Announcements

#occupybankitalia
Rome, October 12

Don’t pay their debt off, claim your social credit!

Every in the world people are taking the streets against the financial dictatorship of bankers and global speculators who are using the crisis to dismantle public services, welfare and education, rip people off their rights, put their hands on common goods.

ephemera cfp: communism of capital?

Call for Papers for an ephemera Special Issue on: Communism of Capital?
Issue Editors: Armin Beverungen, Anna-Maria Murtola and Gregory Schwartz
Deadline for submissions: 29 February 2012

Today, neoliberal capitalism is increasingly put into question. Whereas two decades ago business school gurus argued that the US was ‘the most “socialist” country around’ (Drucker, 1993: 6), today’s self-appointed business leaders know they cannot do without a certain communism. George Soros, Bill Gates and others refer to themselves – not without irony – as ‘liberal communists’ (Žižek, 2008a). Recognising the evils induced by capitalism these patricians of the market proselytise market philanthropy to deliver many of the ostensible benefits of the communism of yore. Newsweek, reflecting on the national bailout of the banks in response to the financial crisis, declared: ‘We are all socialists now’ (Meacham, 2009). Yet, the one thing that seems beyond question in such projections of communism is capital itself.

CFP Post/autonomia Amsterdam May 19-22
Amsterdam, 19-22 May 2011
University of Amsterdam/SMART Project Space

Keynotes from: Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, Vittorio Morfino, Matteo Pasquinelli, and Stevphen Shukaitis

Immaterial labour; multitude; the communism of capital; commons; precarity; biopolitics: autonomist thought has undoubtedly provided contemporary critical theory with some of its major concepts and/or allowed for an important reconsidering of these. Most importantly, autonomist thought has been at the forefront of thinking the crucial shifts in contemporary capitalism and its effects in both the social and cultural sphere. Autonomism’s impact on current critical theory in both European and American academia can therefore hardly be underestimated. Moreover, today we witness a resurgence of autonomist models of activism and thought in social movements in for example Italy, Greece, the UK and California.

Submission Call #8
Grassroots Modernism- movement for today's tomorrow.

We hear of rigorously pedestrian, joyful projects.
We hear of projects,we hear of movements.
Rumor has it that they are adamant. Present and grounded. Utopian.
Rumor has it that they are creative and common and critically minded, and that they can blow our minds.
Rumor has it that while the conditions can only be local, the ideals can find international support.

We are smart as hell, queer and quotidian. Just like the neighbors.
Its movement time again.

The Workers Economy Third International Meeting Mexico June 9-11
Analyzing and Debating a New Economy from the Perspective of Workers and Self-Management
Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Xochimilco, Mexico City

We invite workers, activists, and researchers from around the world to the Third International Meeting of the Workers’ Economy, taking place on June 9, 10 and 11, 2011 in Mexico City at the Autonomous Metropolitan University-Xochimilco (UAM-Xochimilco). With a focus on “Analyzing and Debating a New Economy from the Perspective of Workers and Self-Management,” this Third International Meeting aims to continue the discussions and debates concerning workers’ alternatives to global capital that began in Buenos Aires at the First and Second International Meetings of the Workers’ Economy in 2007 and 2009.

For the Third International Meeting, we propose bridging academic and intellectual contributions with the practices and ideas of workers, bringing together researchers, theorists, and political activists with workers from around the world. This Third International Meeting will continue the spirit of the past two International Meetings by systematizing workers’ experiences of exploitation, projects of alternative work organizations and institutions, and workers’ roles as leaders of their own economic destinies, while also aiming to collaboratively study resistances to capitalists’ management of the economy.

This time, the International Meeting will be held in Mexico. For the organizers, this means consolidating the space of debate that the past two encuentros have generated and accentuating its international character. Mexico is a country where neoliberalism has rampaged against the people and provoked many workers’ struggles and myriad social movements of protest. They need support. The Third International Meeting in Mexico will, in particular, be drawing attention to these struggles and reinforcing them.

NYC Anarchist Book Fair Table and Presentation Application Forms
NYC Anarchist Book Fair

Please note the tables application deadline is February 1st.

PRESENTATIONS, PANELS, WORKSHOPS, SKILLSHARES: 2011 NYC ANARCHIST BOOK FAIR APPLICATION FORM

The 5th Annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair will be held Saturday, April 9, 2011, at Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, NYC.

New Issue of Affinities on Radical Imagination Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action Vol 4, No 2 (2010): “What is the Radical Imagination?” This issue of Affinities focuses on the importance of radical imagination to radical social change. We step in to the terrain of the imagination cognizant of its promises and its pitfalls. On the one hand, imagination brings to mind utopian fancy, a dangerous and demobilizing escapism, and forms of collective or subjective delusion which perpetuate the status-quo. On the other, the ability to imagine the world, social institutions and human (and non-human) relationships otherwise is vital to any radical project. Indeed, as numerous commentators and theorists point out, we cant do without the radical imagination, both on the level of our movements and on the level of our everyday lives – the ability to believe that things can be better -- is a key part of our social, psychological and spiritual lives (for better or for worse). But even if we acknowledge that we cant do without the radical imagination that still doesn't tell us what it is or what we might be able to do with it. These are the kinds of provocations we take up in this issue of Affinities, but without suggesting we or our contributors have anything approaching definitive answers (indeed, definitive answers may not be possible). We do, however, have an abundance of questions.
Radical Foucault: A One Day Conference Centre for Cultural Studies Research, University of East London (culturalstudiesresearch.org) Friday September 9th, 2011 The publication of Michel Foucault's Lectures at the Collège de France, 1983-84 in English will be complete in April 2011 and his first Collège de France lecture course, La Volunté de Savoir will be published for the first time in February. The Centre for Cultural Studies Research at the University of East London is holding a one-day conference on Friday, September 9th, 2011 which will re-assess Foucault's contribution to radical thought and the application of his ideas to contemporary politics. What does it mean to draw on Foucault as a resource for radical politics, and how are we to understand the politics which implicitly informs his work?
New York City's CAP Your Landlords or Bosses Cooperative Action Project Happy New Year! Hot on the heels of a successful Noise Demo, New York City is back at it. We'd rather live in a world with no bosses or landlords, but until then we're ready to CAP 'em. The Cooperative Action Project (CAP) is working in the five boroughs, organized using a model popularized by the folks in the Seattle Solidarity Network. CAP is a network of volunteers in New York City that use collective action to win battles against bosses and landlords. It was founded by a group of New York City anarchists, but is open to all who are interested in our core principles:
Urgent Appeal: Eight South Korean Labor Activists Face 5-7 Years in Prison Loren Goldner [I don't believe too much in the efficacy of the kind of write-in protest advocated below, but an international spotlight on this case just might have an effect on the final sentencing of these exemplary militants. Please distribute far and wide.] On Dec. 3 of last year, the prosecutor in the Seoul Central District Court demanded prison terms of 5-7 years for Oh sei-chull and other members (Yang Hyo-seok, Yang Joon-seok, Choi Young-ik, Park Joon-seon, Jeong Won-hyung, and Oh Min-gyu) of the Socialist Workers’ Alliance of Korea (SWLK), a revolutionary socialist group. These activists in the Korean working-class movement were indicted under South Korea’s notorious National Security Law (passed in 1948 and theoretically still stipulating the death penalty for “pro-North” activities). The eight militants of the SWLK, who as internationalists advocate working-class revolution in both Koreas, were accused of no specific crime except being socialists, but in reality the indictment resulted from their intervention in several strikes and movements going back to 2007.
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