Systemic capitalist forces are pushing ever further in the direction of climate crisis, the precarization of labor, and the menace of (fossil) fascism, all painfully exposing the failures of global (neo)liberalism. Capital is well on its way to expropriate our very means of reproducing life, our planetary future.

The need for strong anti-systemic movements

Greater than ever seems the need for strong anti-systemic movements that can radically challenge the relational structures of capitalism as a social and ecological regime and that, through collective struggle, can reposition ordinary people as protagonists of history.

A deeply fragmented Left will not be able to respond to that need, but a unified Left seems undesirable and/or impossible as long as the living history of Marxist movements’ engagements with Black, Dalit, indigenous, Roma, and feminist radical traditions has not been opened up – as long as the Revolution has not been decolonized.

The call that Aimé Césaire formulated in his letter of resignation from the French Communist Party (1956) remains: “that Marxism and communism be placed in the service of black peoples, and not black peoples in the service of Marxism and communism”.

Why this conference?

The aim of this 2-day conference is to contribute further to “decolonizing the revolution” in view of the climate struggle that will determine the fate of a large part of poor humanity. 

To overcome the historical subordination of the liberation of oppressed, racialized, and gendered groups to conceptions of emancipation proposed by locally dominant groups and global Eurocentric ideals, we seek to build on the experience of “particular” radical traditions of collective anti-capitalist organizing – traditions that have often been side-lined or silenced for the sake of what Césaire called an “emaciated universalism”.

In doing so, we revisit the visions of thinkers recognized as reaching for the universal through the particular in actually existing Marxist movements and other revolutionary anti-capitalist traditions – e.g. C.L.R. James, José Carlos Mariátegui, Anton de Kom, Silvia Federici, Angela Davis, Anand Teltumbde, Pastora Filigrana, Glenn Coulthard.

We also seek to learn from the experiences of political movements operating in this space – e.g. the Zapatistas, the Black Panther Party, the Dalit Panthers. We pay particular attention, moreover, to stretching such visions and experiences to conceive of anti-capitalist responses to the grand challenge presented by climate change. 

Location

Day 1 (June 15): International Institute of Social History (IISG), Cruquiusweg 31 Amsterdam

Day 2 (June 16): Roeterseilandcampus - Anthropology Department Common Room, REC-B5.12

Speakers from the University of Amsterdam