• 28 October 2022 - 30 October 2022
  • Stockholm
  • ABF-huset
    Sveavägen 41 in central Stockholm

  • International Conference
  • Marx22 Conference: Primitive Accumulation

  • Following a series of successful conferences in recent years, transform! europe's member organisation Center for Marxist Studies (CMS) hosts the Marx22 international conference, focusing on primitive accumulation.

    The Marx22 international conference takes place from 28-30 October 2022 in Stockholm.

    Why did capitalism emerge, and why does it persist? Marx argued that an understanding of capitalism’s blood-soaked prehistory is necessary if we want to understand and change the system. In the present era, when everything – from health care and water to our emotions and outer space – is rapidly transforming into commodities, it is more important than ever to think through the processes of capital accumulation.

    For capitalism to exist at all, a class of people must be separated from the means of production and forced to sell their labor power in exchange for wages. But such a working class does not appear out of nothing – it must itself be created. The historical processes that gave rise to our modern class societies were accompanied, every step of the way, by violence and repression against those who resisted proletarianization and the plundering of the commons. Karl Marx called this process “primitive accumulation,” and he described capital coming into the world as “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.”

    Within the Marxist tradition, the concept of “primitive accumulation” has been used in two different ways. First, the term has been used to delineate a historical period that provided the conditions for the capitalist mode of production to emerge. Second, “primitive accumulation” has been used to name the ongoing processes through which capital creates new markets, expands to new spheres of life, and reinvents itself by incorporating new resources.

    Human trafficking, the commodification of water, and the grand plans of Silicon Valley moguls to colonize Mars are only a few examples of how our bodies, life-worlds, and surroundings are incorporated into capital’s process of accumulation. How can we understand these processes? And what can we do to limit and roll back the expansion of capital’s rule?

    Interpretation: English, some of the sessions will be held in Swedish

    Organisers:


Programme

Please find here the preliminary programme schedule of the conference.

Friday, 28 Oct 2022

17:00–20:00 (CET): Marx22 Public Event

Informal mixer at the venue restaurant/pub.

Book reading by poet, playwright and critic Athena Farrokhzad

Saturday, 29 Oct 2022

10:00-10:30 (CET): Welcome Address

The organisers

Location: Zäta 

10:30–12:00 (CET): Keynote 1

Is globalization really over? Mutations of capitalism in an age of pandemic and war.

Sandro Mezzadra

Location: Zäta 

12:00–14:00 (CET): Parallel sessions:

Hur tar vi hyreskampen vidare?

Aktivister från Alla ska bo kvar, Allt åt alla och Ort till ort. Moderatorer: Maria Wallstam & Ilhan Kellecioglu

Location: Hjärtat 

Efter den ursprungliga ackumulationen – erkännandet som upprättelse.

Magnus Hörnqvist, Johan Lindgren med flera. Moderator: Shabane Barot. Arr: Fronesis.

Location: Kata 

Om kapitalismens politisk-rättsliga former och innehåll

David Jivegård, Hugo Lundberg, Hedvig Lärka, Carl Wilén. Moderator: Vanja Carlsson. Arr: Fronesis.

Location: Palme 

Digital Capitalism: From Disciplinary Regime to Surveillance Capitalism. How Digitalization is Changing the Nature of Labor Exploitation.

transform! Europe

Location: Sandler 

Extraktion

Tidningen Brand

Location: Per Albin 

12:00–12:30 (CET): The privatisation of the commons

Erik Hallberg & Lars Nyström

Location: Branting 

12:30–13:00 (CET): Den ursprungliga ackumulationens plats i Kapitalet

Anders Ramsay

Location: Branting 

13:00–13:30 (CET): The legal and social production of difference

Olivia Maury

Location: Branting 

13:30–14:00 (CET): Primitive accumulation in ”post-socialist” capitalism

Gavin Rae

Location: Branting 

14:00–15:30 (CET): Keynote 2 - Markets, planning and the politics of human need

Aaron Benanav

Location: Zäta                                            

16:00–17:30 (CET): Parallel sessions:

War, ”Original” Accumulation and Accumulation. Topicality of Rosa Luxemburg’s 1913 Writing ”The Accumulation of Capital” on the Eve of World War I.

Gavin Rae. Arr. !transform europe

Location: Hjärtat 

Svensk rasifiering och repression – kolonial politik och/eller klassisk klasspolitik?

Paneldiskussion med Leandro Mulinari, Lina Mohageb & Håkan Blomqvist. Samtalsledare: John Hörnquist

Location: Kata 

The history and theory of mute compulsion

Panel discussion with Søren Mau, Carl Cassegård, Lotte Schack och Carl Wilén. Moderator: Evelina Johansson Wilén. Arr: Röda Rummet.

Location: Palme 

Offentlig-gemensam samverkan

Podcasten Rekreation

Location: Sandler 

16:00–16:30 (CET): Vad kan 1800-talets torparhushåll säga om ursprunglig ackumulation och social reproduktion?

Carolina Uppenberg

Location: Branting 

16:30–17:00 (CET): Skolan och klassamhället: Resultat från ett avhandlingsarbete

Tommie Petersson

Location: Branting 

Surveillance capitalism and the datafication of Finnish public health infrastructure

Matti Kortesoja

Location: Per Albin 

And now digital accumulation!

Carlos Felipe Da Silva Costa

Location: Per Albin 

17:00–17:30 (CET): Rapport inifrån ”Hemblahelvetet”: Röster från Hemblas bostäder i Husby, Stockholm

Ilhan Kellecioglu

Location: Branting 

Pseudo Subjectification i.e. True Objectification: The Social Credit System As the Means of Power Maintenance and Alienation

Güven Savul

Location: Per Albin
 

Sunday, 30 Oct

10:00–11:30 (CET): Keynote 3

Location: Zäta 

11:30–13:30 (CET): Parallel sessions:

”Expropriating the expropriators”: The past, present and future of a gnomic utterance.

Panel with Cecilia Cavalcante-Schuback, David Payne, Gustav Strandberg, Kim West

Location: Palme 

Landsbygder i den globala kapitalismen

Arr: Fronesis

Location: Sandler

The past, present and future of space accumulation

Maria Küchen, Markus Gunneflo & Roman Privalov. Moderator: Majsa Allelin

Location: Zäta 

11:30–12:00 (CET): Kapitalism, frihet och alienation

Johan Alfonsson

Location: Branting 

Decentralised finance, territorial appropriation and dispossession

Beth Geglia

Location: Per Albin 

11:30–12:30 (CET): Climate change as class war: Building socialism on a warming planet

Matthew T. Huber presents his book Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet

Location: Kata 

12:00–12:30 (CET): Spridningen av managementidéer inom staten under andra världskriget

Tony Kenttä

Location: Branting 

The gilded genesis of structuralism and contemprorary discourse theory

Tor Hammer

Location: Per Albin 

12:30–13:00 (CET): Hur går vänstern vidare när alla människor är auktoritära?

Mats Deland

Location: Branting 

Accumulation because we do not trust humanity

Carlos Felipe Da Silva Costa

Location: Per Albin 

12:30–13:30 (CET): Cybernetic planning and climate change reversal

Tomas Härdin & David Zachariah

Location: Kata 

13:30–15:00 (CET): Parallel sessions:

Caliban and the Witch 20 år

Allt åt Alla Kvinnofront

Location: Hjärtat 

Det gäller att både tolka och förändra världen

Samtal om tre böcker om klimat och kapitalism av och med Herman Geijer, Rikard Hjorth Warlenius, Ståle Holgersen. Moderator: Shabane Barot

Location: Kata 

Den multipolära världens framväxt – början till slutet för kapitalismens underliggande ursprungliga ackumulation?

Mathias Wåg, John Hörnqvist & Fransisco Contreras

Location: Palme 

Militanta undersökningar – eller den vetenskapliga socialismen i det 21:a århundradet

Allt åt alla Göteborg

Location: Sandler 

13:30–14:00 (CET): Racism, capitalism, and primitive accumulation

Viola Bao

Location: Branting 

Expropriating hydrocarbons in the 21st century: Lessons from history

Matthew T. Huber

Location: Per Albin 

14:00–14:30 (CET): About the totally expropriated capital and value producing plantation unfree labour

Krista Lillemets

Location: Branting 

Rationalisering och nedskärning i statsförvaltningen under andra världskriget

Tony Kenttä

Location: Per Albin 

14:30–15:00 (CET): Det profitabla våldet och dess ideologi

Puya Yekerusta

Location: Branting 

15:00–16:30 (CET): Keynote 4 - Imperialism and capital’s ”historic mission”

Vivek Chibber

Location: Zäta 


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