Marx Talks

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Stalinist counter revolution was experienced in all aspects of life, both in the USSR and in the global Communist movement. As part of the project of establishing political hegemony the Stalinist bureacracy sought to develop and enforce particular styles of cultural production. In literature the preferred style was socialist realism. This session will start by discussing debates that occurred in a...

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Do revolutions have the potential to create an entirely new kind of society, or do they merely replace one type of government with another? There have been countless revolutionary moments in which mass movements toppled dictators and smashed powerful empires, but left capitalism fundamentally intact – Germany 1918; Portugal 1976; Egypt 2011 and many more. No revolution begins with millions of peop...

For almost five decades, racial segregation was enshrined and institutionalised South Africa. Apartheid was a system based on brutal racism which oppressed and exploited the majority of Black workers while maintaining the enrichment and rule of a white minority. This session will discuss what it took to overthrow apartheid - the heroic resistance within South Africa along with the solidarity of wo...

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the fortunes of NATO – pronounced "braindead" only a few years prior – have been miraculously revived. The alliance, buoyed by surging European military budgets and inflows of combat-ready troops and cutting-edge hardware, looks forward to welcoming additional member states. This militarisation of Europe will only add further fuel to an increasingly unsta...

Jerome Small, Mick Armstrong, Yasmine Johnson From the late 1960s a mass movement against the brutal US and Australian war in Vietnam shook Australian society. Thousands of radical students and young people resisted conscription and marched in the streets, linking up with workers who went on strike and refused to transport material for the war. This blazed a trail for other movements in the 1970s,...

Marxists argue that a workers' revolution is necessary to overthrow capitalism. In the last decade, uprisings have broken out in Sudan, Chile, Algeria, Hong Kong, Myanmar and more. Many of these revolts began with specific demands about democracy, inequality, or opposition to military rule. In all of them, the social power of organised workers played an important role in threatening the status quo...

Marxism 2024 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For decades the Communist Party of Australia was the most prominent organisation claiming to build a left-wing alternative to the Labor Party. Thousands of working-class activists inspired by socialist politics joined the Communists and helped to build the party into a major force on the left. However the Communist Party was stained by all the problems of Stalinism: support for authoritarian dicta...

Fascism confronts us today not just as a dark chapter in twentieth century history, but as an emerging danger in our own times. It demands serious analysis, yet the explanation offered by mainstream thinkers is deeply unsatisfactory. Theorising fascism requires an understanding of the capitalist societies in which it emerges, the crises these societies produce and the class tensions inherent to th...

Most supporters of Palestine tend to view the issue in nationalist terms, as a struggle with the Palestinians and the broader Arab world on one side, and the Israeli state and its western allies on the other. Yet any serious look at the situation today, or at the history of the 20th century for that matter, shows that the Arab states have done nothing to seriously challenge Zionism or its Western...

Indian politics is dominated by the personality of Narendra Modi. Since his re-election in 2019, there has been a steady erosion of democracy and an increase in state and mob violence towards India’s 195 million Muslims. But Modi, and the government he leads, cannot be understood without looking at the growth of the powerful National Volunteer Organisation (RSS), an extra-parliamentary fascist mov...

In the period of industrial capitalism, the nuclear family structure was enforced on working class populations to ensure a stable working class to be exploited. While women’s oppression existed before capitalism, capitalism reshaped it and used new structures to enforce it. Capitalism also created conditions for identities outside of the accepted sexual and gender norms, and oppressed LGBTI people...

Equal pay for women was only made law in 1974. The systematic underpayment of women for the same work as men was an important profit-making mechanism for the capitalist class - one which they weren't willing to give up without a fight. This session will it look at the industrial militancy, defiance and rebellions led by working class women and men, which paved the way for legal wage equality in Au...

Racism is a crucial component of the capitalist system. Racism stems from the slave plantations of the Americas - as Eric Williams explained, “slavery was not born of racism—rather racism was the consequence of slavery.” Racism has persisted beyond the abolition of slavery- used to justify colonialism, exploitation of migrant workers, imperialism and more. This session will discuss the roots of ra...

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From the opium wars of the 19th century to the opioid epidemic of the 21st, capitalism's drive for profit has driven addiction and dependency on drugs for centuries. At the same time, the use of drugs has been regulated and criminalised by the state, as a means of social control and a pretext for political repression. This talk will explore the relationship between capitalism and drugs. Hosted on...

The contemporary narrative of Jewish history is one of ghettos, pogroms, suffering, oppression – Jews as the eternal victims. But in the 1930s, Jewish political currents engaged with non-Jewish socialists in struggle: they fought fascists, engaged in tenants' strikes, formed defence groups, led mass demonstrations and linked up with the struggles of other oppressed groups. From New York to London...

4 August 1914 was a decisive turning point for the socialist movement. The capitulation of the majority of parties of the Second International to pro-war chauvinism exposed a fundamental division between reformists and revolutionaries. This talk will examine the developments in the socialist movement that explain the abandonment of an anti-war standpoint by the leadership of key parties such as th...

Diane Fieldes, Eva Sutherland, Audra Hope Despite being dismissed, patronised and subject to constant discipline, high-schoolers have always been at the forefront of fighting for social change and radical politics. The recent school strikes for Palestine were only the latest in a long line of protests, rebellions and uprisings against the system that have been led by students. This session will fe...

Australia is a profoundly racist society: police continue to kill Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, land rights are overturned to dig up fossil fuels, the Liberals claim that Indigenous people get “unearned privileges” and that colonisation was “positive”, vigilante racists whip up attacks on Indigenous young people and the gap between Indigenous and non-indigenous people on income, he...

When it comes to a socialist analysis of cities, David Harvey is a towering figure, with decades of influential writing on the subject. He offers a searing critique of how our urban environments are shaped by the priorities of capitalism, and champions urban rebellions. However, his analysis rests on a problematic reading of Marxism and capitalist crisis, and an approach to anti-capitalist resista...

The relentless drive for profit which is a defining characteristic of capitalism is condemning the world to catastrophic environmental disaster. The competition, free markets and pursuit of profit that capitalism’s apologists tell us deliver optimal outcomes are threatening to destroy the planet on which the system depends. Those with the power to act won’t. This discussion looks at why capitalism...