their own base of militant workers. Strong intra-party hegemony of the leaders over the base, instead of becoming a sharp weapon against capital, is commonly turned against the rank-and-file workers.
Robert Michels’ theory of oligarchy, which delineates myriad mechanisms that induce consolidation of top-down rule in socialist parties, offers essential insights into Gramscian theory. Gramsci denounced Michels’ theory as “confused and schematic”, and there are definite contradictions between these two theories. However, seeking to integrate Michels’ critique of oligarchy into Gramscian strategy for hegemonic party-building is essential for building an effective political force for proletarian hegemony, based on maximum grassroots democracy.
On organizing a Socialist Party without dogmatism or centralization.
Themes: Intersectional, Feminist, Socialist, Historical Materialism, Organization.
As a York University PhD Candidate in International Political Economy who researches The Canadian state and economic stimulus during the Pandemic, I hope to lead a discussion on the practical question of organization. History has moved the study of Marxism beyond the surety of structure or the guarantee of Hegelian modernist progress. It is now critical to understand the violence of modernity as a patriarchal, racist and classist project but where does that leave the "progressive" demands of Socialism? How do we build productive pollical programs which reckon with both the need for moving beyond capitalism and the complexities of modern political science? How do we move beyond the objectivity and dogmatism of Trotskyist/Leninist Traditions that has led to endless splits and divisions over productive revolutionary action? How do we navigate the Gramscian tension between intellectuals and political sloganeering and simplicity? The purpose of all of this is to develop a form of a reflexive political program that bridges the divide between the need for conciseness and with the complexity of our intersectional world.
Is democracy enough to fight against the global civilization crisis?
Ines Duran MatuteWhat is ‘democracy’? Is it enough to stop pandemics, devastation, and climate change? Why, thus, are we walking toward our extinction? This presentation scrutinizes the concept of democracy to reflect on the Congreso Nacional Indígena (CNI) and the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) proposal to “struggle for Life”. Since 2017, their actions have had this underlying message to look for ways to stay alive, preserve nature and create futures and other worlds. “To struggle for life” has become a slogan and reference for mobilizations, projects, and revolts in Mexico and the world. The Zapatista initiative “A journey for life” that arrived in Europe in 2021 is just an example of that.
Their emphasis along their actions has been on “organizing”, not through a vanguard party, but among us with our own ways and means. Still, the question is, what kind of organization are they promoting if it is not democratic? Are they leaving behind the struggle for democracy and positioning the quest for global emancipation through a different agenda? As a researcher-activist accompanying this struggle, I will reflect on the urgency to re-think democracy from below and to the left to open up our grammar, avoid blocking our political imagination and fix our creative power. The idea is to break up anthropocentric perspectives in a moment of urgency that requires a civilizational shift away from capitalism by considering a broader “we”.
Panel to Facilitated by Alternatives Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative
Event organized by ICSSI - Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative
Presentation of the documentary film Fight or Flight, followed by an exchange with the director and speakers (Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIvaE1LgpeI) followed by an exchange with ICSSI and partner networks.
Screening of a short documentary produced by professional videographers that tells the story of three human rights defenders, the challenges they face in Iraq and the specific struggles they face. The protagonists are Ali for environmental and water protection, Jasmine for women's rights and gender equality, and Kamaran for press freedom and the protection of civilians from cross-border bombings. This will be followed by interventions that will shed more specific light on the issues.
- Course of the session :
Introduction - ICSSI
Viewing of the documentary film
Presentation by the film's director
Presentation by She Revolution on women's rights; Humat Dijlah/Save the Tigris on environmental protection; Community Peacemaker Team/End Cross-border Bombing campaign, on freedom of expression and civil rights protection.
Discussion and exchange with the audience.
Discussion to
Plus d'informations à venir.
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Faced with an ecological crisis of existential proportions, the economic relations of capitalism have only fanned the flames. The transformation of property relations is an urgent necessity, but not, in itself, enough to save us. Enter 'degrowth': a concept that radically challenges contemporary life, culture and economics as we know it.
Through an impressive synthesis of the traditions of eco-Marxism and feminist ecological economics, Éric Pineault presents a well-rounded critique of contemporary capitalist growth and its socio-ecological contradictions, in which growth is understood as both a biophysical and accumulation process.
The book provides fresh answers to key questions of current socio-ecological debates: Why does capitalist society depend on accelerating growth? Why is the constant upscaling of its economic process necessary for its social stability? How does this deepen the ecological contradictions that humanity now faces? And what can we learn from this for our understanding of emancipatory futures?
Éric Pineault is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Institute of Environmental Sciences at the Université du Québec à Montréal. His research focuses on financial institutions, extractive economies, the issue of ecological transition and degrowth as well as the general macroeconomic and social transformations of advanced capitalism.
Panel to
“We’re not going away you know!” Belfast worker cooperatives against neoliberalism
Northern Ireland provides a complex portrait of a divided post-conflict society, a toxic mix of neoliberalism and sectarianism where peace fails to materialise as improved living standards for most communities. While this does not leave much space for alternatives, but it does not mean they do not exist.
This paper is based on an engaged, embedded ethnographic study of worker cooperatives in and around Belfast (Northern Ireland), using a approach that blends participant observation and in-depth interviews, rooted in a deep-seated participatory and feminist ethos. The approach responds to an ethical commitment to working "with" co-operators, one that mirrors cooperatives’ values and principles, and allows a consistent respect for the integrity of their everyday experiences. The research highlights as much the therapeutic practices they foster, the desire for emancipation they respond to and the anti-capitalist and anti-sectarian politics they are driven by. Both rage and hope cohabit in these alternative economic spaces where new practices are trialed, even if in imperfect and incomplete ways. Through critical agency, cooperators contribute to articulating a new ‘common sense’ for an economic reality beyond neoliberalism and sectarianism, attempting at creating non-exploitative and ethical work practices, reintegrating solidarity into economics and enacting therapeutic practices.
The assessment of the worker cooperatives presented here might be hopeful. But the fact remains that in Northern Ireland, state and capital “cope” with alternative cooperative economies by suffocating them. Rather than appearing naïve to those difficulties, I wanted to shed some light onto the perspectives of those who refuse to go down without a fight. And in doing so, to contribute to emerging debates on social, solidarity and diverse economies, exploring with a compassionate gaze their emergence, the compromises they engage in, and the attempts at co-option they confront.
Crisis of social reproduction and boundary struggles in Turkey and France: Comparing the Gezi Park and Yellow Vests movements
Demet Evrenosoglu, Thibault BiscahieThis paper comparatively investigates the Gezi Park protests in Turkey (2013) and the Yellow Vests movement in France (2018-19) and the extent to which these uprisings constitute crises of social reproduction and legitimacy. Remarkably, both movements were largely attended and organized by women, who are located at the intersection of production and social reproduction and suffer the most from the multiple forms of exploitation and dispossession regulating the governance of the body and the natural commons in contemporary capitalism.
While analyzed through distinct theoretical lenses – “class struggle”, fight for citizenship rights – these upheavals have not been understood as deeply rooted in a multifaceted crisis of social reproduction. What would an analysis in terms of a crisis of social reproduction reveal about these protests mobilized by groups that initially appeared disorganized or even “apolitical”? What are the resemblances and differences in terms of strategies, grievances, and the emergence of new subjectivities forcefully bringing in the question of “the people”?
Drawing on feminist social reproduction approaches and Nancy Fraser’s notion of “boundary struggle”, we argue that the Gezi Park and the Yellow Vests movements are rooted in the severe degradation of the indispensable background conditions for a capitalist economy: social reproduction and natural ecology. Born out of a gradual loss of entitlements and intergenerational anguishes pertaining to the daily material conditions of subsistence and the very ecological future of the human species, these mobilizations, we argue, constitute original forms of resistance against two distinct forms of authoritarian neoliberalism bearing similar dynamics of precaritization and dispossession, and highlight the centrality of social reproduction as an irreducible axis of crisis.
Dr. Thibault Biscahie & Dr. Demet Evrenosoglu, Department of Politics, York University, Toronto, Canada
Panel to
L'imaginaire selon Édouard Glissant - une étude empirique
Ma communication se penche sur l’axe d’« imaginer » de l’événement de cette année en me basant sur la pensée d’Édouard Glissant. Selon lui : « […] la représentation c’est ce qui fait le lien entre l’imaginaire et le réel. Mais nous devons revoir la certitude que la représentation est d’autant plus vraie qu’elle reproduit fidèlement le réel » (2018 :70). J’emprunte cette notion pour élaborer le rôle représentatif d’art dans une société comme Cuba, une société en changement constant et fortement marquée par le bouillonnement artistique. L’insistance sur la société cubaine a sa racine dans un autre constat de Glissant : « L’imaginaire de mon lieu est relié à la réalité imaginable des lieux du monde, et tout inversement ». (2009 : 47). Je cherche ainsi à trouver la réalité imaginable de cette société qui se présente dans l’œuvre d’art et avec une tentative à découvrir l’imaginaire de cette société.
Postures écologiques : de l'intérêt d’une approche écocritique des textes caribéens
Victoria KleinCette communication s'appuie sur le postulat que la littérature « joue un rôle dans un système mondial extrêmement complexe, dans lequel l’énergie, la matière et les idées interagissent » et s'inscrit dans les études écocritiques telles qu’elles ont été définies par Cheryll Glotefely. Le propos de cette intervention s’accompagne d’une réflexion épistémologique sur la manière dont sont fondés les savoirs et ainsi dont les écologies caribéennes se révèlent en tant que discours, en tant que savoir, en tant que connaissance, en tant que pensée, intuition du monde ou de la terre, des pensées littéraires, politiques, poétiques, philosophiques, qui nous aident à penser autrement les enjeux contemporains.
Victoria Klein d’analyser plusieurs oeuvres publiées par Patrick Chamoiseau pour appréhender la capacité des textes à offrir une proposition décoloniale notamment au travers de la modalité du « vivre-en-Relation ». Les discours de Chamoiseau animés par l’enjeu du « Vivant » perçoivent l’écologie comme une Relation et proposent un nouvel être au monde au travers duquel le sujet s’enquiert de ses multiples relations, matérielles et immatérielles. En suivant cette même intuition écologique, certains textes de Chamoiseau se font prescripteurs, notamment les textes abordant la situation des sujets migrants qui agissent en révélateur de la nécessité d’un devenir écologique du monde. Alors que l’imaginaire néolibéral tend à nous faire croire l’inverse, les frontières fonctionnent en réalité en opérateur du monde. Ce sont elles qui séparent les États, mettent en pause l’idéal égalitariste et le principe d’hospitalité et finalement amènent à ne pas regarder les dévastations du Nord du même œil que celles du Sud.
Elle sonderai ainsi la puissance de la fonction narrative à faire émerger un ensemble de récits collectifs suggérant une suspension de l’imaginaire néolibérale et appelant à un devenir écologique.
Panel to
Beyond the pitfalls of the notion of ''capitalism''
Two notions are developed and proposed which are needed to redress the deficiency of current talk about 'capitalism':
- the notion of modern structures of domination‘ as a general concept which allows a theoretical reconstruction of the specific constellations between modern structures of exploitation e.g. capitalist, modern patriarchal, or post-colonial exploitation, as well as supporting structures of discrimination, as e.g. racism, anti-semitism, sexism, or anti-ecological 'industrialism', determining the complex reality of a given 'modern society‘ (or of a politically linked constellation of societies, like the EU); and
- the notion of, overdetermination‘ as a specific concept for analysing the historically specific, largely contingent way, in which these modern structures of domination shape the conditions of struggle within given 'modern societies' and have to be countered by solidarity and alliance-building.
By having recourse to these notions, it is possible to overcome traditional marxist tendencies to 'subsume' all the other struggles of liberation under class struggle, without giving up on Marx’s critical theory of the domination of the capitalist mode of production (and the‚ dictatorship of the bourgeoisie ever again reproducing it, nor giving in to the broadly developed tendency in these movements to reduce class struggle to the instutionalized ways of conducting a repressive-cum-integrative, policy of labour, and, accordingly to exclude it from their perspectives of struggle.
cf. F. O. Wolf, What ‘capitalism’ is, what it means to be against it, and what it takes to end it: Some remarks to prevent a renewal of blind alleys (2009), revised version published in: Sarah R. Farris, ed.: Returns of Marxism: Marxist Theory in a Time of Crisis, Haymarket, 2016. < Frieder Otto Wolf (rosalux.de) >.
A shadow of things to come
Tom WalkerMy paper anchors Karl Marx's discussion of disposable time in the Grundrisse in what Walter Benjamin described as the earliest customs of peoples: "The earliest customs of peoples seem to send us a warning that in accepting what we receive so abundantly from nature we should guard against a gesture of avarice. For we are able to make Mother Earth no gift of our own." Biblical rituals of Sabbath, the seventh-year Sabbatical and the 50th year Jubilee are rooted in even older Sumerian practices of debt cancellation. Early anti-capitalist movements for land reform and the first proposal for a general strike of workers explicitly took their inspiration from the debt cancellations and freeing of slaves of the Jubilee and Sabbatical years.
In his notes for "On the Concept of History," Walter Benjamin attributed to Marx the "secularization of messianic time." In his first thesis, Benjamin argued that Historical Materialism can win if it employs the services of theology, which is wizened and has to keep out of sight. My paper examines precisely which resources of theology have been secularized in Marx's work and how, and how those resources can be brought to bear on current ecological and social challenges. I will be condensing my communication from a 21,000-word manuscript with the following chapter outline:
1. Channeling my alter zeyde, Rabbi Mayer May
2. Every instant is an act of creation
3. A shadowy ceremony?
4. "God almighty himself is a very notorious leveller"
5. Leisure to attend to our spiritual business
6. Wealth is disposable time
7. Rescued from oblivion?
8. The superfluous as a condition for the necessary
9. The political economy of the working class
10. Borrow. Spend. Buy. Waste. Want.
11. Progressive obsolescence
12. Siphoning off a part of the annual increment
13. Pseudo-activity: politics as a hobby
14. Time stands still
15. Activating the emergency brake
16. Decisive action
Panel to
The rise of techno-feudalism at the shadow of planetary catastrophe: How neoliberalism ended and something worse began.
The global crisis of neoliberalism have captured the attention of Marxist scholars interested in the stages/phases/eras of capitalist development. On the one hand, those in the tradition of transnational historical materialism have focused on the crisis of hegemony of the liberal order, i.e. the Western empire led by United States hegemon (Streeck, 2016; Fraser, 2017; Stahl, 2019; Babic, 2020). On the other hand, more interested on the value form of the current transformations of contemporary capitalism have focused their attention in the features and character of digital capitalism and the rise of big tech (Fuchs, 2019; Durand, 2020; Morozov, 2022). I present an heuristic to articulate both branches of literature and concerns on the crisis of the neoliberal order, to argue that a new accumulation regime and mode of social reproduction is emerging through four realms of social totality. First, as a new industrial paradigm beyond post-fordism transforming the global labor process and because the data-driven character of technological change. Second, as a new mode of regulation because its emerging as a new mode of governance because the mediation of social media between governments and citizens, as well as transforming the character of liberal democracy. Third, as a new regime of accumulation based on innovation and rent-seeking without needing to solve the tendencies to secular stagnation heritage by neoliberalism. Fourth, as a new mode of socialization given the mediation of social media of inter-subjectivity and inter-affectivity relations, as well as the spatial positionality of everyday life. Later, I argue that all these transformations taking place at different realms of social totality are taking place at the shadow of planetary catastrophe. Finally, given this characterization of capitalist crisis I argue about the need for socialist politics to set in motion our own hegemonic project based on the notion of Digital Socialism (Morozov, 2019).
From cynical pessimism to constructive creativity: How to overcome capitalist realism and save the climate
Daniel Horen GreenfordIt's easier to imagine the end of the world — or in the case of climate-economy modellers, unproven negative emissions technologies spanning a landmass the size of India — than it is to imagine an alternative to capitalism. In Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, Mark Fisher described the disappearance of original and creative thought that now characterizes dominant culture. To Fisher, the public mind has become a salted, barren earth; devoid of the creative potential to reinvent itself. The totality of neoliberal thinking has rendered social and ecological values down to exchange value. Taking the place of the multitude of ways to relate to one another and make decisions, business ontology is now standard in public policy, and has even corroded much of private life. Fisher's diagnosis is bleak, but not terminal. Given recent developments in the climate movement, and the general portrayal of the climate crisis in wider discourse, we may be seeing the cracks in this realism widening. As Fisher observed over a decade ago, the real world (Lacan's 'Real') exposes capitalist realism’s tautological assertion. But how stable (or fragile) is this 'reality'? Are we ready to eschew it for something else, perhaps for a way of life and organization we never have tried before? In this brief discussion, I will review and build off of Fisher's thinking, attempting to revise his analysis to account for changes since his work's publication, to reassess this existential question. In the ensuing discussion — armed with the conceptual tools of Fisher and his predecessors, and any helpful insights brought from other fields — I invite you to join me in answering it. Is there no alternative? Or is a better world possible?
Seizing transformative economic possibilities: navigating uncertainty as we challenge the status quo.
Ellen RussellEconomic understandings of the necessary, possible and desirable shape how we understand and struggle for transformative change. This presentation examines economic discourses that are formulated around depictions of inevitability to analyze how these understandings of capitalism thwart resistance and the capacity to imagine economic possibilities which diverge from the perpetuation of capitalism. It examines a recasting of uncertainty that welcomes curiosity and experimentation that is not predicated on promissory assertions about future outcomes
Liberalism, Capitalism, and Climate Compulsions
Dan Boscov-EllenAs the call for papers notes, liberal politicians across the global North are working to depoliticize the climate crisis by framing it as an essentially technical problem; rather than a fundamental indictment of the capitalist system and the existing political order, climate change becomes an opportunity to create “green jobs,” incentivize “green growth,” and even to green our militaries and border regimes. It is clearly imperative to push back against such narratives, and a central part of this, as the CFP suggests, must involve helping people to understand the structural links between capitalism and ecological destruction. However, the struggle for repoliticization of the climate problem also involves a closely related task that has thus far received far less attention from the Left – namely, calling attention to the fundamental causal linkage between climate breakdown and the political philosophy of liberalism.
In this paper, I contribute to this task by delineating a number of the anti-ecological compulsions of liberalism – structural features that make liberalism not merely ill-suited to addressing the climate crisis but centrally productive of it. The core argument is that by explicating the historical and structural linkages between liberalism and capitalism, extant ecological critiques of liberalism can be very substantially sharpened. As such, I begin with a brief account of the historical co-development of capitalism and different strands of liberal political thought. I then show that this co-development has imbued liberalism with certain core characteristics that are both essential to its coherence and cohesion as an ideology and are ineluctably anti-ecological. Finally, I argue that targeting liberal politics directly can help to neutralize various evasive and depoliticizing strategies employed by liberal politicians and political thinkers alike.
to Facilitated by Matthew Burke, Deissy Perilla Daza
Popular political activism and imagination have been reanimated by a post-capitalist possibility, in part because it remains a vague outline of aspirations. In view of rapid organizing of authoritarian projects, proponents oriented to ecology and justice must elaborate details. We need to publicly debate different visions beyond capitalism, think strategically about how to make them a reality, and ensure they are just, transformative, and ecologically beneficial. The session takes inspiration from the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA), which works to create solidarity networks and strategic alliances amongst alternatives on local, regional, and global levels, increasingly shifting to the level of regional networks. Stemming from the Leadership for the Ecozoic partnership’s Ecozoic Policy Project, the session aims to promote and connect ecocentric political economies in northeast North America that align with the criteria of GTA. This session will provide a space to understand and explore such a regional network for the region of northeast North America, as an emerging Regional Tapestry of Alternatives. The objective is to identify and create a dialogue between different post-capitalist models across this region including bioregionalism, commons, degrowth, eco-socialism, eco-anarchism, Indigenous political economies, pluriversal post-development, social ecology and municipalism, wellbeing economy, and others. The session applies an open space meeting format, allowing flexible time and space for deeper discussions on these regional alternatives. Participants are invited to create and manage their own agenda of parallel discussions for each of these alternatives, and any others generated by participants. Thus, the session follows the operations of GTA to enable varied and light structures, defined in each space, that are horizontal, democratic, inclusive, and non-centralized.
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À l’animation : Dalie Giroux
Avec Houria Bouteldja, Jairo Funez et Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni
Pour une transition juste, il est indispensable de démanteler l’impérialisme et le colonialisme sous toutes leurs formes. Abolir ces dynamiques de pouvoir est un défi majeur, mais représente un angle d’attaque clé dans la lutte contre le capitalisme. Comment pouvons-nous construire des liens de solidarité et d’entraide robustes envers nos luttes communes, dans le cadre de la colonialité du pouvoir? Comment stimuler l’innovation dans l’action militante et amplifier le poids des mouvements anticoloniaux sans se les approprier? Comment pouvons-nous repenser la coopération internationale par et pour les populations du Sud? Dans le contexte canadien, nous devons soutenir les luttes pour la souveraineté des populations autochtones qu’elles soient territoriales, corporelles ou culturelles, et au niveau global, nous devons nous battre contre les catégories et systèmes économiques coloniaux. Ce panel cherche à réfléchir aux alternatives au capitalisme dans une perspective décoloniale.
Presenting : Dalie Giroux
With Houria Bouteldja, Jairo Funez and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni
For a just transition to take place, it is essential to dismantle all forms of imperialism and colonialism. Abolishing these power dynamics is a major challenge but represents a key course of action in the struggle against capitalism. How can we build solid relationships of solidarity and mutual support to work towards our common goals in the context of the coloniality of power? How can we stimulate innovation within activist movements and amplify the voices of anti-colonial movements without appropriating them? Predatory practices of capitalism go hand-in-hand with coloniality of power and racial hierarchies. How can we rethink international cooperation so that it functions for and by peoples of the global South? In the Canadian context, we must support Indigenous peoples’ struggles for sovereignty, be they territorial, bodily or cultural, but more generally, we must dismantle colonial categories and economic systems. This panel seeks to think about alternatives to capitalism from a decolonial perspective.
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Discussion to Sam Bliss, Adam Wilson
Mass apathy and isolation make it easy to give up on humans. Sam, the anarchist, asserts that we can indeed cultivate mutually sustaining relations with our neighbors. Adam, the animist, simply adds non-humans to the list of neighbors to sustain. Sam organizes people and rescued ingredients with a mutual aid collective in Burlington, Vermont called Food Not Cops, which shares lunch every day downtown, surrounded by concrete. Fifteen miles up-River, Adam sets up for the weekly Soup and Bread Gift Distribution at Brush Brook Community Farm, where all the food grown and gleaned by the Farm Team is offered as a gift to anyone who is hungry for any reason. Voluntary impoverishment is a staple on the menu at Brush Brook; at Food Not Cops, it’s often involuntary. Adam calls his project a “soup kitchen for rich people.” Unhoused folks who frequent Food Not Cops refer to it as “bumfeed.” Together, these two activists ask, “What does it mean to give food away in a time of cascading ecological and social troubles?”
Both these projects produce lots of food but don’t sell any. They give food away but are not charities or even “organizations.” When something is needed—a big soup pot, plastic containers, onions—the community is asked. Participation here amounts to the skills and habits of giving and receiving. Practicing them is like relearning to walk after a cast has been removed, the leg muscles badly atrophied.
The two presenters’ experiences may be of service in sparking conversation.
When you give someone food, who is the gift really for?
When you receive a gift of food, what does the gift ask of you?
What do non-humans—those whose labors and bodies compose the meal being given away—have to say about any of this? Is anyone asking them if they are fed?
What role do markets play in the continued exile of our capacity to listen? To imagine ourselves as creatures capable of mutually sustaining relations?
Does neighborliness fight capitalism?
Panel to Facilitated by Ashley Smith
We have entered a new phase of imperialism. The U.S. is determined to maintain its supremacy at all costs against its main rising rival, China as well as Russia and host of regional antagonists. Oppressed nations and peoples as well as smaller states from Ukraine to Hong Kong and Taiwan are caught between these great powers. So are the workers of the world, whose livelihoods and lives are sacrificed to yet an arms race and in some cases war. This panel will explain the new phase of imperialism, argue against the left siding with any imperial power, and explain why global solidarity from below between all the oppressed and exploited is the only alternative for the international left.
Sponsored by The Tempest Collective (U.S.)
Speakers:
Promise Li. Promise Li is an activist and writer from Hong Kong and based in Los Angeles. He is a member of socialist organizations Tempest Collective and Solidarity (U.S.), and has been active in left-wing international solidarity work with groups like Lausan Collective and Internationalism from Below. He also has experience in anti-gentrification and environmental justice organizing with Asian diaspora communities in Los Angeles.
Bonnie Jin. Bonnie Jin is a Taiwanese American student and writer at Johns Hopkins University. She is a co-founder of her campus Dissenters chapter, a BIPOC-led anti-militarist youth organization rooted in principles of self-determination and solidarity with everyday people. She is also a member of the Baltimore-based Ecological Design Collective, a community for radical ecological imagination and collaborative practice. Her current research focuses on the left in Taiwan.
Ashley Smith. Ashley Smith is a member of DSA and the Tempest Collective in Burlington, Vermont. He is the production manager of Spectre Journal. He has written in numerous publications including Truthout, Tempest, The International Socialist Review, Socialist Worker, Jacobin, New Politics, and many other online and print publications.
Panel to
Translation/Traduction : English/Français
This project is in collaboration with various South-Asian groups such as, CERAS (Centre on South Asia), Montreal, ICWI-Canada (India Civil Watch International-Canada), SADAC (South Asian Diaspora Action Collective), Montreal, SANSAD (South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy), Vancouver, Teesri Duniya, and SWACC (South Asian Women's Community Center).
More information to come.
Panel to
Michael Beyea Reagan innovative study, explores the relevance of class as a theoretical category in our world today, arguing that leading traditions of class analysis have missed major elements of what class is and how it operates. It combines intersectional theory and materialism to show that culture, economics, ideology, and consciousness are all factors that go into making “class” meaningful. Using a historical lens, it studies the experiences of working class peoples, from migrant farm workers in California’s central valley, to the “factory girls” of New England, and black workers in the South to explore the variety of working-class experiences. It investigates how the concepts of racial capitalism and black feminist thought, when applied to class studies and popular movements, allow us to walk and chew gum at the same time—to recognize that our movements can be diverse and particularistic as well as have elements of the universal experience shared by all workers. Ultimately, it argues that class is made up of all of us, it is of ourselves, in all our contradiction and complexity. The conversation will be moderated by sociologist of economic elite Audrey Laurin-Lamothe.
Michael Reagan is an organizer and historian. He teaches at Princeton University, Rutgers University and the University of Washington. He is the author of Intersectional Class Struggle: Theory and Practice and his work appears in the Boston Review, Labor Online, and CounterPunch.
Discussion to Themrise Khan, Dickson Kanakulya, Maïka Sondarjee, Firoze Manji
Nigerian novelist Teju Cole (2012) qualifies the white savior complex as “an emotional experience that validates privilege.” As Franz Fanon (1970) said, white people’s subjectivity is always confirmed, whereas non-whites are victimized and de-rationalized (Fanon, 1970). White Saviorism, a structure of colonial privilege under a capitalist system of exploitation, is a perennial underbelly of international cooperation practices.
While white saviorism has been defined in various disciplines and by African practitioners, development studies scholars insufficiently integrate race, colonial and capitalist variables into empirical studies (Pailey 2020). Researchers have addressed and defined it as it relates to education, cinema studies, tourism, volunteerism, Third World feminism, and, especially, race studies. In those areas, the concept of white saviorism has served as a powerful catalyst to guide empirical research and, by doing so, has enabled a productive conversation. Development scholars also analyzed power relationships between historically colonized and colonizing countries, but only rarely in relation with capitalism, patriarchy and racism. If some scholars have criticized systemic racism in/by aid organizations (Goudge 2003; Kothari 2006), only a few analyzed development as a white endeavor under capitalism (cf White 2002; Loftsdóttir 2009; Pierre 2020). And despite their pioneering work, these topics remain on the margin of mainstream as well as critical development studies.
This roundtable will present our edited volume White Saviorism in International Development. Theories, Practices, and Lived Experiences, which unites 16 authors from the Global South, in addition to the three editors. We will address questions of colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy in the field of international development under the umbrella of the white savior complex.
Panelists : Themrise Khan, Dickson Kanakulya, Maïka Sondarjee, Firoze Manji
Panel to
La colonisation de la gauche par le capitalisme oligarchique globalisant et le néolibéralisme philanthropique - Podemos
La notion de gauche a toujours eu une grande ambiguïté, atténuée dans des moments historiques particulièrement aigus, comme la lutte antifasciste. L'absence de définition s'est accentuée par l'emploie du mot plus ambigu de progressisme.
Le sujet de la propriété est ignoré par la plupart de la nouvelle gauche, malgré la gravité de la concentration actuelle de la propriété, le rôle dirigeant à tous les niveaux des oligarques du capitalisme financier, les conséquences sociales, économiques et environnementales de l'hégémonie oligarchique, la montée de la précarité de la majorité de la population et la soumission des gouvernements (notamment ces du centre de l’occident) aux intérêts de cette mince minorité spoliatrice.
L'effondrement du système socialiste a entraîné un changement du rôle des idéologies dans le monde, dont l'un des aspects les plus nouveaux a été l'émergence d'une gauche soumise aux courants idéologiques et culturels du système capitaliste oligarchique. Ce progressisme est marqué par les courants idéologiques postmodernes, principalement le constructivisme discursif (E. Laclau, Ch. Mouffe...), le constructivisme performatif (J. Butler) et le constructivisme pharmacologique (P.-B. Preciado) ou chirurgical.
La soumission idéologique aux formulations oligarchiques est complétée, dans un secteur important de la gauche postmoderne, par l'académisation du populisme traditionnel. La fusion du populisme et du constructivisme discursif encourage et justifie la vision de la politique comme politicaillerie. Un cas exemplaire de l'application des postulats constructivistes-populistes est la formation et le développement du parti politique Podemos en Espagne, notamment dans sa phase ascendante.
L'analyse des structures et des méthodes de ce parti illustre la nécessité de promouvoir une politique de principes qui n'est concevable que d’accord avec des principes socialistes et en ferme opposition à l’hégémonie de l’oligarchie dominante.
La police au service de l’ordre néolibéral : un défi pour la nouvelle gauche colombienne
Il ne fait aucun doute que l’élection du premier président de gauche en Colombie en 2022, Gustavo Petro, et de la première femme afro au poste de vice-présidente, Francia Marquez, a été le résultat d’une longue lutte sociale de la part des secteurs syndicalistes, socialistes, paysans, afro, féministes et défenseurs de droits humains. La grève nationale de 2021, marquée par la violente répression par la police nationale, a d’ailleurs été le point culminant des réclamations populaires.
Cette présentation explique dans un premier temps comment la violence policière était alors cautionnée par le discours étatique faisant écho à la pacification, c’est-à-dire le maintien de l’ordre au service du système néolibéral. Les prises de paroles par des représentants de l’État décrivaient les protestataires comme nuisibles et perturbateurs de l’ordre nécessaire à la production de capital dont il était légitime de se débarrasser.
Le président Petro, critique de ce discours et de ce modèle, s’est fait élire en juin 2022 en promettant de réformer les forces de l’ordre et d’abolir l’escadron antiémeute. Bien que la redéfinition du rôle de la police ait été amorcée et que le discours étatique de protection ait laissé place à celui de la sécurité humaine, j’argumente dans un deuxième temps que les réformes policières annoncées ne vont pas assez loin et propose des changements cosmétiques qui ne remettent pas en question le rôle des forces de l’ordre au sein du système.
Le nouveau gouvernement se décrit comme le produit d’un dialogue entre le libéralisme et le progressisme, mais la contradiction et les limites d’une telle position est particulièrement notable dans sa gestion de la sécurité. En effet, si le discours emprunte aux réflexions féministes et décoloniales en centrant l’amour et la dignité, nous concluons que la Colombie se doit de concrétiser cette approche et nouer avec le projet abolitionniste pour réellement se libérer du système d’exploitation et d’oppression.
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Rethinking strategy or learning from defeat
Panagiotis SotirisThe 2010s were marked by increased social and political contestation, hegemonic crisis in certain ‘weak links of the chain’ and a return of left wing politics. However, from the debacle of the Left in South Europe, to the defeat of Corbynism, the contradictory situation of the US Left and the challenges faced by the Latin American Left, these dynamics were in many instances defeated, and did not manage to overcome the historic defeats of anticapitalist movements in the previous decades. However resistances persist in various forms (from new waves of workers’ struggles, to antiracist/decolonial resistance, to struggles against patriarchy and movements against climate change), contributing to the crisis dynamics of contemporary neoliberalism. However, these resistances, movements, and experiments are becoming increasingly difficult to be articulated into strategic initiatives despite the fact that challenges such as the Climate Disaster and interimperialist rivalry point to the need for radical historical ruptures. A fresh rethinking of strategy requires coming in terms with defeat, treating as a necessary learning process, part of a broader conception of transformative political practice as experimental process. This is based on the premise that a large part of the important strategic breaks in the history of anticapitalist movements was based on the ability to actually learn from defeat. This inability to learn from defeat has been one of the main obstacles to strategic renewal in the current conjuncture. Such an attempt for learning from defeat but also from the collective ingenuity and (counter)hegemonic potential emerging in struggles, can enable us rethink notions such as dual power, the dialectic of war of position/of movement and a conceptualization of political organizations as laboratories, learning and pedagogical spaces and permanent ‘constituent processes’ rather than electoral machines.
“At last, no more crises of Marxism!” / « Enfin, plus des crises du Marxisme ! »
william lewisIn the mid-1970s, Althusser emphatically welcomed the “impasse” in which Marxist organizations then found themselves. He embraced this moment of “contradiction” and “difficulty” for what it promised to sweep away: the idea that Marx bequeathed communist organizations with an infallible guide for action. He also appreciated the crisis for what it might occasion: a materialist reconstruction of Marxist theory and a corresponding organizational renewal of communist movements. Of course, this moment of crisis was not the first crisis Marxism had undergone: this heralding was a regular reoccurrence since the 1890s. Kouvelakis (2008) recognizes these crises’ regularity while also noting that these moments are somewhat comparable to the “breakdowns” of normal science. Except that they really are not comparable: the breakdowns of normal science come about when theory is no longer able to account for the phenomenon it wishes to explain or when a theory which better accounts for the phenomenon is introduced. Marxism, by contrast, is thrown into crisis each time its sanguine and simplistic predictions and aspirations inform political organization and strategy and then come to naught. This suggests two things: one, that Marxism is not a science or, two, that Marxism is an idealist philosophy ill-suited to understanding real politics. That these charges echo the most prominent calls of its critics is certainly troubling but it may also be reassuring: the crises of Marxism may be self-caused. When we expect less of Marxism and treat its research program more like that of any other social scientific research program, then the problem of recurrent crises disappears. When we treat its theses as hypotheses, then we are not troubled when they are unable to fully predict or explain an event. Rather, disconfirmations are taken as opportunities to revise the theory as well as the strategic decisions which follow from it. At last, let there be an end to the crises of Marxism.
From the Bund to ‘Soviet Power’: Self-activity, Difference and Solidarity in the Political Philosophy of Iulii Martov
Paul KelloggIulii Martov – a towering figure in his own time – has been almost completely neglected in the years since the Russian Revolution. This paper will sketch the outlines of Martov’s political philosophy, through deploying concepts key to that political philosophy – self-activity, difference and solidarity.
The concept of self-activity emphasizes nourishing the self-organization and self-activity of the working class. The concept would be central to the foundation of the workers’ councils (Soviets) in 1905 and 1917 – in both cases called into being by Menshevik activists. It was deployed by Martov to effect in his 1919 book World Bolshevism. First developed explicitly in 1903 and 1904 by Martov’s chief mentor Pavel Akselrod, in the wake of the acrimonious split between Martov’s Mensheviks and Lenin’s Bolsheviks, the concept was clearly implicit in a youthful 1895 speech by Martov which was to become famous as the founding theoretical statement for the Bund (General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia).
That 1895 speech was delivered while Martov was in exile in the Jewish Pale of Settlement, and it electrified the community of scholar activists in the Pale and indeed throughout the Russian Empire. The speech laid the foundation for the formation of the Bund, built on the principles outlined by Martov. On the one hand, he articulated a “politics of solidarity” –the Jewish workers’ movement could not move forward without being embedded within an “all-Russia” movement, i.e., alongside non-Jewish workers and activists. On the other hand, he articulated a “politics of difference” – being part of an all-Russia current did not preclude, but in fact demanded deep work within the Yiddish-speaking proletariat of the Pale, speaking in the workers’ own language (Yiddish) about the everyday concerns at work and in the community.
The paper will examine each concept in turn, and draw some general conclusions.
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The Extraordinary Governance Measures in the Era of Global Crisis
The failures of liberal democracy opened the way of authoritarian populist right-wing populism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), which on the one hand remained integrated into the neoliberal capitalism and on the other hand dismantled the legal basis of liberal constitutionalism. Investigating the CEE authoritarian populist regimes, it has been argued that Hungarian authoritarian populism and its regional followers established this politics from the migration crisis of 2015 on the permanent state of exception and extraordinary governance measures. The COVID-19 crisis offered a new opportunity to maintain and extend the emergency measures. Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister found the way to capitalize the pandemic crisis and introduced the overlapping exceptional measures. Relying on the political theoretical concept of exceptional governance, it has been argued and analysed in this paper that the new forms of authoritarianism in CEE are based on the extraordinary measures. The crises of recent years have shown that the EU finds it difficult to enforce the rule of law even in the normal legal order, and that there are no European standards for state of exception and other forms of extraordinary governance measures. Yet it was the COVID-19 that showed how important it would be, both regionally and at EU level, if Member States could harmonise their different types of exceptional legal order. Based on an examination of the extraordinary measures of governance introduced by authoritarian populists during the pandemic, it has been argued in this paper that the EU could address many sovereignty problems much better if it took steps towards developing a framework of “European state of exception” which could be a model for exceptional measures applied at global level. This paper explores the ways in which civil society can control and constrain exceptional situations at national and international level.
Explaining Imperialism Today
This paper will address recent attempts to analyze contemporary imperialism through theories of unequal exchange (Roberts and Carchedi), "super-exploitation" (Smith) and monopolization (King). Their attempts to explain the persistence of global uneven development and the place of China in the world economy are found to be inconsistent, inadequate or empirically problematic. An alternative perspective, based on the operation of real capitalist competition (Shaikh) on a world scale, is presented.
Political Ecology of the Global Refugee Crisis: A World-Ecology Perspective
Efe Can GürcanWhat is the nexus between capitalism, ecological change, and geopolitical conflicts, and how has it historically affected global migratory movements? How do neoliberal policies combine with environmental strains to affect the course of geopolitical conflicts and generate a global refugee crisis in the present day? This paper relies on the methods of incorporated comparison to answer these questions from a world-ecology perspective. Incorporated comparison seeks to understand the complexity of global phenomena by addressing cross-case commonalities, mutual influences, and interdependencies in tandem with spatial or temporal variations, historical specificities, and internal tensions for a fuller understanding of a global configuration at hand. Drawing on world-systems theory, world-ecology serves to systematically reveal the contradictions of global capitalism, which arise from the interplay of world market formation, the geographical expansion of capitalism, and agro-ecological transformations. In the first part of this paper, I identify four waves of international migration that have shaped the history of global capitalism, which happen to correspond to critical moments of incorporation accompanied by agro-ecological transformations: the era of slavery, indentured labor, the world-wars period, and the neoliberal era of labor migration from the Global South. After situating international migration in its world-ecological context, the second part shifts the focus to the ways in which the fourth wave of international migration has culminated into a global refugee crisis amidst a global hegemonic crisis. I develop a world-ecological comparison of the cases of Latin America, particularly those of Mexico and Central American states, and the Greater Middle East, with a special focus on Syria and Afghanistan. These countries represent the epicenter of the global refugee crisis, whose world-historical origins can be traced to forced incorporation through US interventionism, economic incorporation through neoliberal restructuring, and political-ecological incorporation into narco-colonialism and extractive capitalism. A striking commonality of these cases is how extractivism and poorly crafted environmental policies have strongly exacerbated the effects of climate change in a way to accelerate migratory flows.
Keywords: climate change; incorporation; neoliberalism; refugee crisis; world-ecology
[Efe Can GURCAN, ISU İmza]
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Les luttes mondiales de justice sociale comme de justice climatique se mobilisent surtout via les usages des réseaux sociaux numériques. Certes, la centralisation du Web orchestrée par des multinationales comme Meta ou Google a permis à des mouvements sociaux de prendre de l’ampleur à l’international (BLM, printemps arabe, #metoo). Toutefois, nous constatons un manque de connaissances sur le fonctionnement interne de ces plateformes corporatives de la part de ces mêmes regroupements. Une meilleure compréhension des infrastructures numérique de la part des activistes constitue la base pour assurer la sécurité de leurs communications puisqu'ils sont souvent la cible de cyberattaques et de surveillance (par ex.: les travaux du groupe militant Forensic Architecture).
Ce panel portera sur les nouvelles formes de socialisation en ligne rendues possibles grâce à un apprentissage technique de l’infrastructure qui soutient les médias sociaux. En continuité de la décentralisation originelle de l'Internet, les médias sociaux alternatifs décentralisés s'avèrent parmi les meilleurs outils des militant.e.s. Assurer des communications sur des plateformes 1) libre et à code source ouvertes 2) anti-surveillance 3) chiffrées de bout-en-bout (Ermoshina et Musiani, 2021) est une première étape pour prendre le temps de mieux comprendre ce qui se cache « sous le capot » des médias sociaux numériques.
L’une des nombreuses formes de résistance numérique qui nous intéresse est le système de réseaux sociaux numériques alternatifs Fediverse. Dans ce panel, nous discuterons du fonctionnement de celui-ci via la question suivante : en quoi le Fediverse propose-t-il une forme de résistance par son infrastructure technique?
Références : Ermoshina, K. et Musiani, F. (2021). Messageries fédérées : des « résistances numériques » par l’architecture? Revue Possibles 45(1), 78-87. ; Forensic Architecture (s.d.). About. https://forensic-architecture.org/about/agency
Panel to Facilitated by Révolution écosocialiste
La vision et les pratiques féministes peinent à être reçues dans les mouvements de gauche pour ce qu’elles sont : un renouvellement de la théorie et de la praxis. Or le féminisme actuel, transformé par l’intersectionnalité et les pratiques de protection de la nature qui ont émergé grâce au leadership de femmes depuis quelques dizaines d’années, peut apporter à l’écosocialisme des perspectives originales. Nous proposons un panel centré sur ces perspectives : comment l’analyse écoféministe vient-elle enrichir l’écosocialisme, notamment aux points de vue de la reproduction sociale, de l’articulation de la nature et de l’humain, ainsi que des violences faites aux femmes et à la nature - violences d’exploitation, de domination et de destruction? Comment la pratique féministe devient-elle intersectionnelle et écologiste à travers la nécessité de construire des solidarités entre les femmes, et comment peut-elle ouvrir au socialisme des voies plus diversifiées dans la lutte contre les oppressions?
Les participant es seront invité es à partager leurs expériences et à faire avancer la jonction de l’écoféminisme et de l’écosocialisme.
Panélistes : Elisabeth Germain et Ginette Lewis
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Description coming soon.
Panelists : Rachel Goffe (University of Toronto, Scarboro) on Jamaica ; Estefania Martinez (Universite de Montreal) on Colombia ; and FTC Manning (RMN, San Francisco) on the USA. More panelists TBA.
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This panel will aim to tackle revolt in the neoliberal age, and from a Marxist and feminist perspective. Camila Valle will be speaking about abortion struggle won in Argentina, as well as Rabab Elnaiem on the revolutionary process in Sudan and its class and gender dimensions, and the way the revolution has challenged power further than the rest of the 'Arab Spring' countries. Finally, Manejieh Moradian will speak on Iran's latest uprising, on the feminist demands that started it, while reaffirming an opposition to Islamophobia. We will discuss what unites the three uprisings, their political economic roots, and the unprecedented ways that they are challenging power.
Sponsored by Spectre Journal.
Shireen Akram-Boshar will moderate and serve as discussant.
Panelists : Rabab Elnaiem, Manejieh Moradian, Camila Valle
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Traduction/Translation offered EN/FR
English follows
L’époque actuelle est marquée par une crise de l’accumulation du capital, comme le montrent l’augmentation des populations excédentaires, la nature changeante du travail et la rupture de la relation traditionnelle capital-travail. L’activité en traitera des impacts sur les résistances à ces développements dans le sud global. Les protestations des agriculteurs en Inde et les luttes des travailleurs-euses migrants-es en Chine en témoignent. Ces conditions forcent également les modèles de migration, fondés sur de nouvelles formes d’exploitation, et créent des occasions pour la lutte internationale. Les panélistes analyseront les nouvelles formes de luttes en Inde et en Chine et ce qu’elles représentent pour l’avenir de la résistance dans ces pays. Ils elles s’appuieront également sur leurs expériences au sein d’organisations de gauche de la diaspora comme le South Asian Left Activist Movement (SALAM) et Lausan.
Panélistes : Promise Li (he/him) est activiste et écrivain de Hong Kong, basé à Los Angeles. Il a été actif au sein du collectif Lausan et de Internationalism from Below ; Madhubala (elle/il) est originaire de Bombay et travaille sur les intersections entre la critique marxiste de l’économie politique et l’histoire économique indienne. Elle a été active dans les luttes populaires dans et autour de la ville de New York ; Aman (ils/elles) est originaire d’Ahmedabad et est actuellement basé à New York. Ils co-convoquent SALAM et sont un membre actif de India Civil Watch International.
The current moment is engulfed in a crisis of capital accumulation as shown by the rise of surplus populations, the changing nature of work and a breakdown of the traditional capital-labour relation. The consequences of these developments have been under-theorized in the global South. This moment can enable us to witness the contradictions embedded within the categories that are tied to the logistical apparatus of capital in new ways. This panel would examine the new forms of proletarian struggles that have emerged in response to this trajectory and the nature of work in India and China, and theorize what they represent for the future of resistance to these developments in the global South. These precarious conditions have been increasingly formalized in terrains that go beyond the boundaries of the nation-state, especially when states are responsible for ensuring profitability in the midst of such crises by colluding with transnational institutions, as recently evidenced by the farmers’ protests in India and migrant workers’ struggles in China. These conditions also force migration patterns, which are premised on new forms of exploitation, and on the other hand, create opportunities for international struggle. The panelists will also draw from their experiences in left-wing diaspora organizations like South Asian Left Activist Movement (SALAM) and Lausan, which aim to model new visions of radical internationalism.
Panelists : Promise Li (he/him) is an activist and writer from Hong Kong and is based in Los Angeles. He has been active with Lausan Collective and Internationalism from Below ; Madhubala (she/her) is from Bombay and works on the intersections of Marxian critique of political economy and Indian economic history. She has been active in grassroots struggles in and around New York City ; Aman (they/them) is from Ahmedabad and is currently based out of New York City. They co-convene SALAM and are an active member of India Civil Watch International.
to Facilitated by Daphné Lisak
The proposed activity is a democratization workshop and assembly led by Divest McGill members. This activity would have an estimated duration of an hour and a half to two hours. This event is meant to be a safe space for participants to analyze the institutions that colour their daily lives through the lens of democratization. Further, participants will be guided through conversations to envision a more democratic future for their communities for the benefit of fossil fuel divestment, decolonization, labour rights, and more. Divest McGill has already held several of community assemblies, including three during the two week long #OccupyMcGill occupation last March. The goal of this assembly is to foster discussion around democratizing the spaces that participants are familiar with and envision what that looks like practically. .
Divest McGill is a student-run climate justice campaign calling on McGill University to acknowledge and address the urgency of the climate crisis by withdrawing the direct investments of its endowment fund from the fossil fuel industry. Divest McGill has gained the understanding that systemic change within the university structure is needed to accomplish its objectives.
The assembly will start with an introduction of who we are and the workshops purpose. Participants will be asked to choose a setting to focus on and gather according to that choice. By setting we are describing a space in their daily life like school, work, local governance, social justice organizing, or any other idea that might be brought forward. Once the participants are grouped by setting, the following questions will be proposed by a facilitator from Divest McGill to the assembly:
- What is democratization? (10-15 minutes)
- Is [setting] a democracy? Why or why not? (10-15 min)
- What would democracy look like in [setting]? (principal discussion topic)
- What issues are people currently facing there?
- What would a solution look like?
- How do we get there? (10 minutes)
Panel to Facilitated by Jonathan Martineau
Titre du panel
« Intelligence artificielle, algorithmes et mutations du capitalisme contemporain. Approches critiques. »
Responsable/animateur du panel: Jonathan Martineau, Université Concordia.
Ce panel multidisciplinaire regroupe 5 expert-e-s qui proposent des approches critiques du développement de l’intelligence artificielle et des algorithmes dans le capitalisme contemporain. Au-delà du hype médiatique et des effets de mode, la montée des nouvelles technologies numériques et du pouvoir socio-économique des algorithmes sont des symptômes d’une refonte de certains mécanismes, processus et rapports sociaux du capital. Enracinés dans un contexte sociohistorique aux contours changeants, ces développements ne se cantonnent pas à la technologie, mais reconfigurent le monde du travail, l’exercice du pouvoir politique, la valorisation économique, la culture, le temps social, la reproduction sociale, et soulèvent d’importantes questions éthiques et politiques. Comment comprendre ces changements au sein d’une théorie critique holiste et historique? Comment nommer cette nouvelle phase du capitalisme? Comment intervenir politiquement et éthiquement dans le déploiement des technologies algorithmiques? Comment s'articulent les nouveaux foyers de résistances et possibilités d’émancipation?
Panélistes et titres des présentations :
Jonathan Martineau, Liberal Arts College, Université Concordia & Jonathan Durand Folco, École d’innovation sociale Élizabeth-Bruyère, Université Saint Paul
Le capital algorithmique, une nouvelle phase du capitalisme?
Maxime Ouellet, École des Médias, UQAM
Capitalisme cybernétique ou techno-féodalisme? : Penser les mutations du capitalisme à l’ère numérique
Martin Gibert, Centre de recherche en éthique, Université de Montréal
Les algorithmes peuvent-ils être de gauche?
Myriam Lavoie-Moore, Australian National University
Le potentiel émancipatoire du capitalisme algorithmique à l’aune des théories de la reproduction sociale
Myriam Lavoie-Moore, Australian National University. Le potentiel émancipatoire du capitalisme algorithmique à l’aune des théories de la reproduction sociale
Martin Gibert, Centre de recherche en éthique, Université de Montréal
Maxime Ouellet, École des Médias, UQAM Capitalisme cybernétique ou techno-féodalisme? : Penser les mutations du capitalisme à l’ère numérique
Jonathan Martineau, Liberal Arts College, Université Concordia Jonathan Durand Folco, École d’innovation sociale Élizabeth-Bruyère, Université Saint Paul. Le capital algorithmique, une nouvelle phase du capitalisme?
Panel to Facilitated by Debbie Samaniego, Mariko Frame
The Worldeater, the spirit that animates and assembles the multiple technologies that drive capitalist and colonial progress toward total extractivism, consumes socio-ecologies at ever greater rates. This not only deepens the escalation of ecological destruction in its multiple guises – from species loss and land-systems change, to accelerating greenhouse gas emissions – but also threatens to erase non-dominant ways of place-making, socio-political organization, and ecological stewardship. The Worldeater is a planetary force that manifests in complex and idiosyncratic ways in specific places and contexts. Everywhere, the Worldeater is met with resistance. This panel features three interventions from across the globe that shine light on how the insatiable expansion of colonial, imperial, and capitalist relations is resisted by grassroots struggles. Specifically, the panel offers reflections on struggles against hydropower dams in the Indian Himalayas, resistance against land grabbing by forest-dependent communities in Liberia, and mobilization and place-making of peoples displaced by extractive and conservation projects in Guatemala. By bringing these distinct but not disconnected contexts of struggle into conversation, this panel explores how the Worldeater manifests and how it can be resisted. It offers space to reflect on strategies that work and tactics that have failed, what obstacles appear and where strength, solidarity, and kinship can be fostered.
Panel to Facilitated by Émilie Marchand
De multiples initiatives locales qui contribuent à la transition socioécologique se développent aujourd’hui à travers le Québec, notamment dans les régions rurales ou périphériques. Plusieurs initiatives régionales, comme le Grand dialogue au Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, le Collectif Territoire en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, la Réserve mondiale de biosphère Manicouagan-Uapishka (RMBMU), FabRégion pour l’autonomie productive Bas-Saint-Laurent et le CIRADD en Gaspésie, défrichent des voies nouvelles en matière de transition socioécologique en région. Ces expériences sont des terreaux fertiles d’innovations qui peuvent servir de moteur pour une accélération de la transition du Québec. Toutefois, ces initiatives se heurtent bien souvent à des enjeux qui sont spécifiques aux contextes régionaux. Ce sont des contraintes réglementaires, politiques, culturelles ou économiques qui limitent leur capacité à les déployer et sur lesquelles elles n’ont que peu de prises. Les particularités régionales peuvent également ouvrir la voie à de nouvelles formes de participation publique et sur des approches de gouvernance innovantes basées sur la proximité des acteurs et sur les solidarités locales.
Le panel, dont la facilitation sera assurée par Émilie Marchand, propose trois communications. La première, présentée par Olivier Riffon, portera sur les enjeux de la transition socioécologique spécifiques aux régions périphériques au Québec. La seconde, présentée par Anouk Farley-Nadeau et Ian Segers, présentera l’initiative du Grand dialogue et ses innovations en matière d’autodétermination, de démocratie citoyenne et de forme organisationnelle. La dernière, présentée par Geneviève Aubry et Karine Berthiaume, présentera le Projet lac Osisko du Collectif Territoire, en axant sur le réinvestissement des espaces publics pour la participation citoyenne et sur la mobilisation d’acteurs divers, notamment artistique et scientifique, pour la recherche de solutions collectives aux enjeux territoriaux.
Le Collectif Territoire en Abitibi-Témiscamingue
Le Grand dialogue régional pour la transition socioécologique
Activer les leviers de la transition en région périphérique : défis et brèches.
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Panel to Facilitated by Nakeyah Giroux-Works
Souhaitant participer à l’effort collectif d’imaginer et de déployer des modèles de sociétés plus soutenables, les chercheures de ce panel brossent un portrait critique d’expériences citoyennes et participatives ayant cours dans la région du Bas-Saint-Laurent, au Québec, et dans la région de la Catalogne, en Espagne (Barcelone et Alt Empordà). En prenant pour exemple des contestations liées à l’implantation de parcs éoliens, des projets forestiers nourriciers et de compensation carbone ainsi que la constitution de savoirs numériques, elles s’appliquent à détailler les points de convergence et les zones de dissonance existantes dans les manières de s’approprier les biens et les moyens d’une transition juste, inclusive et démocratique.
La notion des communs sert de trame pour analyser comment les acteurs à la barre de ces initiatives forgent de nouveaux imaginaires sociétaux et organisent leurs efforts pour se réapproprier un pouvoir d’agir sur leur environnement immédiat.
La discussion proposée dans ce panel repose sur des réflexions engagées et des analyses issues des recherches ethnographiques produites par trois étudiantes des cycles supérieurs du Département d’anthropologie de l’Université Laval. La discipline anthropologique sert ici de terrain d’exploration de nouveaux possibles. Par ses objets de recherche et sa méthode ethnographique, l’anthropologie permet de documenter et de réfléchir à de nouvelles manières de faire société, au développement d’imaginaires alternatifs et à l'expression de nouveaux désirs pour rendre ce monde plus habitable.
« Faire communauté » avec le monde végétal, un arbre à la fois. Portraits d’initiatives citoyennes et collectives de plantation d’arbres au Bas-Saint-Laurent, Québec.
Nakeyah Giroux-WorksDécentraliser la transition énergétique. Réflexions à partir des luttes citoyennes en Alt Empordà (Catalogne, Espagne).
Sabrina BougieEt si la véritable révolution, c’était d’aborder les technologies comme des communs? Les effets sociopolitiques de la participation citoyenne dans les espaces de fabrication numérique.
Sandrine LambertPanel to Facilitated by Joel Wainwright
Alyssa Battistoni
Title: “Tragic Freedom? Revisiting Freedom and Necessity in an Age of Ecological Crisis” Anxieties about freedom in an age of ecological crisis have intensified in recent years. Dipesh Chakrabarty (2009) has pointedly asked whether the Anthropocene is a “critique of narratives of freedom,” suggesting that “the mansion of modern freedoms stands on an ever-expanding foundation of fossil fuel use.” The Anthropocene seems to many to definitively settle the debate on the side of the view that, as philosopher Pierre Charbonnier claims, “nothing is more material than freedom” (2021). In a materially finite world, however, this appears a serious liability. The reliance of modern human life on vast inputs from the nonhuman world, and the revelation that those ostensibly free gifts come with serious material costs, prompts an unsettling question: what happens if we stop treating nature as a free gift? I examine the assumptions underpinning accounts of what I call “tragic freedom”—freedom achieved only briefly, partially, and temporarily through the spending-down of limited resources. In emphasizing freedom’s material underpinnings, I argue, many accounts of tragic freedom echo Marxist and socialist concepts of freedom, and implicitly hinge on the distinction at the heart of Marx’s famous argument that the “realm of freedom” begins only beyond the “realm of necessity,” and recall the “materialist pessimism” of Sebastian Timpanaro (1970) in positing the material world itself as constraint on freedom. In seeking an alternative to tragic and pessimistic views of freedom I look instead to alternative accounts: on the one hand, radical republican and value form readings of Marx which describe capitalism in terms of domination; and on the other, a materialist existentialism which seeks to reconcile radical human freedom with the persistence of social and material constraints. Synthesizing these perspectives, I articulate a critique of capitalist unfreedom as a materially mediated form of social domination which limits our ability to determine values in our own right and reorders the physical world in ways that constrain our possibilities. I draw on Simone de Beauvoir’s underappreciated contributions to Marxist feminist thought in offering an account of freedom for a finite material world: freedom as situated, embodied, and ambiguous, always both enabled and constrained by the more-than-human world.
Ajay Singh Chaudhary
Title: “Climate Lysenkoism: Science, Theory, and Left-Conservative Fantasies”
Soviet agronomist Tsofim Lysenko spearheaded a rejection of genetics in favor of a more Lamarckian view reconcilable with Soviet understandings of dialectical materialism in the Stalinist era. ‘Lysenkoism’ has come to be a kind of shorthand for the one-sided treatment of empirical phenomena based on doctrinal expedience. Moving “Lysenkoism” out of its legacy as a Cold War epithet, I propose the concept of “Climate Lysenkoism” to examine a growing tendency in the Anglo-American left to dismiss any inconvenient, clearly substantiated “physical events” in the interdisciplinary climate sciences as neoliberal Malthusian cant or “austerity ecology” (Phillips 2017) or quasi-psychodynamic pathic projection of “carbon guilt” (Huber 2022). Climate Lysenkoism is not merely an academic affair or a theoretical dispute. Given the intensity and urgency of climate mitigation and adaptation, the growing popularity of Climate Lysenkoism on the left has profound implications in everything from hotly debated technical and policy disputes to ultimately undermining the political possibilities to be drawn from the unforeseen socioecological realities of this conjuncture. Like the self-described “ecomodernists,” Climate Lysenkoists propone Promethean techno-mystical discourse – wrapped in the trappings of hard-headed scientific and technological language. In addition to an account of technology and labor that is hyper-masculinist and dismissive of any technological discussion which falls below narrow imaginaries of mid-century science fiction, climate Lysenskoists adopt a trade union consciousness in the Global North at the manufacturing point of production as the center of a left-wing climate politics, wholly at odds with the political coalition and subjectivity that are more likely to be drawn to a left-wing climate realism. I demonstrate that Climate Lysenkoism and left Prometheans are bereft of any basis in science or history, are predicated on theoretical dogmatism, and lead to catastrophic errors in possibly pathways for mitigation and adaptation. Thus, there is no justification for these positions and they should be roundly dismissed, while a brief outline of what they obscure is helpful in fostering comradely relations.
Joel Wainwright
Title: “Marx’s critique of capital as an analysis of natural history”
In the Preface to Capital Volume I (1867), Marx states that his “standpoint” is one in “which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history”. This marked a major departure from his previous writings. Marx only arrived at this view in the early 1860s after reading The Origin of Species (1859). Marx felt that Darwin provided a scientific basis for writing the history of capitalist society. In Marx’s approach, the distinction between nature and society is at once affirmed and cancelled out: affirmed because capitalism is shown to be but a form adopted by one species; cancelled out because the very adoption of this form is social and set against nature itself. If we take the evolution of the economic formation of society as a process of natural history, we see that conflicts between distinct social groups always manifest through changing human relationships with the environment; conversely, the domination of the Earth to support the interests of elites reflects class conflicts within different social formations. Unfortunately, this standpoint—‘Marxian natural history’—was out of synch with, first, the approach to nature and science adopted by Engels, and, later, Stalin. Marx saw that Darwin’s breakthrough destroyed historical teleology. Yet the promise of a specific telos— proletarian revolution—is what the first two generations of Marxists wanted from Marx. This led to the suppression of reading Marx as a natural historian, particularly after Stalin took power in the USSR. Taken together, the novelty and importance of Marx’s Darwin-inspired natural historical turn were lost for generations. A few thinkers have tried to revive it, but the project remains undeveloped. Today, in the face of our planetary climate emergency, a return to Marx’s approach is essential. We would do well to return to the standpoint of the Preface to Capital and elaborate upon its radical conception of natural history.
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Discussion to Fiona Jeffreys, Cynthia Wright, Gulay Kilicaslan, Niloofar Golkar (Facilitated by Bengi Akbulut)
Albeit under different guises and at varying and intersecting scales, the Left has been fighting the rise of fascism for nearly a decade. This rise, almost unexceptionally, has been accompanied (or rather articulated with) with a violent patriarchal politics and attacks on women’s bodies and reproductive rights. At the same time, we’ve witnessed inspiring forms of women’s organizing and movements, not less around social reproductive politics, from the Kurdish Women’s Movement to the Feminist International and, most recently, the insurgency spearheaded by women in Iran.
In this discussion panel, we invite the participants to discuss the articulation of fascism with patriarchy and explore the possibility and promise of a transnational feminist antifascism, through 4 interlocutors. We propose the following initial questions, but we are looking forward to many others:
What are contemporary and historical articulations of patriarchy and fascism, at micro, everyday, nation-state or international scales? What can we learn from them (if anything)? What does feminist organizing, tactics and strategies offer to an antifascist politics, historically, contemporarily and conceptually? Why does antifascist politics be feminists? What kind of feminist politics is needed to challenge fascism? What is the “yes” of antifascist feminism? What does feminist politics offer us to organize an antifascist "life" at large? How to think about the rise of fascist/eco-fascist feminisms and the subversion of feminist politics? How to organize a transnational feminist antifascism? What are the struggles, movements and solidarities on the ground that show us a way?
Panelists : Fiona Jeffreys, Cynthia Wright, Gulay Kilicaslan, Niloofar Golkar
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This panel develops new Marxist perspectives in social reproduction theory along the axes of sexuality, childhood, and resistance. Struggles over bodily autonomy for queer and trans people and children are theorized alongside the idea of the social reproduction strike as a harbinger of new modalities of struggle and resistance in late capitalism.
Sponsored by Spectre Journal.
Panelists : Kade Doyle Griffiths, “Transgender Laborers, Social Reproduction, and Class Formation” ; Sue Ferguson, “Written on the Child’s Body: Alienation, Play and Social Reproduction” ; Aaron Jaffe, “From Social Reproduction Theory to Social Reproduction Strikes”
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Activité conjointe Alternatives, Coalition haïtienne contre la dictature en Haïti, France Amérique latine Magazine, Convergence Haiti
Devant la dégradation de l’État et de la situation de violence en Haïti, des rumeurs d’intervention du Core Group sont croissantes. Nombre de courants haïtiens s’y opposent. Alors, comment agir en solidarité pour renforcer l’autodétermination populaire du peuple haïtien, souhaitée par le projet de transition de rupture? À l’occasion de la publication d’un numéro spécial de France Amérique latine Magazine (FALMag), dans lequel des membres de la communauté haïtienne du Québec ont contribué, nous tenons une table ronde internationale sur la situation en Haïti et sur la solidarité à développer.
À l’instar de la publication, la table ronde abordera le contenu et les objectifs de la guerre que les gangs mènent contre le peuple haïtien et dont les actions s’inscrivent dans un projet de destruction. Il s’agit d’une volonté de contraindre les mouvements populaires, notamment de la paysannerie par un contrôle du territoire. Par ailleurs, la mise en place depuis novembre 1983 des plans d’ajustement structurel et les persistances d’accords qui lient le gouvernement et le Fonds monétaire international (FMI) ont contribué à la déstructuration économique en Haïti.
Toutefois, il existe une résistance du peuple haïtien. La table ronde fera écho à la richesse et la profondeur des dynamiques de mobilisations en particulier qui contredise la lecture traditionnelle du peuple haïtien «incapable et inepte».
Panélistes : Chantal Ismé, Coalition haïtienne contre la dictature en Haïti (Montréal), Camille Chalmers (Haïti) intéressé, Alain Saint-Victor (à confirmer)
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More information coming soon.
L’internationalisme à l’épreuve de la guerre en Ukraine : à propos des livraisons d’armes et des sanctions économiques
Martin GalliéDepuis le déclenchement de la guerre, la « gauche radicale progressiste »[1] celle qui se revendique des mouvements ouvriers, décoloniaux, anticapitalistes, anti-impérialistes mais également féministes, antiracistes, écologistes, LGBTQ+ etc. est divisée sur le soutien à apporter aux ukrainiens et ukrainiennes.
D’un côté, une partie majoritaire de cette gauche appelle au cessez-le-feu, aux négociations immédiates et à la démilitarisation. De l’autre côté, une petite partie de cette gauche milite pour un soutien armé et le renforcement des sanctions ou, plus précisément, pour le renforcement de certaines d’entre elles.
Le mouvement internationaliste s’accorde ainsi pour dénoncer l’agression Russe mais s’oppose ensuite sur des questions aussi fondamentales que celles de savoir : Qui soutenir ? Pourquoi ? Et comment ? Ce sont donc ici deux visions de l’internationalisme, de la solidarité ouvrière, de la lutte contre l’impérialisme, la colonisation ou le sexisme qui s’opposent frontalement.
À partir d’une analyse des prises de position mais également des actions des organisations syndicales, socialistes, anarchistes, féministes hors Ukraine, sur la question des livraisons d’armes et des sanctions économiques en particulier, cette proposition de communication souhaite documenter ce que signifie aujourd’hui, concrètement, l’Internationalisme pour la « gauche radicale progressiste ». Quels sont les principes constitutifs ou les critères de l’internationalisme pour les uns et pour les autres ? Quelles sont les contradictions ? Quelles sont les propositions pour tenter de dépasser ces contradictions ?
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Decolonizing the Colonizer in Africa: towards the emancipation and sovereignty of francophone African countries in a changing world
The decolonisation of the French colonial Africa that began from the late 1950s to the 1960s had seem to be on paper and not a reality. The hegemonic attitude of France against its former colonies has neither been historical nor intermittent but systematic. The vestiges of French colonial imperialism in Africa remain and are seen in the neo-colonial French Africa in the guise of “Francafrique”. “Françafrique”, which reigns especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, has been the name of covert operations, interventions, neo-colonial interest networks, illegal commercial activities and the hegemony embodied by these last ones for decades. The stream of consciousness has run through the minds of some “Francophone” Africans and has ignited anti-French sentiments. A wind of change is gradually blowing across “former” French colonies in Africa colonies to counter French hegemony. Considering this, the study argues that there is a need to decolonise the French colonizer in Africa. In other words, the relation between France and Francophone countries should be rethink and rebuilt. African countries should cease the opportunity to foster their emancipation and gains their real sovereignty in the ongoing changing world. Following the historical and realism approach, the study will examine the French-Africa relation from the colonial period. and discuss the relations have impacted the latter. The study analyses the relationship between France ands its former colonies and why there is then paradigm shift in this relation. The study will also look that the prospects of French African colonies when they shrug themselves off the French neo-colonial grip.
Tazoacha Francis, Director of Peace and Security Division, Nkafu Policy Institute, Denis and Lenora Foretia Foundation (USA/Cameroon) andDr Steve Tametong, Deputy director of Governance and Democracy Division, Nkafu Policy Institute, Denis and Lenora Foretia Foundation (USA/Cameroon)
Le panafricentrage, une option équilibrée de développement autocentré et continental
Aziz Fall du Centre Internationaliste Ryerson — Fondation Aubin (CIRFA) et enseignant à l’université McGill et à l’UQAM
De l’apport théorique d’internationalistes comme Samir Amin, à la praxis de Nyerere, Fanon, Cabral ou Sankara s’édifie un renouveau panafricaniste. Le panafricentrage, s’en réclame et s'articule sur des expériences de développement comme le Sankarisme, mais en renouvelant la praxis aux exigences du 21 ièm siècle et des transitions nécessaires. Le Panafricentrage c’est le processus de conscience politique et historique d’autonomie collective continentale favorisant, par une rupture sélective avec le capitalisme dominant, un autre projet de société misant sur la maîtrise de l’accumulation, son équitable redistribution dans le respect de l’environnement. Il promeut la revalorisation de la valeur d’usage et de nos solidarités, un renouveau socioculturel ancré dans le matérialisme historique et le ‘Matérialisme’ permettant à l’Afrique d’apporter sa contribution active à notre ère. Il incombe aux masses laborieuses et aux intellectuels organiques de l’Afrique et de sa diaspora de forger cette alternative contre les phases prédatrices de la mondialisation impérialiste qui n’autorisent que des options compradores et leurs chimériques intégrations continentales.
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Decolonizing Canadian immigration law
Canadian immigration law is premised upon the enforcement of highly policed borders that were negotiated without consulting the Indigenous nations who reside on those lands. These same Indigenous nations are now unable to engage in cross-border cultural practices without violating those laws. The consequences of violating Canadian immigration law are severe. I will examine whether a reinterpretation of the relevant statutory instruments may allow for non-Canadian citizen Indigenous individuals with historical and present-day connections to Canadian Indigenous communities to enter and reside in Canada to practice their cultural traditions.
In so doing, I will examine whether Canadian immigration law furthers the erasure of Canada’s indigenous peoples, and whether a reinterpretation of the legal framework can advance the recognition of these Indigenous peoples in the Canadian legal landscape. I will also examine how the right of non-Canadian indigenous peoples to enter and reside in Canada interacts with the Canadian state’s right to exercise control over its sovereign borders.
I will consider the affirmation of the “existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada” in the Canadian Constitution, as well as Canadian immigration law, which affirms the right of “every person registered as an Indian under the Indian Act” to enter and remain in Canada. How this legal framework may include non-Canadian citizen Indigenous peoples is an under-theorized area of law. To answer this question, I will draw upon modern constitutional principles and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, colonial creations which nevertheless represent the minimum legal obligations Canada currently holds towards its Indigenous peoples. I will conclude by pointing out the legal and theoretical grounding for the right of members of cross-border Indigenous communities to enter and reside in Canada in order to practice their cultural traditions.
What can Critical Transnational Feminism Teach Us About Solidarity & Community Building?
Situated in the Canadian context but widely applicable beyond it too, this paper addresses how Canadian Muslim feminisms can benefit from adopting a critical transnational feminist lens that centres mutual accountability and collective responsibility (Russo, 2019, p. 188; Alexander and Mohanty, 2010, p. 42).
Broadly, this involves taking a closer look at the intersectionality of feminism.This necessitates a shift in focus from this/that oppositions to sometimes tense interconnectivity and intersubjectivity, foregrounded when spaces and practices across various forms of borders are made proximate to each other ideologically and geographically (Alexander and Mohanty, 2010, p. 40). This kind of analysis, informed by critical transnational feminism, can be one way to ensure feminist research, mobilization and theory is aware of, accountable for and proactively disrupting essentialist binaries.
Specifically, we will look at how critical transnational feminism demands self-reflexivity on one’s location in structures of domination and subjugation, as well as one’s complicity in advancing orientalist, imperialist and colonial logics (p. 193; Nayak, as cited in Russo, 2019, p. 213). Critical transnational feminism also necessitates consideration of when transnational feminism gets deployed for normative functions and when transnational feminism can be mobilized for decolonizing, radical functions (Alexander and Mohanty, 2010, p. 42). These insights can productively inform the strategies that are deployed to deconstruct intersecting, overlapping systems of oppression including but not limited to patriarchy. Furthermore, such an analytical framework squarely disrupts colonial logics and imperial motives, by not only highlighting and challenging them, but also by proposing alternative understandings.
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Intersectional ecofeminisms: Fighting for a “safe space” in youth climate activist circles
Greta-inspired climate activism is growing across the globe due to the power of globalization of social media and moving back to in-person classes there will be more school strikes in the coming months. Governments, policy makers, the public sphere, and older generations of civil society activists now face an emerging group of youth that demand a healthy and livable planet--the basic and simple human right that the United Nations only came to agree on its necessity in July 2022! It seems that climate activism is now added to the multiple choices of identity making available for youth and has shaped and continues to shape their engagement with their immediate and larger social context. This paper focuses on the intersections of climate change activism and ecofeminism with a focus on identity making and negotiating. Based on ethnographically informed fieldwork and qualitative in-depth interviews with environmental and climate activists in Turkey and Egypt in this paper I explore how young activists challenge and change gender roles and hierarchies in their activism and claim access to or create a safe space within and between different activist circles.
Non-Capitalist Collective Urban Productive Spaces
Kevin PankewichWe operate within what Foster, York, and Clark (2010), drawing on Marx, refer to as a metabolic rift between town and countryside in terms of nutrient depletion/accumulation and nutrient cycling, including carbon (p. 45-46). How might we begin to relocalize some amount of food production to repair or reduce this rift? Some community garden models may offer an attempt. Where the logic of private appropriation and accumulation are hegemonic, we would be well served to acutely study where functional alternatives, however small, may spring up and what kind of political consciousness they produce. Here the materialist outlook is at its most subversive. It is in this sense that community gardens and community farms may, in some cases, represent a small archipelago of alternatives to the dominant capitalist mode. In offering geographical sites of collectivized production, without commodified labour or the appropriation of surplus, we may see some seeds of subversion to the dominant capitalist ethos. Where an essay may be convincing and a picture may be worth a thousand words, what tangible, functioning collective growing projects may be worth is potentially immense.
The author’s interest in this stems from a role in working with such a project. It has been arguably successful and appears isolated. It is his belief that the common space here represents something substantially different from the way our society tends to operate, and is functioning well enough to warrant further study.
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Par notre atelier de discussion, nous souhaitons mettre de l’avant les rapports économico-politiques déterminant la constitution sociale de stocks, et donc de la trajectoire écologique de notre société. Partant du postulat que l’investissement exerce une régulation sur la trajectoire écologique des sociétés (Schnaiberg, 1980, Ceddia 2020), nous nous intéressons aux grandes firmes qui monopolisent la fonction d’investissement dans le capitalisme avancé (Lavoie, 2022). Cet investissement détermine en grande partie la demande future en ressources naturelles, et ce, tant par la constitution de stocks biophysiques que par la commande de flux de matières et d’énergie (besoins en matières premières, besoins sociaux particuliers, type d’énergie utilisée, etc.). De fait, l'investissement incarne le pouvoir social d'orienter la production, la consommation et, incidemment, l'appropriation de la nature (Hornborg, 2019). Il détermine donc en grande partie l’organisation sociale future de la société ainsi que notre capacité à effectuer une transition socioécologique réussie. Comme la capacité d’investissement est en grande partie monopolisée par les grandes entreprises capitalistes et par des États adhérant aux doctrines de la croissance et l'extractivisme, il est fondamentalement politique.
Nous souhaitons d’abord faire une présentation théorique de 20 minutes sur le sujet. Nous formerons ensuite des sous-groupes de discussion, dont l’objectif sera d’explorer un stock particulier, issu du contexte québécois, national ou international. Nous proposerons une série de stocks et de questions pouvant se prêter à discussion. Puis, un retour en grand groupe permettra à chaque sous-groupe de présenter les faits saillants de leur discussion.
Des exemples de stocks pouvant être discutés sont:
-Le troisième lien
-La Fonderie Horne
-Des projets de condominium
-Des projets actuels ou futurs d’infrastructures fossiles (Bay du nord, Coastal GasLink, etc.)
Discussion to Bruce McKenna, Djamila Mones, Shannon Ikebe
Over the course of the 2010s, many social movement activists participated in a turn “from the streets to the state” (Gray 2018), recognizing the limited impact of extra-parliamentary strategies since the 1990s. In Britain and the United States, self-described socialist candidates Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders came closer to power than at any time in recent memory. These developments, along with other trends, such as the slow rise of Québec solidaire (QS), have demonstrated that a more traditional understanding of political parties—as mass-driven vehicles for meaningful social change—may not be confined to history.
Since 2019, left party activists have suffered major setbacks, including the nomination of Joe Biden in the United States, and efforts by British Labour leader Keir Starmer to suppress the legacy of Corbynism. QS failed to make major gains in the 2022 election. Although it has at times been the site of significant internal contention, the New Democratic Party (NDP) has not made a meaningful break with norms of neoliberal governance in any province, and NDP governments have been major proponents of the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure. In Western Canada, the rise of an increasingly radical right-wing populism sheds light on the challenges facing left parties elsewhere in the country. An updated reflection on the discourse of western alienation may be in order, especially in light of trends toward the polarization of Alberta politics with the election of Danielle Smith.
This roundtable brings together three young politically engaged scholars to reflect on the past, the present, and the future of parties as vehicles of transformation. Intellectually, we are grounded in political science, history, and sociology. Practically, we draw on our experience in the labour movement in Ontario, Quebec, and California, as well as party experience in Quebec solidaire, the NDP, La France Insoumise, NUPES, and a variety of campaigns in the United States.
Panelists : Bruce McKenna, Djamila Mones, Shannon Ikebe
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The global slump of 2009 fractured the world economy and world politics. As the international economy today plunges into a new slump, we face erupting imperial aggressions and dangerous right-wing insurgencies. Yet, significant forces of resistance persist—in popular revolts, national liberation struggles, feminist insurgencies, and new modes of working-class struggle. This panel analyses these developments and addresses key challenges for the left with respect to imperialism, race, national liberation, and socialist internationalism.
Sponsored by Spectre Journal
Chair and discussant: Ashley Smith
Panelists : Shireen Akram-Boshar, “From Palestine to Iran: Imperialism, Internationalism, and Class Struggle” ; David McNally, “World Crisis, War, the New Right, and Left Insurgencies”
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to Facilitated by Anaïs Houde, Gabrielle Roy-Grégoire, Anaïs Houde, David Sanchez
Nous voulons proposer une perspective critique du capitalisme vert et du solutionnisme technologique qui se met en place pour répondre à la crise climatique. Du point de vue des luttes socioécologiques qui s’y opposent, des cas concrets de projets d’infrastructures portés par le plan vert, la stratégie maritime du Québec et le programme de création de zones d’innovation seront questionnés. Comment sont liées ces stratégies mises en place par le gouvernement actuel? Comment l’élargissement des frontières de l’extractivisme et sa logistique, poursuivent et la dépossession territoriale des populations vulnérables et menaces le vivant? Quelles technologies et logistiques s’implantent pour mener la stratégie globale du gouvernement?
Pour aborder ces enjeux, nous proposons de faire un atelier ciné-discussion autour du film La souplesse du roseau de David Sanchez. Ce film a été initié par Mobilisation6600 Parc-nature MHM, un mouvement luttant contre la réindustrialisation et l’expansion portuaire dans Hochelaga-Maisonneuve à Montréal. À travers la présentation du conflit en cours au terrain vague d’Hochelaga, il met en scène une rencontre interlutte qui a eu lieu sur le territoire défendu lors d'une semaine d’actions à l’été 2022. Le film permet une ébauche des liens possibles entre la création de mines de minéraux d’avenir, la stratégie maritime Avantage Saint-Laurent, les zones d’innovations et les luttes socioécologiques qui y font face. Ce portrait sera ensuite approfondi et discuté avec un panel de discussion.
Le panel est constitué de manière à mettre en valeur la pratique artistique, les mobilisations et les réflexions théoriques en cours. Il sera composé du réalisateur du film, de deux personnes militant dans les mobilisations présentées dans le documentaire et deux jeunes chercheur-es ayant des projets de recherches sur la thématique de l’extractivisme vert et du conflit socioécologique territorial.
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La demande de définancer la police a récue l'attention du public lors des manifestations historiques de 2020, mais elle provient d'une tradition abolitionniste plus ancienne qui remet en question la nécessité prés de la police, des prisons et de la punition. Ce panel réunit des militant.e.s de la Coalition pour le définancement de la police à Montréal pour aborder la question du définancement et de l'abolition de la police sous différents angles. D'une manière générale, nous montrerons comment des problèmes comme le racisme et la violence policière ne peuvent être résolus par des réformes ; comment diverses communautés développent des moyens de se protéger les unes les autres sans l'intervention de la police ; et common le définacement et l’abolition de la police est une partie intégrante d’une transition anti- et post-capitaliste.
Panelistes : Ted Rutland, Marlihan Lopez, Jessica Quijano
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OBJECTIVE FORM, TERRITORY OF CRITICAL STRUGGLE
Amidst debates in the sixties regarding late modernisation in peripheral countries, Roberto Schwarz came to define objective form (1991) as a construct that provides the rhythmic and invisible links between the social-historical domain and the aesthetic. It consists, said Schwarz, of a form comprising a “practical and historical substance” acting also as the “social core of the art form” (1997).
By connecting the preexistent social experience to the aesthetically built form, and moreover socially and historically ordered by a collective and impersonal subject, such construct distinguishes itself from postmodern eclecticism disconnected from the historical process.
The objective form offers critical intelligibility before the historical-social matter, but only if taken as a form that is intrinsic to the aesthetic sphere. Thus, the problem of the aesthetic condensation of the social rhythms is therefore concretely reoccurring whenever necessary to retrace the reciprocal links between social-historical and artistic forms. Accordingly, the exercise of aesthetic intuition and the critical act regarding the art materials are required to synthesise the structures of the social-historical matter – otherwise inapprehensible in the intrinsic connections to the perception and reflexion about the historical objectivity and dynamics. There are things that only in art emerge and make it an indispensable tool for dialectical historical reflexion.
Thus this paper will revisit some critical responses that Brazilian art gave to the civil-military coup of 1964 and to the late accelerated economic modernisation that ensued. And finally, it will also revisit the contemporary installation Big Wheel (2019, C. Gross) – a negative architectural construct that totalised Brazil’s tragic moment with epic poignancy.
* Proponent: Luiz Renato Martins (University of São Paulo, Brazil; author of The Long Roots of Formalism in Brazil, Haymarket, 2019)
Handbook of Political Economy through Contemporary Art
Arts are another a space for representing the economy. The political and social aspect of our economies recommends extending the reflections on it beyond the debate among economists. Economic ideas cross this disciplinary border and end up being the subject of a more open and participatory debate. For this reason, the economic discourse of arts is welcome. A particularly noteworthy aspect is that, unlike the dominant economy, artists are used to transdisciplinary intellectual work and creativity.
This work deals with the relationship between the economy and contemporary art. It focuses on the opportunities that art-based research offers to develop new narratives about our economies, on the representation of the economy through contemporary art. This paper reviews the work of several contemporary artists whose interest is focused on the economic issues of our time. In addition, the work explores the possibilities and obstacles that art offers for the dissemination of ideas about economics and, therefore, its effectiveness for teaching and learning political economy, as if it were just another (different) handbook of economics.
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Repolitiser les changements climatiques en RD Congo : les collectivités locales entre résilience spontanée et résilience suscitée
De plus en plus, les changements climatiques sont devenus une question déterminante de notre époque et nous sommes à un moment décisif. De l’évolution des conditions météorologiques, qui ont des effets sur le production agricole et alimentaire, à l’élévation du niveau des mers, qui accroît les risques d’inondations, les conséquences des changements climatiques sont mondiales en termes d’effets et d’échelle. Sans action immédiate, concertée et contextualisée, il sera beaucoup plus difficile et coûteux de s’adapter efficacement aux conséquences futures de ces changements. Actuellement, des initiatives allant dans le sens d’améliorer les moyens de substance des populations à la base sont mise sur pied pour renforcer la resilience locale, en l’occurrence dans les pays en voie de développement, dont la RDC. Cependant, des questionnements subsistent dans l’opinion. Ces mesures sont-elles basées sur les intérêts et les besoins des collectivités locales ? Les savoirs locaux, y compris ceux des femmes, sont-ils pris en compte dans les documents stratégiques ? Les documents de planification intègrent-ils suffisamment la dimension changement climatique pour impulser l’action collective locale ?
L’expérience de l’ONG SOFEDI avec les collectivités locales de la plaine de la Ruzizi en RDC permet de poser le postulat selon lequel les options d’adaptation identifiées et hiérarchisées par les populations locales participent à l’élaboration des réponses opérationnelles pertinentes et durables pour le renforcement de la résilience des populations à mieux faire face, au cours du temps, aux variabilités climatiques, encore difficilement prévisibles. Dans les faits, malheureusement, l’on constate que les collectivités territoriales ont des capacités limitées pour intégrer la dimension climatique et les stratégies d’adaptation dans le système de planification locale. Cette situation pousse les populations locales à développer des mécanismes de résilience susceptibles de dégrader davantage l’environnement, l’instinct de survie primant sur la durabilité (résilience dégradante).
Ainsi, le travail de SOFEDI, aux côtés des communautés locales dans la plaine de la Ruzizi à l’est de la RDC a fait émergé trois principales leçons apprises, incluant : (i) l’importance des connaissances endogènes dans la planification locale sensible au climat : lors de la planification locale, on observe généralement que la simple concertation populaire est privilégiée en lieu et place d’une participation réelle et effective des populations locales ; (ii) l’exigence d’une démarche collaborative dans la planification locale sensible au climat : la problématique de changement climatique nécessite une approche intégrée dans la quête des solutions durables. Il s’agit d’une combinaison des différentes sources de connaissances (endogènes et conventionnelles) ; (iii) la nécessité de renforcer les capacités des acteurs locaux en matière de changement climatique. Actuellement, le processus de planification locale ne tient pas compte des informations issues des terroirs, de leurs milieux de vie ainsi que des documents d’orientation sectoriels. La prise en compte des aspects liés à l’adaptation aux changements climatiques dans les plans locaux de développement (verdissement des plans locaux de développement), à l’échelle locale, doit se faire à travers une démarche participative et pluridisciplaire et constitue.
En somme, des leviers adaptatifs identifiés par les collectivités locales, planifiés à l’échelle locale avec des outils contextualisés et acceptés par les acteurs locaux constituent la voie privilégiée pour bâtir des sociétés résilientes et durables face à la crise climatique.
Viviane Sebahire, Coordinatrice SOFEDI
Réflexions écoféministes sur une société écologique et inclusive : Parcours au sein du Collectif Solon
Marie BeigasSelon les perspectives écoféministes, le système d’exploitation capitaliste cause la dégradation des écosystèmes au profit des systèmes économiques tout en exacerbant les injustices sociales, environnementales, raciales et épistémiques. Les mouvements écoféministes participent à soutenir les souverainetés contre l’impérialisme et le colonialisme par le biais d’actions militantes pour la démilitarisation et la dénucléarisation qui peuvent continuer d’inspirer les luttes actuelles. Les courants écoféministes social et queer sont particulièrement pertinents si l’on souhaite imaginer d’autres futurs. Ils proposent des actions collectives permettant de mieux vivre et lutter ensemble pour éviter la paralysie et l’indécision, en s’interrogeant sur le désastre environnemental depuis les marges pour contrer l’exploitation et la destruction du vivant. Réfléchir les luttes écologiste, postcolonialiste et féministe de manière intersectionnelle permet de comprendre la co-constitution des systèmes d’oppression et diminuent les risques des luttes individualisées pour favoriser l’émergence de nouveaux modèles.
Plus que jamais, il faut reconfigurer les gauches en proposant des nouvelles manières de s’organiser à différentes échelles de la société en misant sur l’entraide, la solidarité, le partage des ressources et des connaissances pour mettre en réseau les acteur·trices des transformations sociales. Certains mouvements citoyens, tels que le Collectif Solon, proposent un récit collectif pour la transition socio-écologique pour lutter contre les changements climatiques grâce à des actions collectives qui s’inscrivent dans le territoire. Au sein du Collectif Solon, on cherche à repenser la démocratie et les relations de pouvoir en réfléchissant à une organisation du travail plus collectif et autogéré par les employé·es. Le Collectif Solon est un incubateur parfait d’expérimentations de l’autogestion et partage des tâches et responsabilités de manière horizontale.
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Activité conjointe d'Alternatives, de l'Association pour la Taxation des Transactions financières pour l'Aide aux Citoyens (ATTAC)-Québec et ATTAC-France
La pandémie annonce-t-elle la fin du néolibéralisme? Que nous apprend la lutte contre les retraites en France sur le rêve néolibéral d’une mondialisation du capital sur la planète? L’offensive du gouvernement Macron carbure-t-elle aux politiques néolibérales traditionnelles? Que reste-t-il du néolibéralisme, avec l’accentuation des luttes interimpérialistes pour l’hégémonie de la planète et la résurgence du nationalisme autoritaire?
Ce projet d’atelier réunit les composantes française et québécoise des réseaux ATTAC. D’une part, Claude Vaillancourt, président du groupe au Québec, vient de publier un essai sur La fin du néolibéralisme. Il y soutient que la crise économique, le réchauffement climatique et la pandémie, notamment, nous ont plongés «dans une nouvelle période de l’histoire». Par ailleurs, forts de ses 10 000 membres en France, les membres d’ATTAC-France sont complètement impliqués dans une mobilisation de résistance à une attaque sur les retraites de l’État, qui heurte les conditions de vie de la population laborieuse. S’il est vrai que nous entrons dans une période post-néolibérale, il demeure d’actualité de développer une résistance systémique à la persistance des politiques d’un capitalisme toujours avide d’accumulation.
Panélistes : Claude Vaillancourt, président d’ATTAC-Québec et auteur de La fin du néolibéralisme ; (à venir), syndicaliste français et membre du bureau d’ATTAC-France
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À l’animation : Alessandra Devulsky
Avec Elisa Loncón, Chris Smalls et Mustafa Barghouti
Les partis de gauche au Chili et en Colombie ont contribué au renouvellement discursif et pratique de la gauche en Amérique latine et ailleurs en intégrant des revendications féministes et environnementalistes au cœur de leurs programmes. Cette nouvelle gauche diffère de la vague rose du début du 21e siècle: elle critique le développement économique basé sur l’économie extractive et fossile et elle dénonce ouvertement le patriarcat et la colonialité du pouvoir. Elle a aussi su construire de nouvelles formes de socialisation politique basées sur des structures moins hiérarchiques et centrées sur le recours aux réseaux sociaux. Il s’agit d’une gauche nourrie du contenu des grandes mobilisations sociales mondiales. Dans le cadre d’un projet de transition issu d’une convergence de résistances, il faut construire des modèles de gauche qui prennent en compte l’émergence de nouveaux types de citoyenneté, de formes d’exercice du pouvoir, et de modes d’articulation de la droite. Quels sont les apports de la critique féministe, de l’écologisme et de la critique décoloniale peuvent contribuer à la construction de nouveaux modèles d’émancipation de gauche? Comment établir un dialogue fructueux entre ces critiques et le marxisme qui permette de nouvelles constructions politiques qui dépassent le racisme, le sexisme, l’impérialisme et la colonialité du pouvoir dans la pratique politique? Comment penser à de nouvelles formes de socialisation politique de gauche, moins hiérarchisées et plus décentralisées? Et si les problèmes auxquels fait face la gauche ne peuvent se régler qu’à l’échelle planétaire, comment assumer un réel internationalisme? Ce panel présente des activistes du Chili, des États-Unis, de Palestine et du Brésil, qui réfléchiront aux succès et aux échecs des mouvements de gauche dans leur contexte.
Presenting : Alessandra Devulsky
With Elisa Loncón, Chris Smalls and Mustafa Barghouti
The recent presidential elections in Chile and Colombia have contributed to a discursive and practical renewal of the left in Latin America and elsewhere by integrating feminist and environmental demands into their platforms. This new left differs from the pink wave of the beginning of the 21st century: it criticizes extraction-based economic development and openly denounces patriarchy and the coloniality of power. It has also constructed new forms of political socialization based on structures that are less hierarchical and increasingly centered on the use of social media. It is a left nourished and sustained by global social movements. Within a transition project born from the convergence of many forms of resistance, it is essential to build models of the left that consider the emergence of new meanings of citizenship, power, and modes of articulating the question of rights. How can feminist and decolonial critiques help build new left-wing models of emancipation? How to establish a constructive dialogue between these critiques and Marxism to develop new political frameworks which go beyond racism, sexism, imperialism, and the coloniality of power within political practices? How can we imagine new forms of political socialization within the left, less hierarchical and more decentralized? And if the problems the left is facing can only be solved on a global scale, how can we embody a true internationalism? This panel presents activists from Chile, the United States, Palestine and Brazil, who will reflect on the successes and failures of the leftist movements in their context.
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Panel to Facilitated by Rosa Luxembourg Fondation
Resource extraction endangers not only the livelihoods of local people, but also the rights to a safe and healthy environment. The defense of territories and vulnerable populations against the projects of private and state actors is an anti-systemic issue in both the North and the South. It is about countering projects that put profits before the population and the environment.
The workshop aims to testify to concrete cases of resistance by comparing approaches centered on the defense of land and living conditions of populations against resource extraction and expropriation. A reflection based on such a comparison aims to raise awareness of the requirements for successful and meaningful organization and action to counter the attempts of extractivist capitalism.
Kathi Lehmann of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation will present the German case of the Lützerath lands. She will recall why the extractivist Lützerath project is important to the German state and explain the origins of the resistance movement, its organization and the tactics used against the forced eviction of the population. Rosalinda Hidalgo, responsible for urgent actions at CDHAL will discuss a Latin American case. It is possible that an indigenous person from Guatemala will also be present to do the same.
Panelists : Kathi Lehmann, Fondation Rosa Luxemburg ; Rosalinda Hidalgo, responsible for urgent actions Committee for Human Rights in Latin America (CDHAL)
Panel to
Activité conjointe Journal des Alternatives/Plateforme altermondialiste et du Centre internationaliste Ryerson — Fondation Aubin (CIRFA), autres à venir. Langue : français.
Sous forme de table ronde, l’activité sera animée par Maïka Sonderje, professeure à l’École due développement international et de la mondialisation de l’Université d’Ottawa (ÉDIM-UO) et membre du conseil d’administration d’Alternatives.
Introduction par Aziz Salmone Fall du Centre Internationaliste Ryerson — Fondation Aubin (CIRFA) et enseignant à l’université McGill et à l’UQAM.
L’internationalisme est un combat politique, qui exige une rupture avec l’asservissement systémique des populations du Sud aux pays du Nord. L’oppression colonialiste, impérialiste ou néolibérale, participe à la reproduction du capitalisme contemporain. Les dernières élections ont fait peu de cas de l’importance d’une approche de solidarité internationale dans l’ouverture du Québec au reste du monde. À la fois une conséquence du racisme systémique et de la faiblesse de la conscience internationaliste, cette réalité prend toute sa mesure notamment en Europe, alors que la xénophobie est le menu de la montée de la droite radicale.
L’internationalisme est une ligne de résistance contre cette montée du chauvinisme impérialiste. La reconnaissance de la contribution des réseaux de solidarité internationale à l’accroissement de la conscience internationaliste est trop faible et mal soutenue. Comment bâtir un pôle internationaliste au Québec, aujourd’hui? C’est cette question que veut soulever avec cette table ronde.
Panélistes : Chantal Ismé, présidente de la Coalition haïtienne contre la dictature en Haïti ; Haroun Bouazzi, député de à l’Assemblée nationale du Québec et responsable des questions internationales pour l’aile parlementaire de Québec solidaire ; Ian Vidal, responsable de la commission internationale d’ATTAC-France ; Ronald Cameron du Journal des Alternatives/Plateforme altermondialiste
Discussion to
Plus d'informations à venir.
Discussion to Facilitated by Amanda Aziz
Drivers of migration to Canada depend on current models of capitalism, neoliberalism and colonialism. Most of Canada's temporary migration programs depend on significant economic inequality between host countries and countries from which migrants are moving. Canada's foreign policy often contributes to this economic inequality and resulting instability. Most recently, there has been a consistent shift away from permanent migration in favour of keeping migrants in precarious, temporary status or pushing people out of status.
This discussion proposes to focus on the exploitative temporary immigration system, and the systemic, gendered vulnerabilities it creates by design. It will also discuss the ways in which systems exclude migrants, including Canada's temporary migration programs, and the use of the detention apparatus as a means of marginalizing already vulnerable communities. Proposed topics of discussion include migrant labour, access to and exclusion from health care, and detention. Proposed discussion prompters include:
Blandine Tona (she/her, francophone, first generation settler) - Director of Programs, Women's Health Clinic (Winnipeg, Manitoba - Treaty One Territory)
Erin Bockstael (she/her, settler francophone) - Manager of Family and Community Programs, Women's Health Clinic (Winnipeg, Manitoba - Treaty One Territory)
Amanda Aziz (she/her, second generation settler) - Immigration & Refugee lawyer, Migrant Workers Centre (Vancouver, BC - unceded and occupied Coast Salish Territories)
Molly Joeck (she/her, settler, PhD candidate in law, bilingual in French/English) - Immigration & Refugee law practitioner (Vancouver, BC - unceded and occupied Coast Salish Territories)
We propose to shape a discussion that includes the lived experience of attendees, case studies and campaigns to resist and re-imagine inclusive services and systems that uphold human dignity and migrant human rights, contextualized by migrant self-determination.
Discussion to Samia Dumais, Florence Prévost-Grégoire, Catherine Larochelle, Camille Robert, Christine Chevalier-Caron, Benoit Gaudreault
Active en ligne et en libre accès depuis 2010, la revue HistoireEngagée.ca favorise la révision des récits dominants et, dans une logique collaborative, la création de savoirs historiques. Actrice incontournable de l’histoire publique qui se pratique en français, la revue a multiplié, au fil des ans, les projets collaboratifs qui comblent plusieurs fossés traditionnels : que ce soit entre anglophones et francophones, entre universitaires, militant.e.s et mouvements sociaux ou entre histoire et art. Sa mission est triple : en plus d’offrir à son lectorat des textes qui analysent l’actualité canadienne et internationale sous l’angle de l’histoire, elle participe activement aux débats historiographiques et s’efforce de mettre de l’avant des récits qui restituent une place aux oublié.e.s de l’histoire. Puisqu’un de ses objectifs est de se mettre au diapason de l’actualité et des enjeux touchant la discipline historique, HistoireEngagée.ca publie des prises de positions informées et ancrées dans des perspectives historiques et sociales plus larges. Dans les dernières années, l’équipe éditoriale s’est efforcée d’offrir un regard historique critique sur les enjeux touchant au colonialisme, aux crises (climatique, sanitaire, etc.), au racisme systémique, à la décolonisation. Les divers rapports de pouvoir qui traversent nos sociétés et les lieux de productions du savoir (la discipline historique elle-même) sont au cœur de notre mission.
La table-ronde proposée, réunissant cinq membres du comité de rédaction actuel, sera l’occasion de réfléchir à diverses collaborations des dernières années (avec le Graphic History Collective, Active History, Borealia, la Société historique du Canada et l’Institut d’histoire de l’Amérique française), aux défis d’une publication savante en libre accès entièrement indépendante et à l’organisation « horizontale » qui priorise la santé mentale de ses membres, et aux retombées de ce type d’engagement intellectuel et social.
Panel to
Face aux défis environnementaux, les promesses du capitalisme vert sont de moins en moins convaincantes. Les « industries vertes » multiplient les campagnes pour se présenter en tant que solution à la crise actuelle, et leurs discours sont souvent relayés par les gouvernements. Pour elles, l’innovation implique la combinaison parfaite entre technologies novatrices et stimulation des marchés.
Face à elles, plusieurs organisations et communautés mettent activement en place des pratiques alternatives plus audacieuses tant au plan écologique que social : en plus de promouvoir un plus grand respect de la nature non humaine, elles contestent la centralité du marché comme logique d’organisation sociale. Ces communautés pensent l’innovation d’une façon différente : non pas en tant qu’ajouts technologiques rendus attrayants par les coûts des désastres environnementaux, mais comme la priorisation d’objectifs qu’elles choisissent par elle-même, pour leur bien-être et en pensant à celui de la planète. Ce faisant, elles s’engagent implicitement dans une lutte pour définir l’innovation contre les tenants du capitalisme vert.
Ce panel regroupe les interventions de chercheurs et chercheuses qui se penchent sur les innovations sociales en étudiant les dynamiques d’action collective et de conflits. Il aborde des questions telles que : Que sont les innovations aujourd’hui ? Est-ce la nouveauté technologique qui alimente un consumérisme plus vert ? Est-ce la recherche d’un autre type de nouveauté qui remet plus profondément en cause les logiques sociales et économiques qui ont produit le désastre qui nous entoure ? Est-ce un mariage entre les deux ? À quoi se confrontent les innovations sociales qui s’opposent ou font concurrence à l’extractivisme ou aux grandes industries ? Les pratiques vertes d’entreprises privées, ou leur prétention à l’économie circulaire sont-elles innovantes, ou plus simplement un verdissement de leur image ?
Pour une perspective sociale et pragmatiste de l’économie circulaire
Chedrak ChembessiTransition énergétique : les changements climatiques comme stratégie d’accumulation ou de démocratisation radicale
Leandro Vergara-CamusReverdir les terres sacrificielles ou redorer son image : quelles luttes pour l’innovation à Sudbury?
Thomas Chiasson-LeBelPanel to
Une haine d'une certaine démocratie
Thierry Gendron-DugréAu moment même où l’imminence de la catastrophe nous contraint à penser la transition, il devient essentiel de réfléchir aux obstacles qui se dressent sur notre chemin. Si l’on accepte de suivre l’hypothèse selon laquelle plusieurs des problèmes auxquels nous faisons face aujourd’hui sont des symptômes d’une organisation sociale qui bafoue le principe démocratique, soit que toutes et tous devraient pouvoir gouverner sans posséder de « titre » pour ce faire, il est important de se familiariser avec les raisons pour lesquelles nos sociétés semblent résister à un tel principe. Aussi voudrions-nous présenter certaines des idées que le penseur Jacques Rancière a développé au sujet d’une « haine de la démocratie » dans son ouvrage du même nom publié en 2005 et de la haine de l’égalité qui la sous-tend. Nous nous appuierons aussi sur de nouvelles analyses que Rancière a réalisé près de 15 ans plus tard sur cette haine de la démocratie, analyses republiées dans son plus récent livre, Les trente inglorieuses (2022). Cela devrait notamment nous permettre de comprendre non seulement pourquoi l’élite intellectuelle, économique et étatique, depuis longtemps, lutte contre l’aspiration démocratique, mais dans quelle mesure celle-ci a contribué à normaliser cette haine d’une certaine démocratie.
LA GRANDE INCOHÉRENCE POSTMODERNE : DE LA CONTINGENCE ANTI-MÉTAPHYSIQUE AU DOGMATISME OBSCURANTISTE DU CONSTRUIT
Les principales constructions théoriques postmodernes, outre la grande erreur générale consistant à rejeter la métaphysique moderne pour promouvoir une nouvelle métaphysique de l'éphémère, présentent une incohérence centrale qui invalide leur propre principe absolu de contingence, revenant à défendre un réalisme caché dont l'émergence est inévitable si l'on veut éviter le solipsisme paralysant auquel conduit le constructivisme radical, et pouvoir élaborer une quelconque théorisation.
Le constructivisme discursif, associé à un populisme académicien (Laclau), introduit une séparation nette entre les revendications démocratiques, locales, particulières, hétérogènes..., d'une part, et les revendications populaires, globales, équivalentes, d'autre part.
Laclau admet la préexistence de demandes hétérogènes qui conditionnent ("conditions de possibilité") l’établissement de équivalences par les agents populistes. Cette dualité entre l'hétérogène primaire, préfiguré, et l'homogène populiste, construit, reproduit distinction marxiste entre infrastructure et superstructure, répudiée dans la théorisation de Laclau. L'admission par le constructivisme d'une base à partir de laquelle les agents articulent de nouvelles demandes populistes entraîne une rechute non avouée dans le réalisme et à un démantèlement des postulats fondateurs du constructivisme.
Le constructivisme populiste montre d'autres signes d'incohérence et de théorisation idéaliste fallacieuse, dérivés de ce qui précéde :
- La nature et l'économie comme des constructions discursives (matières premières, agriculture, industrie, technologie, propriété oligarchique...).
- Exaltation de la contingence comme vertu absolue.
- Décomposition des anciennes identités et dogmatisme des nouvelles constructions identitaires. Relation avec l'obscurantisme techno-digital et la crypto-économie oligarchique capitaliste.
- Subordination de classe à l’hégémonie culturelle-académique du néolibéralisme démocratique-philanthropique.
Panel to Facilitated by Martha Caswell, Colin Anderson
Agroecology is a science, practice, and social movement for more sustainable and equitable agriculture that prioritizes food sovereignty and the political and practical autonomy of farmers and farm laborers. This panel will build upon a growing body of literature and practice around agroecological transitions as well as the enmeshed oppressions of racism, sexism, classism, and anthropocentrism. With the understanding that just transitions should upend hegemonic cultural and political tools that keep members of society oppressed, this panel proposes pre-reflection on how agroecology might aid in configuring such a society. The panel will explore the complex political dynamics of scaling out agroecology in different contexts, considering hegemonic structures, and proposing new forms of relating to comrades and ecologies across political, social, economic, racial, gender, and species boundaries. As it gains traction globally, the application of this place-based agricultural technique must embark on pre-reflection to ensure consistency of values for each territory within which it is applied. This panel will include a series of short presentation on diverse aspects of agroecological transitions, and then engage with all attendees to discuss the complexities of such transitions in the context of dominant economic structures and systems of oppression. Presentations from members of the Agroecology and Livelihoods Collaborative at the University of Vermont (USA) will address scaling the agroecology transition through reimagining and redesigning food supply chains, the role and character of human and nonhuman animal labor in agroecological transitions, the opportunity for energy-ecology as the application of ecology to energy systems through diverse practices and social movements, repoliticizing knowledge production in agroecologies, and pedagogies of just transition for agroecology.
Presenters
Ayana Curran-Howes, Matthew Burke, Michelle Nikfarjam, Juliana NeiraPanel to
The Centre for Research on Social Innovations and Transformations presents the three-part symposium New Directions for Democratic Planning?
In recent years, there has been an explosion of research surrounding the possibility of democratic planning of the economy. Previously restricted to a handful of highly invested economists and activists, discussions on the subject are now embracing an increasingly broad public that is asking a simple question: how can we organize the economy differently? The socio-political context marked by the climate crisis, the ubiquity of new technologies and the failures of globalization has contributed to this growing interest in a democratically planned post-capitalist economy.
This greater interest has a consequence for the field itself. The models and authors that emerged in the 1990s are now surrounded by a variety of often partial, but always challenging, proposals.
This colloquium will attempt to situate the new research priorities of the field by asking five questions:
- Should we continue to build and improve economic models of democratic planning or take a different direction?
- Should new technologies be at the heart of democratic planning or should we be wary of them?
- Should the shrinking of the economy be a goal of democratic planning?
- What existing institutions, organizations or movements support democratic planning?
- What international trade relationships are compatible with democratic planning?
1. Technology and postcapitalism
Guillermo Murcia López : Cibcom: democratic economic planning to overcome capitalism
Raphael Arar : The E3 Stack: A technology-assisted vision for post-capitalism and a strategy for how to get there
Alessandra Renzi : Insurgent Technopolitics: Building Technical Infrastructures For Antagonistic Social Reproduction
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Politiques d’immigration et luttes des sans-papiers au Canada
Dans le contexte de la sortie de la crise de la COVID-19 au Canada, le nombre des personnes migrantes avec un statut migratoire précaire et sans statut augmente considérablement, alors que leurs droits sont constamment bafoués, étant marginalisées ou exclues du système de protection publique et sociale. Face à ces lacunes du système public et aux discriminations sociales, des personnes migrantes organisent des luttes collectives, en dépit de lourdes barrières, appuyées par des alliés de milieux variés. Cet atelier, organisé par le Centre des travailleurs et travailleuses immigrants et Solidarité sans frontières, se propose pour discuter des enjeux d’immigration au Canada, invitant des expert∙es et des acteur∙trices du terrain. Plus précisément, les intervenant∙es s’attarderont sur l’analyse critique des politiques d’immigration du Canada et du Québec, en les situant dans le contexte international. Ensuite, les discussions porteront particulièrement sur les conditions des personnes sans statut migratoire et leur lutte pour la régularisation, intensifiée notamment en face de l’annonce du gouvernement fédéral prévoyant une mise en place d’un programme de régularisation.
Panélistes à venir.
Discussion to
La question de la pénurie de main-d’œuvre est abondamment discutée dans l’espace public depuis quelques années. On peut pourtant voir le problème sous un autre angle en se demandant si chaque poste vacant est vraiment lié à une pénurie et s’il n’y aurait pas plutôt trop d’emplois à pourvoir. Ces emplois, dont les postes considérés vacants, sont-ils tous vraiment nécessaires? Dans une société s’appuyant sur le principe dit du « libre marché », chaque entreprise décide elle-même du nombre d’emplois qu’elle doit pourvoir et à quelles conditions, sans que la population soit consultée directement. Une société fondée sur la planification démocratique pourrait prévoir des processus pour décider collectivement quels postes doivent être pourvus et à quelle condition. Dans certains cas, plutôt que de décrier la pénurie de main-d’œuvre, il serait possible d’opter pour la « décroissance » : réduction des heures d’ouverture ou même fermeture complète de certaines entreprises jugées moins désirables. Il serait aussi possible de mettre en place des mécanismes pour réallouer la main-d’œuvre des secteurs où elle est abondante vers d’autres secteurs où la pénurie est considérée comme un problème important. Ce panel permettra de repenser le travail en remettant en question les présupposés du discours public.
Cette table ronde est organisée par l'IRIS.
Panélistes : Julia Posca, Guillaume Hébert et Mario Jodoin.
Panel to
The Leftovers Communist discussion group is proud to bring one of our interventions to the Great Transition 2023. Founded in 2015, Leftovers is an international multi-current discussion network, operating at first primarily online, but increasingly through interventions at Historical Materialism conferences in London and Athens. A significant number of recent well-known Marxist text got their start and were workshopped amongst Leftovers participants. Leftovers members may come from many political spaces, but we share a queer socialist-feminist reading of the Marxist tradition, focusing on a unitary analysis and the avoidance of class reductionism. With this being said, we are all of the belief that the popular struggles of today, from queer folks fighting for their very existence in parts of the United States to women throwing off reactionary patriarchal oppression in Iran, from climate justice organizers to Indigenous struggles for self determination are all constitutive aspects of the universality of class struggle.
These three interventions should be seen as part of a single intervention of a proverbial North American debut of building upon our inevitably partial though no doubt playful and heterodox approach to the revolutionary tradition. We see these conferences as not merely a part of the renovation of “academic Marxism”. We see our role, and the role of the institutions around HM in general as being a small part of building a new International. In doing so, we recognize, as Marx says, “The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse.” HM and its offshoots, in Athens, Montreal, Beirut and beyond are mere building blocks for a new historic bloc. We aim to include those often “left over” from mainstream Left traditions, yet in doing so, re-assert that these are not mere discrete ingredients but a smorgasbord of Leftovers.
Panelist 1: Grietje Baars
Abolition as a common paradigm to anarchism and communism: A closer look at the intersection between ‘the abolition of law’ and ‘social movement lawyering’
While anarchists and Marxists often emphasise their differences, the current moment demands a joining of forces. Such joining is seen widely in everyday organising, be it in antifascist mobilisation, community mutual aid and workplace organising as well as in broader social movements that contain a much broader set of ideas as well as practices, strategies as well as tactics. It is in these broader movements that ‘abolition’ has become a focal point. What started with ‘police abolition’ through a connection with the abolitionist perspectives of elders such as (Marxist) Angela Davis brought about by political events, has broadened into a willingness to consider and organise for abolition on a much broader scale. Family abolition, gender abolition, the abolition of the state and indeed law form part of a current discussion and struggle for the abolition of capitalism, where anarchist and Marxist/communist voices become less clearly defined and polarised. In this paper I examine how grassroots organising and intellectual work are driving eachother forward into what we might envisage as a joint abolitionist front. In my own field, law, the rapidly emerging ‘abolition of law’ shared view among Marxist legal scholars provides a fruitful intersection with anarchist social movement lawyering practices. This intersection will form the core field of enquiry for my paper.
Panelist 2: Aaron Jaffe
Politics as Philosophy/Philosophy as Politics in Marx
Karl Marx wrote to his friend Arnold Ruge in March of 1843 to complain about Feuerbach’s inattention to politics. In doing so Marx made an astounding epistemological claim. Immediately after holding that Feuerbach “refers too much to nature and too little to politics,” Marx proceeded: “that, however, is the only alliance by which present-day philosophy can become truth.” The idea that the present philosophy, by which Marx meant critical-Hegelian philosophy, becomes truth through politics is a tantalizing, but deeply underdeveloped epistemological claim. It is also far from universally accepted. Some hold that Marx’s liberatory philosophy must in itself be “true” in order to reliably motivate Marxist politics. Yet this part of Marx’s criticism of idealism is absolutely central to the development of his own communist commitments. From 1843 on, these commitments are jointly philosophical and political which means Marx, as well as latter day Marxists, must politically earn the truth in our notions of abolition and freedom. After developing the practical nature of this epistemological claim, I’ll turn to tracing the outlines of the kind of social research that provides the political points of contact by which this Marxist notion of the truth can be practically achieved. Beyond the Marxological claim that the idea present in Marx’s famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach can be found roughly two years earlier, the paper defends Marx’s philosophical commitment to changing the world as itself an unfolding, practical task.
Panelist 3: Isobel Plowright
Frontiers of Abolition in the United States
This paper will explore the growth of historical materialism in the 19th century United States by reviewing the activities of communists and socialists in the decade leading up to the American Civil War, particularly with regards to the abolitionist and free-soil movements. Through pamphlets, tracts, and newspaper articles, early communists attempted to provide a materialist view of labor and land in the United States. This paper will begin with the annexation of Texas and the Mexican American War. While German social reformers sided with the slaveholding class and created volunteer companies to fight against Mexico, the exiled revolutionary Adolph Douai published abolitionist literature calling for the separation of West Texas as a free state. Joseph Weydemeyer, who arrived in the United States on the heels of the war, became the leading advocate for Marx’s critique of political economy in the United States. I will follow the work of Angela Zimmerman and August Nimtz in analyzing his writings for German newspapers. I will argue that rather than a mere prelude to the First International in the United States, the politics of land and labor in the lead-up to the Civil War indelibly shaped the organization’s trajectory in America.
Panel to
Who is the working class and where is its revolution? Is the limit of the working class's aspirations "more work" and "better work"? Do social movements ever coalesce around antiwork politics? How might UBI embolden the broader working class and contribute to the fulfillment of some of our most urgent needs? Why are we "against" work, and what are we for instead?
From vastly different intellectual and political traditions, this panel brings together some of the most provocative contemporary antiwork thinkers to discuss how we might challenge the place of wage work in society, and limn alternatives.
Panelists : Kathi Weeks, Sophie Lewis, David Calnitsky
Panel to
Un proposant un tour d’horizon de diverses problématiques auxquelles font face les femmes et le monde du « développement international » actuellement, ce panel se veut autant une critique qu’un espace de réflexion permettant de repenser l’avenir féministe.
Les deux premières présentations offrent un examen de la politique féministe d’aide internationale canadienne et relativement à la manière dont le gouvernement devrait ou ne devrait pas financer ses objectifs féministes. Les autrices exposent de ce qui a changé avec la position canadienne, soit sa nouvelle posture féministe et son positionnement en faveur des outils de financement innovant, dont les investissements sexospécifiques pour combler les écarts dans le financement du développement. Ces présentations se veulent des critiques féministes de l’économie politique actuelle et de la main mise des entreprises dans le domaine du développement international, et surtout pour la réalisation des objectifs féministes de développement.
La troisième présentation nous informe sur la réalité des initiatives urbaines féministes comme outils de changements sociaux. Elle nous offrira la possibilité de réfléchir, au travers de quatre études de cas, au rôle des mouvements sociaux féministes dans la réorganisation de nos espaces urbains traditionnellement genrés.
Notre quatrième présentation se veut une analyse décoloniale du rôle des organisations féministes dans la mise en place de nouvelles pratiques en développement international.
Finalement, le panel se conclura par une présentation sur l’économie du care et les impacts de la pandémie dans l’exacerbation de cette problématique
Pour un Agir féministe contre : La division genrée et coloniale de l’économie des soins au niveau international
Mounia ChadiÀ qui la décolonisation ? Le rôle des organismes féministes dans les contestations du développement international
Gloria NovovicLa citoyenneté urbaine féministe en Amérique latine : initiatives, alliances et défis
Charmain LevyCharmain Levy (Depart. Sc. Sociales, UQO) (Présentatrice)
Ana Laura Rodriguez Gustá
Mariana Caminotti (
Liliana Rainero
Marisol Dalmazzo
Natalia Czytajlo
Julia Garcia
Jill Wigle
Lorena Zarate
Mots clés : Mouvements sociaux féministes, initiatives urbaines féministes, égalité de genre, autonomisation, Amérique Latine, engagement féministe, urbanisation
Résumé : Malgré l’intégration massive des femmes dans la population active et les paysages urbains, la planification urbaine est encore largement conçue par et pour les hommes et ne prend pas en compte un usage diversifié, complexe et différencié de l’espace et du temps. Bien que la politique urbaine genrée soit un champ d’action basé sur des critiques et des initiatives urbaines féministes rependues en Amérique latine, le débat sur la citoyenneté urbaine en tant qu’outil de changement social ainsi que les études de cas d’initiatives urbaines féministes restent peu étudiées. Pour combler ce vide, cette communication analyse le rôle des mouvements sociaux féministes et leur interaction avec les gouvernements locaux dans la création, la réinvention et la gestion des initiatives urbaines féministes. Ce projet s’appuiera sur des études de l’égalité de genre et l’autonomisation des femmes au niveau local et analysera comment les initiatives féministes contribuent à la reconnaissance des droits des femmes et à remodeler leurs modalités d’accès aux ressources. En lien avec la montée des gouvernements municipaux de gauche ainsi que les innovations en matière de décentralisation et de démocratie participative, on explore les différentes manières dont les femmes s’organisent et comment les féministes s’engagent dans les institutions et les espaces sociaux-démocrates pour construire des politiques de qualité en matière de genre. Nous proposons d’étudier quatre cas d’initiatives féministes, à savoir Montevideo, Bogota, Sao Paulo et Rosario, qui offrent une opportunité de réflexion théorique.
Féminismes, assistance internationale et le Fonds Égalité : Les outils de financement innovant font-ils progresser l’égalité de genre ?
Julie St-Pierre-GaudreaultLa politique féministe d’aide internationale du Canada et le financement innovant : un embellissement des impacts sur le genre et la financiarisation du développement.
Susan Spronkto Facilitated by Cheolki Yoon, Manuel Salamanca Cardona
La transformation du monde du travail, caractérisée entre autres par l’éclatement des relations du travail et la croissance de travailleur.euse.s précaires, se poursuit dans le contexte de dit “relance économique”. En dépit des barrières pesantes, des résistances et des mobilisations de travailleur.euse.s précaires ont lieu dans différents lieux, recourant à des stratégies innovatrices et à de nouvelles formes organisationnelles. Intéressé à ces nouvelles luttes de travailleur.euse.s précaires, notre atelier a pour but d’ouvrir un espace de dialogue et d'échanges entre des chercheur.euse.s universitaires et des acteur.trice.s de terrain, autour des récentes mobilisations menées au Québec. Plus précisément, la réflexion portera sur 1) les conditions de l’action collective; 2) les stratégies mises en place et les obstacles rencontrés; et 3) les nouvelles pistes de futures actions.
La discussion sera d’ailleurs organisée autour de quatre axes: 1) le régime de travail migrant et les luttes des travailleur.euse.s à statut migratoire précaire; 2) le travail d’entrepôt et les campagnes d’organisation; 3) l’économie de plateforme et les résistances de travailleur.euse.s; et 4) le secteur du soin de santé et la collectivisation des travailleur.euse.s.
L’atelier est organisé par sept chercheur.euse.s affilié.e.s au GIREPS: Cheolki Yoon (McGill), Esla Galerand (UQAM), Jill Hanley (McGill et SHERPA), Manuel Salamanca Cardona (UQAM), Martin Gallié (UQAM), Sid Ahmed Soussi (UQAM) et Yanick Noiseux (UdeM). La discussion sera principalement menée par des acteur.trice.s de terrain qui collaborent actuellement avec ces chercheur.euse.s: PINAY, Réseau d’aides aux travailleuses et travailleurs migrants agricoles du Québec (RATTMAQ), Fédération du commerce de la CSN (FC-CSN), quatre comités (comité des femmes, comité d’entrepôt, comité de santé et comité sud-asiatique) du Centre des travailleurs et travailleuses immigrants (CTTI).
Discussion to Haley Pessin, Aaron Amaral (Facilitated by Natalia Tylim)
Panel to
Face aux enjeux pressants qui s’imposent à nous, la mobilisation citoyenne revêt une importance cruciale pour faire avancer les idées progressistes porteuses de solutions à long terme. Cependant, le morcellement des forces de gauche et une certaine fatigue militante posent des défis quant à la capacité des progressistes de faire valoir leur point de vue et d’exercer une influence réelle sur la vie politique. Dispersés, les groupes et individus peinent souvent à se coordonner et à faire entendre leur message.
Conscient-es de ces problèmes, autant que de l’urgence de réunir l’ensemble des progressistes à l’échelle du territoire québécois, des militant-es travaillent depuis un peu plus de deux ans à constituer un réseau d’échange et de mobilisation, nommé la Convergence populaire. Celle-ci se veut décentralisée, fondée sur des groupes régionaux se réunissant pour développer des projets communs autour des trois axes politiques au cœur de la démarche : justice sociale, justice écologique et démocratie.
Comment organiser un réseau décentralisé à l’échelle nationale ? Comment faire en sorte que les enjeux régionaux et nationaux convergent et se renforcent mutuellement ? Comment regrouper des personnes partageant des valeurs communes à l’échelle d’un vaste territoire ? À quelles conditions une telle organisation pourra-t-elle espérer atteindre ses objectifs ? De quelle manière les groupes organisés, des milieux syndicaux et communautaires notamment, peuvent-ils se placer en appui à une telle démarche citoyenne ?
La Convergence populaire souhaite présenter le modèle d’organisation auquel elle travaille, pour en souligner les bons coups et réfléchir aux difficultés inhérentes à un projet d’une telle envergure. Sur la base de l’expérience des deux dernières années, les participant-es à l’atelier seront à même de s’en inspirer et de contribuer à une réflexion collective sur les moyens dont nous disposons afin de travailler ensemble et nous renforcer les uns les autres.
Panel to
The Centre for Research on Social Innovations and Transformations presents the three-part symposium New Directions for Democratic Planning?
In recent years, there has been an explosion of research surrounding the possibility of democratic planning of the economy. Previously restricted to a handful of highly invested economists and activists, discussions on the subject are now embracing an increasingly broad public that is asking a simple question: how can we organize the economy differently? The socio-political context marked by the climate crisis, the ubiquity of new technologies and the failures of globalization has contributed to this growing interest in a democratically planned post-capitalist economy.
This greater interest has a consequence for the field itself. The models and authors that emerged in the 1990s are now surrounded by a variety of often partial, but always challenging, proposals.
This colloquium will attempt to situate the new research priorities of the field by asking five questions:
- Should we continue to build and improve economic models of democratic planning or take a different direction?
- Should new technologies be at the heart of democratic planning or should we be wary of them?
- Should the shrinking of the economy be a goal of democratic planning?
- What existing institutions, organizations or movements support democratic planning?
- What international trade relationships are compatible with democratic planning?
2. Critique of postcapitalist models
Bengi Akbulut : Planning for social reproduction? Feminist political economy and democratic planning
Jan Groos : Planning as an Art of Government
Adam Balsam : The Pitfalls and Potentials of Idealist Formulations in Economic Relations
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Panel to
Malgré les imposantes mobilisations internationales menées par les étudiant-e-s et certaines victoires contre de nouveaux projets d'extraction des hydrocarbures, rares ont été les avancées en faveur d’une reconversion industrielle verte et d’une transition énergétique. Cela découle d’un rapport de force limité par un grand absent du mouvement de la justice climatique : le pouvoir de grève des travailleurs et travailleuses. Exercé au cœur des secteurs névralgiques de l’économie capitaliste, ce pouvoir de perturbation a le potentiel d’inverser le rapport de force actuel. Dans cette perspective, il est déterminant de trouver les moyens de faire des lieux de travail des centres de politisation et de luttes pour la transition écologique, dans une perspective écosocialiste. Dans cette conférence, il sera question de réfléchir à comment réhabiliter une stratégie de lutte des classes pour sortir des hydrocarbures. Quels sont les secteurs et les syndicats clés à investir? Comment rallier des travailleurs et travailleuses traditionnellement peu investi-e-s dans la lutte écologiste? Dans une perspective internationaliste, nous nous poserons aussi la question à savoir comment réaliser une transition énergétique sans qu’elle débouche sur une nouvelle division internationale du travail relayant le Sud global à un chaînon d’extraction de minerais nécessaires à la production des infrastructures d'énergie renouvelable et des voitures électriques. Cela supposera de réfléchir aux avenues pour construire une solidarité internationale ouvrière dans la lutte pour la sortie des énergies fossiles.
Panélistes : Matt Huber, auteur de Climate change as a Class War ; Bengi Akbulut, professeure en économie écologique, Université Concordia
Panel to
À l’initiative d’Alternatives, en collaboration avec la Federacion de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras del Sector Social de la Economia informal de Honduras (FOTSSIEH)
Traduction offerte : Français et espagnol
Le travail informel, c’est-à-dire l’activité économique et productive de survie développée par des millions d’hommes et de femmes à travers le monde, est l’une des grandes séquelles du modèle économique capitaliste actuel. L’économie informelle désigne les activités économiques qui sont peu ou prou couvertes par les dispositions légales du pays (OIT, 2003). Les lois du travail du pays ne s’appliquent pas à ce secteur. Cette situation pousse des millions de travailleur.se. s dans une situation de précarité sociale et économique, les privant de leurs droits et d’une sécurité minimale. Ces activités «invisibles» sont beaucoup le fait des femmes : elles représentent 74 % de la population touchée en Afrique subsaharienne et 59 % en Amérique latine et dans les Caraïbes (ONU Femmes, 2017). En plus d’être peu reconnus et hors de portée de la protection sociale, leur niveau d’organisation formelle est très faible (coopératives, syndicats, associations, etc.).
Alternatives propose cet atelier de discussion sur des expériences de travail du secteur informel qui impliquent des femmes, notamment en Amérique centrale, où ils/elles ont mis sur places des initiatives locales afin de combattre la précarité de leur situation et défendre leurs droits. S’ajoutera au panel, un témoignage africain sur les violences sexuelles et sur le travail des femmes dans l’exploitation minière en République démocratique du Congo.
Animation : Marcela Escribano
Panélistes : Anibal Banegas, secrétaire générale de la Federacion de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras del Sector Social de la Economia informal de Honduras (FOTSSIEH); Idalmy Carcamo, coordinatrice locale du projet d’Alternatives «Autonomisation des femmes su secteur de l’économie informelle au Honduras»; Viviane Sebahire Maramuke, coordonnatrice de Solidarité des femmes pour le Développement intégral — SOFEDI (RDC) (à confirmer — en ligne?); Chantal Ide, vice-présidente Conseil central Montréal métropolitain CSN (à confirmer)
Panel to
The Leftovers Communist discussion group is proud to bring one of our interventions to the Great Transition 2023. Founded in 2015, Leftovers is an international multi-current discussion network, operating at first primarily online, but increasingly through interventions at Historical Materialism conferences in London and Athens. A significant number of recent well-known Marxist text got their start and were workshopped amongst Leftovers participants. Leftovers members may come from many political spaces, but we share a queer socialist-feminist reading of the Marxist tradition, focusing on a unitary analysis and the avoidance of class reductionism. With this being said, we are all of the belief that the popular struggles of today, from queer folks fighting for their very existence in parts of the United States to women throwing off reactionary patriarchal oppression in Iran, from climate justice organizers to Indigenous struggles for self determination are all constitutive aspects of the universality of class struggle.
These three interventions should be seen as part of a single intervention of a proverbial North American debut of building upon our inevitably partial though no doubt playful and heterodox approach to the revolutionary tradition. We see these conferences as not merely a part of the renovation of “academic Marxism”. We see our role, and the role of the institutions around HM in general as being a small part of building a new International. In doing so, we recognize, as Marx says, “The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse.” HM and its offshoots, in Athens, Montreal, Beirut and beyond are mere building blocks for a new historic bloc. We aim to include those often “left over” from mainstream Left traditions, yet in doing so, re-assert that these are not mere discrete ingredients but a smorgasbord of Leftovers.
Chair: Isobel Plowright
Panelist 1: Jordy Cummings
Capitulation on a Significant Anniversary: Musings on the near General Strike in Ontario
On the 105th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, the collective working class of the province of Ontario had Premier Doug Ford all shook up. Having attempted to use a sort of ‘state of exception’ to prevent a strike by public sector education workers, a united front emerged, at first spontaneously, but then in a coordinated sense amongst the broad working class, within and beyond organized labour. There was a genuine cross-sectoral sense that we were on the cusp of a general strike. Yet at the moment that, in CUPE National president’s words, Ford “blinked”, the labour movement leadership threw in the towel. While it would be perhaps hubristic to make the claim that the labour movement was prepared for a general strike, as the editors of Midnight Sun pointed out, this kind of political effervescence has a virality of its own. At any rate, workers in the very union that’s strike was being fought for were not given the opportunity to vote on whether or not they would have to go back to work while still in bargaining.
Many labour activists and scholars proverbially “saw this coming” predicated upon classical Marxist analyses of labour bureaucracy, whether from the late Mike Davis, Max Shachtman or Ernest Mandel. Making use of these classical analyses, along with an examination of the author’s own long-time militancy in the Canadian Union of Public Employees, this paper attempts to engage the long historical lineages of the liberal-pluralist approach of the Canadian labour bureaucracy. As “labour leaders” adorn Trudeau’s unelected senate, the labour bureaucracy is acting to tame the rank and file, instrumentalizing it against outliers like Doug Ford while reeling it in lest it get out of control. In Ontario, a general strike could have been mounted, and this scared the labour bureaucracy perhaps more than it scared the hoodlum premier.
Panelist 2 : Katie Feyh
Surplus and Survival Pending Transition
The defining feature of the proletariat is separation from the means of production such that we are compelled to sell our labor-power to others in order to survive. Those excluded from selling our labor-power form a surplus population, including both a “reserve army of labor” awaiting exploitation and an increasing population left permanently excluded by or rendered irrelevant to capital accumulation. The maintenance and management of surplus population typically amounts to bare provision of subsistence where they are not killed outright, left to die, or criminalized as members of the so-called "dangerous class" of the lumpenproletariat. In this context, various institutions of care, incarceration, and education take over for the relative lack of "traditional" structures like family or village. These institutions exist in the contradiction between the need to protect and maintain life on the one hand and the pressures from state and capital to contain, discipline, suppress, or extinguish it in the context of reproducing a population often prey to, frequently hostile to, and always both superfluous and necessary to the production and reproduction of capital.
Any discussion of transition away from capitalism requires us to think through what we can do here and now to, in Aaron Jaffe’s words, “fight for emancipation on two fronts,” one “against the social structures that constrain our lived embodied personalities,” and one “for…the social structures that would condition” their “greatest possible direction and development.” Regarding the population rendered surplus to capital, how do socialists struggle against structures we seek to abolish (police, education, family) and for structures that not only reproduce living labor but produce and reproduce the lives we all should live?
Socialists intervene in real time in these pockets of resistance. I will discuss a number of interventions and campaigns aimed at protecting and sustaining livable lives among surplus populations, from social work to mutual aid, decommodification, and the creation and defense of entitlements. Each intervention or campaign, located within the constraints and contradictions of capital, state, and community capacity presents interesting questions about the navigation of hostile terrain and what compromises are tolerable for survival and beyond, “pending revolution.”
Panelist 3 : Andrew Osbourne
Organising Among Women Vendors in New York’s Outer Boroughs: The Affordances and Constraints of the Extended Latina Flexible Family
Street Vendor Project is a New York worker center that organises across multiple ethnic boundaries, among an informal and mostly undocumented workforce widely distributed over a large geographic urban area. This distribution, known as the ‘vending hierarchy,’ is a direct consequence of the highly racialised and gendered spatial logics of neoliberalism (i.e. that which David Harvey calls “flexible accumulation” [1990]): a novel mode of urban production that has contributed to the “feminisation of poverty” while at the same time “disintegrating” the organisational capacity of the working poor. This far-reaching transformation has by consequence, thrown vendors back onto the organisational resources of the family work unit. Yet, while the fortification of familial bonds is undoubtedly necessary for survival, the pressure on vending families to pursue informal entrepreneurial activity also presents a substantial obstacle to would-be organisers since it heightens competition among the wageless sub-proletariat, along the lines of kinship and ethnicity. New York has since 1983 operated a hard cap on the issuance of new vending licences and as result, SVP has sought to organise around one major legislative issue, the campaign to Lift the Caps, while at the same time, challenging city’s ambiguous regime of “legislative informality” that allows the NYPD to harass the vendors daily through the flexible interpretation of the law (Devlin 2010); a racialised form of dispossession, that deprives the vendors of the very public space on which their subsistence depends.
Despite expectations, over the past two decades, activity around this universally experienced work-related issue has underperformed in terms of sustaining engagement levels at the project. This inertia was however recently reversed when organisers at SVP began to draw on the ready-to-hand organisational resources of Latina “flexible family” (a non-traditional and women-led kinship structure which works to absorb of costs flexible accumulation, while also providing a potential haven from administrative sanction [Graaf & Ha et al. 2015; Dunn]). Only after creating a confidential space for Latina pushcart vendors at the project, were these vulnerable women then able to break silence and interrogate their defining experiences, as single-mothers, sole-breadwinners and the victims of domestic violence. This emotional trust-based work around social reproduction issues, which before now had to not been considered vending-related, cemented the bonds of solidarity among the women.
Panel to
L’autrice et doctorante en droit Aurélie Lanctôt s’entretient avec la journaliste Vanessa Destiné et le professeur Francis Dupuis-Déri sur le thème de la liberté d’expression. Vanessa Destiné croit que le “gros méchant wokisme” n’est pas l’enemi à abattre, et argumente plutôt que ce sont les personnes marginalisées qui subissent de la censure et de l’autocensure. Francis a quant à lui déconstruit la propagande réactionnaire dans son livre Panique à l’Université, en révélant ses exagérations et ses outrances, ses demi-vérités et ses mensonges. Il discutera cette fois de la panique « anti-wokes » du côté progressiste, qui s’inscrit dans la vieille tradition du conservatisme de gauche. Les panélistes donnent des astuces pour démanteler les arguments de la droite sur la liberté d’expression. Est-ce vrai qu’on “peut pu rien dire”?
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Traduction available/offerte English & Francais
[English will follow]
‘’A notre époque, compte tenu de la puissance de destruction à la disposition des pouvoirs (destructions écologiques et militaires) le risque, dénoncé par Marx en son temps, que les combats détruisent tous les camps qui s’y affrontent, est réel. La seconde voie par contre exige l’intervention lucide et organisée du front internationaliste des travailleurs et des peuples’’. Partant de ce constat, figurant dans une cinquantaine de livres de Samir Amin, le film met en scène les luttes, audacieuses, entrevues, conférences et moments inédits du plus grand intellectuel engagé du sud. Samir Amin y traite de l’économie politique du développement, du capitalisme et de l’impérialisme, de la résistance des travailleurs et des peuples.
Le film est aussi articulé sur les témoignages de, Isabelle Eynard Amin, Francois Houtart, Isabelle del Almeida, Ibrahima Thioub, Isham el Makhood, Fatou Sow, Cherif Salif Sy, Bernard Founou,Eric Koebe, Floriant Rochat, Lau Kin Chi, Rémy Herrera, Yash Tandon, Taoufik ben Abdallah, Ebrima Sall, Gustave Massiah, Aziz Salmone Fall. Samir Amin est aussi en compagnie entre autres de Mamdouh Habashi, Issa Shivji, Firoze Manji, Krishna Murty Padmanabhan, Sandeep Chachra, Luciana Castellina, Tina Ebro, Pedro Paez, Shahida El Baz, Helmi Shaarawi, Tawhida Shaarawi, Mohamed Nour El Din, Salwa El Antari, Aziz S. Fall, Saad El Taweel, Mary El Taweel, Gabriele Habashi.
Le film hommage -bilingue anglais français- est agrémenté de quelques images du film Les dépossédés de Mathieu Roy et de plusieurs autres séquences de par le monde illustrant poétiquement les enjeux analysés.
Animé par Aziz Fall
“In our era, when we consider the destructive (ecological and military) might at the disposal of the powers-that-be, the risk, denounced by Marx in his time, that war will end up destroying all the opposing camps, is real. On the other hand, there is a second path that demands the lucid and organized intervention of the internationalist front of workers and peoples.”
Taking as its point of departure this observation, itself a feature of 50 books by Samir Amin, the film depicts the audacious struggles of, as well as interviews with, addresses by and special moments involving this outstanding intellectual of the South. In the film Samir Amin discusses the political economy of development, capitalism and imperialism, as well as the resistance of workers and peoples.
Animated by Aziz Fall
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Une campagne est actuellement en cours avec le Réseau cnca-rcrce (https://pas-negociable.ca/).Cette mobilisation vise notamment deux projets de loi (Bill C-263 aims to empower the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise (CORE) to compel Canadian corporations to provide documents and testimonies in response to complaints about their actions that violate human rights. Bill C-262 will require Canadian companies to exercise due diligence with respect to human and environmental rights throughout their global supply chains).
Cette approche s'oppose à l'approche proposée par le projet de Loi S-211, actuellement en discussion à la Chambre des communes, sur l'esclavage moderne, qui veut obliger les entreprises à «faire rapport» , sans prévenir ni être tenues responsables légalement des préjudices causés dans les pays du Sud. Les législations par «reporting » ont été notamment mises en place dans les pays anglo-saxons (UK et Australie) et la société civile en place confirme le caractère inopérant de tels mécanismes. Adpoter une loi inefficace pourrait faire perdre plusieurs année au Canada. Les defenseurs des droits canadiens veulent dès à présent s'inspirer des systèmes l'Allemagne, la France, les Pays-Bas notamment.
Une discussion pourrait avoir lieu autour du comportement et de l'imputabilité de nos entreprises à l'international (notamment l'exemple des minières au Congo, ac le Fr. Jacques Nzumbu (https://www.canadianjesuitsinternational.ca/green-energy-transition-must-not-sacrifice-human-rights-says-jesuit-priest/), doctorant à l'UQAM et spécialiste de l'industrie des minières.
Nous pourrions aussi abordé la responsabilité de chaînes d'approvisionnement des entreprises canadiennes et des droits fondamentaux des Ouighours .. Nous sommes en contact avec le collectif ISU (https://www.isupportuyghurs.org/), eux attendent du Canada qu'il refuse d'importer des biens issus du travail forcé et qu'il agisse sur les entreprises qui se fournissent dans le Xinjiang.
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With more urban residents interested in living sustainably, we have seen the emergence of a green-tech service economy premised around a kind of “lifestyle environmentalism.” Concerns over sustainability have been co-opted to sell a high-tech urban lifestyle, with interested vested in real-estate speculation, causing cities to become more unequal and branded as "green" and "smart", cementing the elite’s status, and excluding the working class, racial minorities, and women.
This panel will bring together several researchers, community organizers and activists to discuss how environmentalism risks reinforcing class fragmentation through an overemphasis on consumption habits and lifestyle choice. In turn, the important influence that class divisions have on ecological devastation will be raised - suggesting the impossibility of addressing climate and ecological emergencies through a post-class lens. The aim is to be able to bridge discussions across the rural-urban divide, from land grabbing for "green" commodity production in the countryside to real-estate speculation for greener and so-called sustainable cities. Contrasting examples of Smart cities, 'green utopias' monoculture tree offsets, and community gardens in urban areas, panelists will provide examples of alternative ecological imaginaries that put things like housing justice and accessible and affordable food, as well as climate reparations and land back as the basis of ecological replenishment and highlights how efforts towards building solidarity and repoliticizing our environments breaks down class divisions and regenerates the possibility for human and non-human life alike to flourish.
Panelists : Vijay Kolinjivadi, Aaron Vansintjan, Melissa Garcia-Lamarca, Jamie Tyberg
Panel to Facilitated by Jonathan Durand Folco
Ce panel multidisciplinaire regroupe cinq intervenant·e·s de multiples horizons qui présenteront des réflexions théoriques, des études de cas et des outils pratiques visant l’essor des communs comme alternative au système capitaliste. Le but de ce panel est d’examiner les modalités pratiques liées à l’expérimentation, la mise à l’échelle et l’institutionnalisation des communs à travers différents contextes locaux, en nous concentrant sur des expériences collectives ayant cours au Québec, en Amérique latine (México, Valparaíso) et en Europe (Barcelone). Ces propositions visent à mettre en lumière les défis et obstacles auxquels sont confrontés les communs, en favorisant un partage d’expériences et d’idées, afin d’élaborer des pistes d’actions et de nouvelles perspectives stratégiques pour bâtir une société démocratique, écologique et post-capitaliste.
#1: Jonathan Durand Folco: Le municipalisme comme tremplin des communs au Chili: l’expérience de Valparaíso
#2: Monica Garriga: Le modèle de soutenabilité des communs à Barcelone
#3: Marie-Soleil L’Allier: Les pratiques de commonings émergentes au Québec: quelle typologie, enjeux et leviers
#4: Marc D. Lachapelle: Mise en œuvre des communs : quelles pratiques organisationnelles pour médier les tensions?
#5: Jonathan Veillette Politiques de l’autonomie et “commun” à México et à Puebla
Politiques de l’autonomie et “commun” à México et à Puebla
Mise en œuvre des communs : quelles pratiques organisationnelles pour médier les tensions?
Les pratiques de commonings émergentes au Québec: quelle typologie, enjeux et leviers
Le modèle de soutenabilité des communs à Barcelone
Le municipalisme comme tremplin des communs au Chili: l’expérience de Valparaíso
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Le Centre de recherche sur les innovations et les transformations sociales présente le colloque Nouvelles directions pour la planification démocratique? en trois parties :
Dans les dernières années, on assiste à une explosion des recherches entourant la possibilité d’une planification démocratique de l’économie. Réservés auparavant à une poignée d’économistes et de militants très investis, les discussions sur le sujet embrassent un public de plus en plus large qui se pose une question toute simple: comment organiser l’économie autrement? Le contexte socio-politique marqué par la crise climatique, l’omniprésence des nouvelles technologies et les échecs de la mondialisation a contribué à cette croissance de l’intérêt pour une économie post-capitaliste planifiée démocratiquement.
Cet intérêt plus important a une conséquence sur le champ lui-même. Les modèles et les auteurs qui ont émergé dans les années 1990 sont désormais entourés d’une variété de propositions souvent partielles, mais toujours stimulantes.
Ce colloque tentera de situer les nouvelles priorités de recherche du champ en posant cinq questions:
- Faut-il continuer à bâtir et améliorer des modèles économiques de planification démocratique ou prendre une autre direction?
- Les nouvelles technologies doivent-elles être au cœur de la planification démocratique ou doit-on plutôt s’en méfier?
- La décroissance de la taille de l’économie doit-elle être un objectif de la planification démocratique?
- Quelles institutions, organisations ou mouvements déjà existants favorisent la planification démocratique?
- Quels rapports commerciaux internationaux sont compatibles avec la planification démocratique?
3. Institutions postcapitalistes
Simon Tremblay-Pepin : Des modèles aux modules
Mathieu Dufour : Une interface internationale: planifications démocratique dans un contexte global
Ambre Fourier : Redéfinir démocratiquement les besoins pour planifier l’économie
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Description coming soon.
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À l’initiative d’Alternatives, en collaboration avec ses partenaires du SUD (CLADE, ANCEFA)
Traduction offerte : Français et espagnol
Rapport de recherche sur la violence des jeunes femmes dans les écoles au Honduras, au Nicaragua, en Haïti
Depuis 2021, Alternatives poursuit une recherche sur la violence auprès chez les étudiantes d’écoles publiques en collaboration avec le groupe latino-américain CLADE (Campaña Latinoamericana por el Derecho a la Educación). Cette recherche permet de rendre compte des agressions, de la quantité et de l’intensité de ces événements, faite auprès des jeunes femmes dans un milieu qui, pourtant, devrait être considéré comme sécure et pacifiste.
L’atelier permettra non seulement de rendre compte des résultats de la recherche, mais aussi de l’impact qu’une telle recherche sur la transformation des conditions de vie à l’école pour les étudiantes. Le responsable de la recherche, David Hernandez, animera la discussion avec la directrice de CLADE, Nancy Lizarazo, qui a organisé la recherche dans trois pays : Honduras, Nicaragua et Haïti.
Animation et introduction : David Salvador Hernandez — Alternatives
Panélistes : Nancy Lizarazo, coordonnatrice générale de la Campaña Latinoamericana por el Derecho a la Educación (CLADE) ; Solange Akpo, coordinatrice régionale d’ANCEFA (Africa Network Campaign on Education For All).
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The Leftovers Communist discussion group is proud to bring one of our interventions to the Great Transition 2023. Founded in 2015, Leftovers is an international multi-current discussion network, operating at first primarily online, but increasingly through interventions at Historical Materialism conferences in London and Athens. A significant number of recent well-known Marxist text got their start and were workshopped amongst Leftovers participants. Leftovers members may come from many political spaces, but we share a queer socialist-feminist reading of the Marxist tradition, focusing on a unitary analysis and the avoidance of class reductionism. With this being said, we are all of the belief that the popular struggles of today, from queer folks fighting for their very existence in parts of the United States to women throwing off reactionary patriarchal oppression in Iran, from climate justice organizers to Indigenous struggles for self determination are all constitutive aspects of the universality of class struggle.
These three interventions should be seen as part of a single intervention of a proverbial North American debut of building upon our inevitably partial though no doubt playful and heterodox approach to the revolutionary tradition. We see these conferences as not merely a part of the renovation of “academic Marxism”. We see our role, and the role of the institutions around HM in general as being a small part of building a new International. In doing so, we recognize, as Marx says, “The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse.” HM and its offshoots, in Athens, Montreal, Beirut and beyond are mere building blocks for a new historic bloc. We aim to include those often “left over” from mainstream Left traditions, yet in doing so, re-assert that these are not mere discrete ingredients but a smorgasbord of Leftovers.
Panelists : Megan Kinch, Rachel Rosen, M.E. O’Brien, Eman Abdelhadi
Leftovers is proud to present a special roundtable discussion with two of today’s most important radical left science fiction authors M.E. O’Brien, Eman Abdelhadi and Rachel Rosen, with left journalist and memoirist Megan Kinch, a lifelong science fiction fan. Situating science fiction in the “warm stream” of socialist visionary work, both Rosen and O’Brien are consciously attempting to transcend the utopia/dystopia gap by providing glimpses at alternate worlds, giving us a chance to consider our own world from a distant vantage point. O’Brien and co-author Eman Abdelhadi’s Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 give us a proverbial “history of the future”, examining a prospective “New York commune” that comes into existence following earth-shattering events. Yet their focus is a tangible and tantalizing yet hard won and precarious future society. Only recently published, their book has already won critical acclaim and captured radical left and science fiction communities alike. Rosen’s Cascade is similarly a twist on the “post-apocalyptic” set-up with keen satire of Canadian politics and subversion of genre tropes to the level of the sublime. Examining the talismanic power of emojis with the daemonic quality of bureaucracy, Rosen is at once a a sardonic anarchist and a magical realist. The two will discuss their work, well beyond their novels with renowned left journalist Megan Kinch, someone who credits science fiction culture as playing a significant role in their politicization.
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L’héritage de Charles Mills se lit également dans la nouvelle historiographie du capitalisme, notamment dans le courant du capitalisme racial. Interrogé sur son analyse de la place du racisme dans le développement du capitalisme, Mills explique que la question la plus pertinente pour lui n’est pas tellement de déterminer si le capitalisme tel qu’il se manifeste aujourd’hui est un système raciste, puisque ce constat est évident à ses yeux, mais d’interroger la centralité ou la contingence du racisme dans le développement du capitalisme. De nombreux travaux récents sur l’esclavage, la discrimination financière ou encore les politiques de logement aux États-Unis font écho à ces questionnements. Aly Ndiaye, alias Webster, signe la traduction de l’oeuvre phare de Mills, Le Contrat Racial. Ayant bénéficié de l’appui de Naïma Hamrouni et de Ryoa Chung, parmi d’autres, il et elles vous présentent la pensée de cet auteur anti-raciste en lien avec l’histoire du système économique mondial.
Webster (Aly Ndiaye) est un militant, artiste hip-hop et conférencier.
Naïma Hamrouni est professeure et militante féministe.
Ryoa Chung est professeure et militante féministe
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La soie et le soja : la sériciculture au Brésil comme champ de dispute politico-économique
Giulia FalconeParmi la diversité des commodities produits au Brésil, la production de matières premières de la soie diffère de celle habituellement pratiquée par la grande agro-industrie brésilienne. Principale source de revenu d'environ 2500 familles qui vivent dans des petites propriétés rurales, l'activité de sériciculture, c’est-à-dire l'élevage du ver à soie, c’est réalisé sous les principes de l’agroécologie. Bien que cet activité soit souvent qualifiée comme « durable » en raison de cet ensemble de caractéristiques, les conditions actuelles de la sériciculture sont représentatives de certains différends et contradictions qui traversent plusieurs régions rurales du Brésil.
D'une part, au-delà des impacts des intempéries causés par le changement climatique, comme les givres hors saison ou les sécheresses prolongées, la sériciculture est progressivement menacée par la dérive des pesticides provenant des propriétés où sont cultivés le soja, la canne à sucre ou le maïs, ce qui peut entraîner la perte de récoltes entières de cocons, puisque le ver à soie ne résiste pas au contact des pesticides. D'autre part, la reproduction de l'activité séricicole au Brésil dépend de sa relation avec les chaînes de valeur globales de l'industrie de la mode, car la production de soie brésilienne est orientée vers l'exportation aux marques de luxe européennes et japonaises.
Alors, cette communication cherche à retracer ces deux mouvements divergents qui saisissent l'activité séricicole au Brésil. Dans un premier temps, les modalités d'intégration de la sériciculture au circuit du capitalisme global contemporain seront envisagées, en vérifiant ses points de contact avec le mode de production agro-industriel. Dans un second temps, les formes d'opposition proposées par la sériciculture à ce mode de production seront abordées, en mettant en évidence ses stratégies de résistance vers la production en masse et ses possibilités en tant que modèle alternatif de développement.
Penser nos stratégies de transition systémique à l’échelle territoriale : Quelques concepts-outils depuis la théorie de Erik Olin Wright
Les régions du Québec sont frappées par les crises enchevêtrées de notre époque: crise du dérèglement environnemental, crise de légitimité des institutions démocratiques, crise sanitaire, crises socio-économiques liées aux inégalités, au salariat et au désengagement public, etc. Face aux problèmes qui découlent de ces crises, les collectivités sont les mieux à même de préfigurer les formes de leur propre autonomisation et émancipation territoriale. La présentation explorera les défis pour passer d'un réseau d'organisations innovantes à un changement d’échelle marquant une transition systémique à l'échelle régionale. Ce faisant, elle invitera praticien·ne·s, étudiant·e·s, et chercheur·e·s à questionner certains modes innovants de concertation et de planification depuis la perspective de l'innovation sociale émancipatrice.
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Plus d'informations à venir.
Les origines premières du mouvement #MoiAussi
Fondée en 2006 par la militante et organisatrice communautaire afro-américaine Tarana Burke, la campagne #MeToo se destinait aux femmes et aux filles noires issues de milieux défavorisés aux États-Unis. Le mot-clic est devenu viral à travers la planète en octobre 2017 dans la foulée du scandale sexuel impliquant le producteur hollywoodien Harvey Weinstein et près d’une centaine d’actrices hollywoodiennes, majoritairement blanches.
Cette présentation s'inspire de mon essai à paraître prochainement Le privilège de dénoncer (éditions du remue-ménage, novembre 2022). Elle vise à retracer la genèse du mouvement #MeToo à travers la prise de parole de survivantes et de militantes noires. Pour ce faire, plusieurs cas seront présentés dont 1) l’affaire Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas de 1991; 2) l’affaire Nafissatou Diallo-DSK de 2011 et 3) la campagne #MeToo de Tarana Burke (2006). Nous expliquerons que ces cas emblématiques ont dressé la table pour le mouvement #MeToo international tel que nous le connaissons aujourd’hui. Nous mettrons également en lumière certains des défis et enjeux auxquels font face les femmes et les filles noires qui vivent des violences sexuelles dans un contexte d’effacement et d’invisibilisation de leurs réalités et d’appropriation de leurs stratégies de résistance.
Panel to Facilitated by Révolution écosocialiste
Ce panel propose de réfléchir sur le renouvellement des liens entre luttes écologiques et luttes syndicales au Québec. Les dimensions politique, écologique, économique et sanitaire des conjonctures mondiales et locales mettent en évidence la nécessité de transformations fondamentales dans les organisations syndicales pour bâtir une alternative de transition anticapitaliste. Comment impliquer la base syndicale dans l'élaboration d'une telle alternative? Que faire pour que les acquis actuels deviennent des leviers de transformations futures? Quelles sont les tensions entre la sortie souhaitée du capitalisme et les efforts nécessaires à engager par les syndicats? Il ne s'agit pas de créer de nouvelles organisations mais d'identifier, dans le cadre d'une transition écologique du travail, et à partir des acquis syndicaux, les changements organisationnels, le contenu programmatique, les outils et les moyens, et les luttes de terrain pour produire de nouveaux rapports de force face au Capital.
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Avec Silvia Federici, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor et Julian Lattimore
Notre monde est façonné par de multiples rapports d’oppression, d’exploitation et de dépossession. Afin de les dépasser, on constate la croissance d’un ensemble de pratiques qui contestent l’ordre colonial, sexiste, raciste et écocidaire dont le capitalisme est tributaire jusqu’à aujourd’hui. En même temps, on voit une normalisation inquiétante des discours de l’extrême droite. Il s’agit de réaffirmer l’interdépendance de tous les systèmes d’oppression et d’articuler l’importance de ne laisser personne pour compte lorsque nous luttons pour un monde post-capitaliste plus juste. Quels sont les obstacles intersectionnels à nos luttes?Quelle est la place des luttes anticapitalistes dans l’activisme et les cadres d’analyse décoloniaux et intersectionnels ? Si nos oppressions sont interdépendantes, nos libérations le sont aussi. Comment pouvons-nous analyser les liens entre les systèmes d’oppression, de marginalisation et de destruction environnementale et sociale de façon à soutenir la construction d’une plus grande solidarité entre nos luttes? De quoi auraient l’air les relations internationales dans un monde post-capitaliste, féministe, décolonial et inclusif? Ce panel réunit des activistes de renommée mondiale qui réfléchiront à la manière de mieux aligner nos mouvements de libération.
With Silvia Federici, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Julian Lattimore
Our world is shaped by many intersecting forms of oppression, exploitation, and dispossession. In a desire to move beyond them, there are an increasing number of practices that contest the colonial, sexist, racist, and ecocidal order upon which capitalism remains dependent to this day. At the same time, we are witnessing a worrying normalization of extreme right-wing discourse. We must reaffirm the interdependence of all systems of oppression and articulate the importance of leaving no one behind in our struggle for a fairer post-capitalist world. What are the intersectional obstacles we face in our global and local struggles? What is the place for anticapitalist struggles in decolonial and intersectional activism and frameworks? Most importantly, if our oppressions are interdependent, the same is true for our liberations. How can we analyze the ties between systems of oppression and marginalization with regards to social and environmental destruction, in order to enable us to construct greater solidarity between our struggles? What would international relations look like in a post-capitalist, feminist, decolonial, and inclusive world? This panel unites world renowned activists who will reflect on how to better align our movements for liberation.
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Conférence avec Éric Martin et Sébastien Mussi
La présence croissante du numérique dans l’enseignement a des impacts négatifs majeurs, alertent deux professeurs de philosophie. Dans une critique sans concession de l’informatisation de l’école, ce panel aborde les arguments du livre « Bienvenue dans la machine ». Il expose les risques très préoccupants de cette informatisation sur les élèves, les étudiant.e.s, les profs et les systèmes scolaires, notamment au niveau cognitif et social des jeunes. L’offensive numérique à l’école met à mal l’autonomie des enseignant.e.s et nous mène vers la dissolution des institutions d’enseignement comme lieux de transmission du savoir et de la culture. Devant une école qui sert avant tout à former du «capital humain», ce cri d’alarme est un éloge du métier de professeur.
Éric Martin est docteur en pensée politique de l'Université d'Ottawa et professeur au Département de philosophie du Cégep Édouard-Montpetit. Il est également membre du Groupe interuniversitaire d'études de la postmodernité (GIEP).
Sébastien Mussi est professeur de philosophie au Collège Maisonneuve.
Discussion to Valérie Lefebvre-Faucher, Guillaume Tremblay-Boily
Avez-vous remarqué ce personnage en marge du cadre, dont on ne nous raconte pas l’histoire? Une enquêtrice décide de suivre la piste des femmes entrevues dans les portraits de Marx. Ses antennes féministes remuent en direction de l’héritage marxien: tant de gloire virile recouvrant une pensée d’égalité, c’est louche. Quel risque courons-nous si nous nous intéressons aux femmes qui étaient là? Une simple promenade qui, au final, chamboule tout.
Vous qui possédez Le petit Karl comme un catalogue d’outils à dégainer dans toutes les situations, que savez-vous de l’œuvre d’Eleanor Marx? De l’influence de Jenny ou de Laura Marx? Camarades, quelqu’un vous a-t-il parlé d’elles pendant ces nombreuses années d’université? L’autrice Valérie Lefebvre Faucher vous en parle dans cette discussion animée par le chercheur à l’IRIS Guillaume Tremblay Boily.
to Facilitated by India Civil Watch International, Alternatives
Traduction/Translation : English/Français
One of the unfortunate failings of progressive politics and humanities scholarship has been their relative disengagement from issues and practices of religiosity. Religion has long been perceived as a threat to academic rationality and an obstacle to socio-political utopianism, whether due to the Eurocentric ideal of the separation of private religion from a secular public sphere, the heightened awareness of a rapidly technologizing society, or an epistemological shift from cultural questions of identity and difference to scientific concerns of planetary collapse. The relegation of religiosity as insignificant, despite its hypervisibility in many aspects of modern social, political and ecological life, has contributed to its appropriation by fascist and theocratic forces as well as the oppression of racialized minorities through enforced secularism. For instance, the question of Muslim women’s agency in India to wear a hijab and in Iran to not wear one, as well as the imposition of laïcité in Quebec, give cause for critical engagement with religion today.
Through this workshop, we aim to rethink the question of secularism through cultures of film, media and information where religion continues to shape and oppose public opinion on issues of identity, community, nationalism and environmentalism. The workshop will encourage comparative perspectives across South Asia and North America, specifically Quebec, through mainland and diasporic lenses in order to situate local analyses within a transnational world.
The workshop will be facilitated by: Ishita Tiwary, Assistant Professor in Film and Moving Image Studies, Concordia University; Dipti Gupta, Filmmaker and Professor in Cinema-Communications, Dawson College ; Ajay Bhardwaj, Filmmaker and Postdoctoral Fellow in Institute for the Humanities, Simon Fraser University ; Rakesh Sengupta, Assistant Professor in English and Cinema Studies, University of Toronto
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Building Trans-local Solidarities for Water Justice
Adrian MurrayDespite the ambitious framework of the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, over the last decade, the global ‘community’ has struggled to adequately respond to the ongoing pandemic, climate change, or growing inequality. In this context, increased private sector involvement in the governance, financing and delivery of public services like water and sanitation, are promoted as a solution to make up for the apparent lack of available public funds and inefficiency of the public sector and to ensure that the world achieves the Sustainable Development Goals, including SDG 6: clean water and sanitation for all.
This trend contradicts the experience of Indigenous, peasant and working-class communities around the world that have documented the disastrous reality of private participation in the water sector for decades, a position overwhelmingly supported by the accumulated evidence. It also comes up against the Global Water Justice Movement’s equally well-evidenced arguments in favour of diverse forms of democratically controlled and publicly owned and operated water services and resources, including the growing trend towards remunicipalisation and the success of community water management.
Indeed, activists and organizers around the world have continued to fight for water justice despite the threats posed by the corporate capture of global water governance, and intensifying financialization and privatization which are to deliver us from the ‘polycrisis’ in which we find ourselves. Informed by working-class activists and organizers, particularly racialized womn, this paper explores trans-local processes of knowledge generation and solidarity building to both contest and build alternatives to these latest iterations of imperialism. This research is based on work to organize water justice solidarity networks during the pandemic, the 2022 Alternative World Water Forum held in Dakar, Senegal and critically engage the 2023 UN Water Conference in New York.
“We Were in Battle”: A Comparative Study of Settler-Colonial Political Messaging During Indigenous-led Land and Water Defence Movements on Turtle Island
Maya GarfinkelThe project is dedicated to addressing the following overarching research question: How do the American and Canadian settler-colonial states publically react to Indigenous-led, anti-colonial, nonviolent direct action in the 21st century? This project aims to address the subject through a deep-dive into anti-colonial, Indigenous-led anti-pipeline water and land defence across Turtle Island (so-called North America). More specifically, this project will study the cases of Standing Rock resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline and Wetʼsuwetʼen resistance to the CGL pipeline through the lens of state press releases available to the public. This subject is helpful because it provides the opportunity to study the ways in which the settler-colonial state and anti-colonial forces (made up of Indigenous forces and settler allies) come into tension in a highly-publicised and sanitised context. This project aims to contrast and compare American and Canadian approaches to political messaging on the subject. Existing literature on the subject points to the fact that Canada paints itself as absent of racism and “past” settler-colonialism but actually retains many similar violent practices and patterns as the US. I analysed press releases by the federal, state, and local government sources of Canada and the United States released during times of high tension with Indigenous-led pipeline resistance to test the following hypotheses:
Part 1: There are important differences between US and Canadian messaging. These differences will paint the Canadian state as more understanding, sympathetic, and responsive to Indigenous anti-colonial resistance.
Part 2: In reality, these differences in writing will not translate into on the ground treatment of Indigenous resistance in the case studies chosen for this project.
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The social engineering of energy futures
Megan EglerThis paper explores how power and narrative shape visions of the future and energy transitions. Energy transitions describe new energy futures while destabilizing regional identities within extractive economies. This offers both opportunities to reimagine social roles and relationships and presents risk for those who have benefited from the social hierarchies common in extraction-based communities. Narrative plays a powerful role in how people imagine themselves, their place within society, and what futures are possible and desirable. They are also constructed and contested within political spaces making them heavily subject to distributions of power. In this vein, the social engineering of extraction describes how social legitimacy is achieved through subtle and long-term efforts by powerful actors to shape human minds and behavior with the intent to both suppress opposition to extractive projects and build consent for them. In this, the control of narrative can be instrumental. Drawing on theories of narrative identity, narrative network modelling, and interviews with people who labor within the extractive landscapes of Alberta, Canada, and the Appalachian region of the USA, this research uncovers the role of corporations and the state in the perpetuation of narratives that support or hinder just energy transitions.
Oil and Labour Activism in Venezuela
Kristin CiupaThis paper traces developments in worker organizing in Venezuela since the 1980s, situating them within the country’s oil extraction and export economy. While there is an abundance of literature on social movements and governments under Venezuela’s pink tide, little has been written on the role of Venezuelan workers in shaping the country’s social and political trajectory. This paper explores the historical dualization of Venezuela’s labour movement into large corporatist unions recognized by the state and smaller Marxist unions, and its effect on class struggle. This division, which has been in place since the mid-twentieth century, was further institutionalized in the neoliberal period, alongside reforms that increased precarious and informal labour. During the pink tide era, there was a renewal of the left represented by class coalitions between formal and informal labour, the urban poor, peasants and indigenous people. Yet, while new government-endorsed workers’ unions were created during this period, the division between large moderate unions and small radical unions at odds with the government remained.
This paper analyzes the ongoing dualization of Venezuela’s labour movement focusing on two themes. First, it explores how labour and the conditions for worker organizing within and outside of the oil sector are tied to the extractive form of accumulation that prevails in Venezuela. Given the oil-dependent character of Venezuela’s economy, state subsidies to other sectors – made possible by oil rents – mean that the availability and nature of work, and the experience of the working class across various formal and informal sectors, is largely tied to extractive accumulation. Second, it explores the relationship between the state, oil and workers to analyze how the Venezuelan state form affects the possibilities for worker organizing and union advocacy.
Panel to Facilitated by Carlos Velasquez, Dilara Baysal, Chelsey Ancliffe, Charlie Bond, Burak Yilmaz
To presume that postcapitalism can only result from the conception of an ideal and absolute socialist plan is to fall in the capitalist trap of the possibility of absoluteness. Therefore, following Herbert Marcuse, we can argue that the effective revolutionary action is not that of positive proposition but, on the contrary, that of negative thought, of the refusal to participate in, not to retreat from, all forms of oppression and domination. Refusal thus emerges both as a mode of critique and of conceiving of further or higher potentialities. As such, this revolutionary proposal, popular amongst different social movements in the late 1960s, has regained prevalence today as many authors and activists have reclaimed previous calls for the refusal to work or the refusal to use certain forms of technology while adding new forms of refusal such as that of the refusal of ascribe to gender norms, the refusal to participate in the nuclear family or the refusal of growth (degrowth), as means of creating openings towards postcapitalist possibilities. The purpose of this panel is to critically review these forms of refusal as well as the initial theoretical formulation proposed by Marcuse. To do so, this panel will incorporate five presentations which will address: first, a critique of H. Marcuse's concept of "The Great Refusal"; second, a review of the idea of absolute refusal of the Internet complex, as suggested by Jonathan Cracry; third, an defence and analysis of the notion of degrowth as a means of imagining postcapitalist alternatives; the fourth paper proposes a critique of contemporary conceptions of the "economic" in an effort to highlight how these notions are ultimately determined by an uneconomic core; the fifth and final paper will present a critical review of the development of the notion of abolition within Black Marxist theory.
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This panel gathers four professors from the Department of Social Science at York University working with multidisciplinary and critical lenses on capitalism and its alternatives: Carlo Fanelli, Audrey Laurin-Lamothe, Katherine Nastovski, and Sonya Scott.
The panel starts with a discussion on the four-day workweek. It aims to present new data about shortened and compressed work schedules in Canada compared internationally with the objective to replace the debate within the current discussions about labour-management relations, neoliberalism, and its recent trends. The second presentation focuses on narratives deployed in time of capitalism crisis. It aims to provide an analysis of the metaphors used historically to describe economic crises, such as the metaphor of the vulture during the Argentina’s sovereign debt crisis. The third presentation is a brief overview of the recent literature on fascism in the context of the pandemic and the global ecological crisis. It discusses the involvement of corporations and private companies in such alt-right groups in Quebec. Focusing on the cases of grassroots, rank and file driven solidarity with struggles in Chile, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and against apartheid in South Africa, the last presentation identifies lessons from the way these grassroots actors created new models for member engagement in transnational labour strategies.
Panelists : Carlo Fanelli, Audrey Laurin-Lamothe, Katherine Nastovski, and Sonya Scott.
to Facilitated by Ana Milic, Amanda Buchnea
In this workshop we hope to radically imagine, together, alternatives to the global housing/homelessness crisis and carceral shelter system, which can be understood as products of economic growth decoupled from social justice and the carrying capacity of the planet. Grounding this work in recognition of the intrinsic links between capitalist and neoliberal policy, settler colonialism, systemic racism, intergenerational trauma and homelessness, we will provide the historical and present-day context (i.e. charitable responses to homelessness; shelter reform; stigmatization of poverty and addiction; colonial land-theft and Indigenous homelessness; financialization of housing; austerity) to open space to explore what alternatives might look like. We also invite participants to identify and reflect on the ways that homelessness is deeply connected with similarly urgent issues such as climate change, the Movement for Black Lives and LGBTQ2S+ rights.
For those of us working in shelters, peer support, non-profit and community organizations, activist and advocacy on housing issues, or with living experiences of homelessness, it is often difficult to find time, space and capacity to imagine how to enact radical shifts to State systems, while we are treating the immediate symptoms of housing precarity, homelessness, and marginalization.
In this workshop, Part 1 will provide some historical and contemporary framing for issues of housing justice, both within a Canadian and Québec settler-colonial (where the facilitators work) and global context, providing opportunities for all participants to share information about their unique local housing contexts. Part 2 will focus on (re)imagining responses to housing injustice, asking participants to share exciting and effective mobilizations toward justice in their own communities. We will end this session with opportunities to learn from each other in ongoing ways, contributing to building networks of solidarity and mutual aid.
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As more and more socialists are entering elected office in the United States, there is an urgent need to develop thorough and deep socialist policy analysis for governing. One area that especially needs clarification and elaboration are the overlapping agendas of decriminalization, legalization and commodification or decommodification. Socialists generally oppose commodification when it comes to public goods such as the environment, healthcare, and intellectual property. In this context, the goal of socialist policy is to limit the incursion of the market into yet untapped resources while incrementally seeking to decommodify certain sectors of the economy. Yet in the context of certain stigmatized and/or criminalized industries such as drugs and sex work, many socialists support the creation of new legalized markets, with the aim of bringing these under state regulation and therefore improving conditions for workers. However, as the new legalized marijuana markets have come to be dominated by large corporations owned by white men, while thousands of working class people of color remain in jail or barred from employment due to marijuana convictions, the clear question arises: who do these new markets serve? Can socialist policymakers support the workers in black markets without embracing the neoliberal commodification of everything? In the era of climate change, robots, and “post-work” politics, socialists cannot focus exclusively on the shop floor but also must engage with questions about what kinds of jobs are important and necessary for creating the kind of world we want. Will legalizing things like sex work shift more employment to that sector, and should that also be a question for industrial policy? In this panel, we will present competing left wing perspectives on these issues, with the earnest goal of finding common ground and building a practical synthesis.
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À l’animation : Maude Prud’homme
Avec Mohamed Amer Mezianne, Sabrina Fernandes et Matthew Huber
En septembre 2019, le premier ministre du Canada, Justin Trudeau, a participé à la grande manifestation pour le climat à Montréal. L’année précédente, son gouvernement avait conclu une transaction de 4,5 milliards de dollars avec la compagnie Kinder Morgan pour l’achat de l’oléoduc Trans Mountain, dans le but de compléter l’expansion du projet. En mai 2022, le coût de cette expansion s’élevait déjà à 21,4 milliards de dollars. Cet exemple souligne l'ironie de notre époque: les politicien·ne·s parlent de plus en plus de la crise climatique, font semblant de s'y intéresser, mais continuent de soutenir un statu quo destructeur. Pire que du greenwashing, il s’agit d’une dépolitisation du sujet, ce qui contribue à créer la fausse idée que la crise climatique peut être résolue sans changer notre système économique de façon radicale. Il n’y a pas de solution à la crise climatique au sein du système capitaliste, colonial et extractiviste qui l’a créée, un système qui nie le fait que les êtres humains font partie intégrante de l’environnement. Comment peut-on repolitiser la question climatique en montrant les liens entre le capitalisme et la destruction écologique? Comment expliquer la place inextricable qu’occupe la justice climatique au sein de la libération collective de tous les groupes opprimés? Comment repolitiser les relations de pouvoir au sein même des mouvements environnementalistes? Ce panel place les luttes politiques au centre de la question climatique, ou plus exactement, de la crise climatique. Il présente des activistes et penseurs.ses environnementaux de la Tunisie, du Brésil et des États-Unis. La conversation est animée par l'une des plus célèbres fermières militantes du Québec.
Presenting : Maude Prud’homme
With Mohamed Amer Mezianne, Sabrina Fernandes and Matthew Huber
In September 2019, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, participated in the climate march in Montreal. The previous year, his government had concluded a $4.5 billion transaction with Kinder Morgan, the energy company, to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline, to complete the planned expansion. In May 2022, the expansion cost had gone up to $21.4B. This example shows that politicians pay only lip service to the climate crisis since they continue to support a destructive status quo. Worse than greenwashing, we are witnessing a de-politicization of the issue, which creates a false narrative that the climate crisis can be solved without radically transforming our economic system. There is no solution to the climate crisis within the capitalist, colonial, and extractive system that created it, a system that denies the fact that humans are an integral part of the environment. What are the links between capitalism and ecological destruction? How can we reaffirm the central role of climate justice in the liberation of all oppressed peoples? How can we repoliticize power relations within environmental movements? This panel puts political struggles at the center of the climate question, or more accurately, the climate crisis. It presents environmental activists and thinkers from Tunisia, Brazil and the United States. The conversation is mediated by one of Quebec’s best-known activist farmers.