Join us on the Friday evening of the Marxism Festival, for this fun and inspiring tour of the radical history of Sydney Uni.

For more info about the Marxism Festival visit:

https://www.marxismconference.org/program?city=sydney

Sydney uni, long a bastion of elite conservatism, has also frequently been a base of radical activism from students and staff, from the harbouring of Vietnam draft resisters, to the Freedom Rides for Aboriginal rights, to countless protests, strikes and student occupations over the decades. Come along to hear some stories of rebellion.

Our tour will be led by the one and only Diane Fieldes, participant in the anti-Vietnam War movement, Mardi Gras 78er, and revolutionary socialist ever since.

The tour will commence at around 7pm from the Holme Building Courtyard, where our post-conference dinner and drinks will be happening. We will return around 7.45, in time for last drinks.

All tickets to the Marxism Festival include access to this radical walking tour.

Radical History Walking Tour of Sydney Uni

Sydney Park Pavilion, Euston Rd, Alexandria

https://g.page/sydney-park-pavilion?share

We are excited to announce that in addition to the two days of talks and discussions from 15-16 April at the Marxism Festival, we are now adding an opening night extravaganza!

The night will feature lots of time to meet and greet other conference goers and organisers, with a bar and plentiful buffet of finger food, open from 5.30pm.

From 6.30pm we will hear from some of our most powerful conference speakers, about resisting the endless capitalist atrocities that confront us today, from imperialist war, to climate crises, to an economy that only serves the rich, and beyond. Along with the horror, they will speak about the hope of resistance and the fight for a better world, and what we can look forward to in that vein from the rest of the Marxism Festival.

It will be a great way to kick off what is sure to be a fantastic weekend for the rest of the Festival.

All tickets to the Marxism Festival will also grant access to the opening night.

For details of the Marxism Festival, including how to get your tickets, visit our website here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/481416066927397

April Holcombe: Convener of Community Action for Rainbow Rights, which recently celebrated a victory over Scott Morrison's and Mark Latham's religious discrimination bills. April is a revolutionary, an anti-capitalist, and the bane of every bigot in Australia. She will be speaking later in the conference on "Understanding Chinese capitalism today".

Chloe Rafferty: one of Sydney's leading climate activists and socialists, who organised and spoke at the immense "Sack Scomo" climate rallies, during Australia's bushfire crisis. Chloe will be speaking at the conference on "The war in Ukraine and its meaning for world imperialism".

Following speeches, there will be plenty of time to mingle and enjoy the bar and food.

Our venue will be the beautiful Sydney Park Pavilion, which is close to St Peters station, or via buses 308, 348, 370, 422, and has a carpark.

https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/hireable-indoor-spaces/sydney-park-pavilion

Opening Night: Resisting a system of endless war and crisis

PLEASE NOTE: The opening night event will be taking place at the Trades and Labour Council Building, at 16 Peel St, South Brisbane. The rest of the conference is taking place at UQ, St Lucia. 

Brisbane has a long history of radicalism and trade union activism. From the general strike in 1912 to the students protests in the 70's, Brisbane has been a hotbed of left wing activity.

Our opening night event will feature a panel on this topic, followed by informal discussion. Marxism ’22 is the largest gathering of left-wing people in Brisbane and presents a unique opportunity to connect with local activists.

All tickets to the conference include entry to the opening night event.

Opening Night Panel: Radical Brisbane

Wrap up the Conference with some drinks, dinner and speeches.

Closing Panel: Resisting Barbarism, Fighting for Socialism

This all-in closing panel is an absolute must for conference participants. Some of our most powerful speakers will seek to draw together all the different threads of discussion and make the case for a socialist alternative to this monstrous capitalist system.

As Karl Marx said, "the point is to change it!"

Closing Panel: Building the left in a world in crisis

Gender roles are deeply ingrained in both our sense of self and how we see others. They are also a product of oppression and a means to perpetuate it. Marxists both support people's right to express their gender however they like and fight for a world free from gender roles and women's oppression.

The freedom to be: Marxism, gender oppression and the struggle for trans liberation

The failure of identity politics: A Marxist analysis

Against Transphobia and Misogyny: a Marxist critique of gender

China's rise as an economic and increasingly assertive imperialist power is a key development which has reshaped the world. This session will discuss this, but also explore the internal dynamics of Chinese capitalism. China is, after all, a class divided country like every other, with a myriad of contradictions, class struggle and other forms of popular resistance.

China under Xi Jinping

China's Century?

China's Growth Pains

China's Rise as a World Power

Understanding Chinese capitalism today

Anarchist ideas are attractive to many on the left, and are often seen as an alternative to the supposed ‘authoritarian’ politics of Marxism. However, throughout history anarchism has failed to adequately understand the nature of the capitalist system and how to overthrow it. This session will provide a critique of anarchist politics, and explain why a politics based on opposing vague concepts like ‘authority’, and supporting individual liberty will never be able to guide a successful fight against capitalism and liberate workers and the oppressed.

Anarchism: a Marxist critique

Marxism and Anarchism

Counterpower, participatory democracy, revolutionary defence: debating Black Flame, revolutionary anarchism and historical Marxism

Anarchism, syndicalism and strategy: a reply to Lucien van der Walt

A Marxist Critique of Anarchism

This session will tackle the long-running debate between Marxists and anarchists. Which approach can actually overthrow capitalism and create a classless society?

While anarchism has a radical gloss, and can understandably attract people who rightly reject the horrors of Stalinism, we will argue that it has no strategy to actually win the class struggle, and boils down to a more radical form of liberalism. A victorious workers' revolution is the only way to actually smash the state and bring about a classless society, but in practice anarchists have always opposed this strategy.

Marxism vs the state

Can we change the world without taking power?

Nestor Makhno: the failure of anarchism

Marxism vs anarchism

The "bourgeois revolutions" which laid the basis for capitalism were varied and contested historical events. Lenin often drew lessons rom the French Revolution. So we will examine the social and political processes involved in those upheavals and consider how much, if at all, they provide a guide to what will be involved in overthrowing capitalism.

The Great French Revolution

The World Turned Upside Down

The Dutch Revolt: a socialist analysis

 Part 4, Chapter 2, “Renaissance and Reformation” and chapter 3, “The birth pangs of a new order”

If the French Revolution didn't bring us Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, how do we know a workers' revolution will?

The English Revolution and the transition from feudalism to capitalism

The Dynamics of Revolution

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

A Marxist view of bourgeois revolutions: from peasant wars in Germany 1552-5 to Russia 1917

Fighting racism and every form of oppression is integeral to socialist politics. But how racism is to be fought and whether it can be eliminated depends on what you think its source is. The concept of 'whiteness' presents white people or white culture as creating the racist society we live in. Marxists instead argue that it's capitalist society that creates racism. This session will explore these two different theories of racism, their strategies for fighting it and investigate what will be needed to win liberation and a world without oppression.

Who's to blame for racism in Australia?

A Marxist critique of the theory of 'white privilege'

Racism: is whiteness the problem?

The workers' revolution that took place in Spain in 1936 successfully confronted an attempted fascist coup by the military, and began a social transformation on a scale unseen outside of the Russian Revolution of 1917. This talk will discuss the revolutionary potential of this little known period and lessons for today's radicals. 

The Spanish civil war: anarchism put to the test [book chapter]

Revolution and Counter Revolution in Spain [book]

Homage to Catalonia

Fighting fascism and capitalism: the workers revolution in Spain, 1936

"It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped with red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties..." The Spanish revolution brought the working class to power and pitted them against an insurgent fascist movement. It raised, and answered, crucial questions about how to fight fascism, and what the practical divergences are between Anarchism, Stalinism, and revolutionary socialism.

Russia's invasion of the Ukraine with the tacit agreement of China has seen a renewal of militarist rhetoric and accelerated arms spending across the US-aligned states, from Europe to Australia. Western powers are pitching themselves as defenders of "democracy", despite their clear track record of invasion and mass murder. 

Even before this recent conflict, the Australian state was preparing for a future war with China, as seen by the new AUKUS pact between Australia, the US and the UK, which will see Australia wielding nuclear-powered weapons of death. This session will make sense of the recent wars and increase in tensions and put forward how socialists should respond. 

Australian imperialism and the rise of China

AUKUS and the US Alliance: Australian Imperialism in the Indo-Pacific

Bukharin's theory of imperialism

Capitalism and the threat of WWIII

Australian Militarism Resurgent

Ukraine resists invasion

West's "Solidarity" with Ukraine displays breathtaking hypocrisy

The war in Ukraine and its meaning for world imperialism

We are now entering a new Cold War between the US and China. In the US Biden has built on Trump's hostility to ratchet up tensions with America's 'strategic competitor'. Biden has openly declared "We are in a competition with China to win the 21st century" and he's matched that with high profile diplomatic stoushes, rising military spending and hawkish rhetoric around Taiwan. In Australia, the Liberal Government is openly speculating about the prospect war with China in the future. This raises important questions for the socialist left. 

Is conflict with China likely? How do we oppose the growing imperialist tension, militarism and a future war?

We have to stop the coming war with China

AUKUS makes workers pay for war on China

Taiwan's independence and the new Cold War

Biden's plan for the US empire

Imperialism today: the US, China, AUKUS and the threat of WWIII

The 1987 Intifada transformed Israel-Palestine relations, birthed new forces and political parties, and posed the question of how Palestinian liberation might be won. Last year Palestinians from the Occupied Territories and within Israel’s 1948 borders demonstrated against the eviction of Palestinians in an East Jerusalem neighbourhood to make way for settlers, and against IDF attacks on the al-Aqsa mosque. Come and learn more about the socialist analysis of Palestine and the Intifada.

The Story of Palestine

Ending Apartheid in Palestine: the case for a revolutionary strategy 

Israelis and Palestinians: Conflict and Resolution

Intifada: the Palestinian Uprising of 1987

As they let covid rip, the message of our rulers to the working class is "work 'til you drop". Labour shortages everywhere due to mass infection is proving the basic argument Marxists have always made, that it's our labour that makes the world run; and the bosses need us, we don't need them. 

This session will feature a panel of socialist union delegates - a train driver, a teacher, a retail worker and a healthcare worker - who have been leading a class fightback in their workplaces, including strikes and other campaigns, to fight for health and safety over profits, for wage rises and more staff, and for left wing politics.

Extensive coverage of the class struggle during the pandemic

Our unions in crisis: how did it come to this

Look who's essential now: panel of socialist union activists

Have your burning questions about socialist politics and organisation answered by a panel of leading Socialist Alternative members!

Q and A with Socialist Alternative

Capitalism is an undemocratic system that deprives workers of control over the world around them.  Workers are shocked and appalled by the injustice of the system, and so charity is one way in which capitalism creates an illusion of control and a way of explaining away its failures.  There are charities which give to the poor, fund research and provide relief for women facing domestic violence.  Charity however raises the question; Why isn’t the rich paying for all this stuff?

This talk will explore the trouble with charity and why individualist strategies of social change can’t make capitalism moral.

The ambiguity of charitable volunteering

The dead end of moral individualism

"Be the change you want to see": Do we need Charity or Revolution?

At the core of capitalist ideology is the notion that any understanding of society, of politics, the economy, morality and justice must begin with the individual. This stands in stark contrast to pre-capitalist societies, and today serves above all to conceal fundamental class divisions. 

This session will explore liberal individualism, including its many impacts in left wing circles today, and why we need an alternative worldview and politics of class solidarity and struggle.

Profit-hungry hippies aren't progressive

The dead-end of moral individualism

The tangled paradox of liberalism

Marxism vs liberalism

Class politics vs liberal individualism

Support for Stalinism and the USSR led to the destruction of workers movements and struggles all around the world. Socialist parties were transformed from organisations fighting for working class liberation into bureaucratic, counter-revolutionary monstrosities, holding back radical struggles and discrediting socialist ideas for generations. This session will give an overview of this history, and argue that any successful fight against capitalism today will have to reclaim the genuinely liberatory politics of revolutionary Marxism from Stalinist distortions.

Leon Trotsky and the fight against Stalinism

If it wasn't socialist, what was the USSR?

How Stalinism distorted Marxism

Section 2: the transformations of Marxism

Against Tankies: the scourge of Stalinism on the workers' movement

Some of the most heroic struggles of the oppressed in history have been for democratic or national rights. But every struggle that leaves capitalism intact only leads to new forms of inequality and oppression - often ruled over by the former heroes of the democratic/national struggle, turned capitalist tyrants. 

How then should socialists approach struggles for democracy, for national liberation, and so on?

The permanent revolution and Results and prospects

From deflected permanent revolution to the law of combined and uneven development

The relevance of permanent revolution: a reply to Neil Davidson

Deflected Permanent Revolution

Democratic struggles and permanent revolution

Capitalism is riddled with various forms of oppression. The working class as a whole is oppressed and exploited. Racial and gendered oppression, as well as of the elderly and disabled, prevail. Oppression is central to the daily functioning of capitalism; for scapegoating, dividing and ruling and attempting to break the confidence of people to resist. This session will argue that an anti-capitalist perspective is needed to understand why oppression persists, and that only working class revolution can end it for good.

Chapters 7 & 8

Why capitalism causes oppression

Why we need socialism to end oppression

Oppressions, of all kinds, have not always existed. They are not natural or inevitable. They are constructed and enforced today under the capitalist mode of production, to serve the needs of an exploitative system ruled by profit-seeking billionaires. So to end oppression, we must overthrow this whole system and replace it with something else: a society based on equality, collective interests and genuine democratic control. 

What would socialism look like, and how would it end oppression?

How Oppression can be ended

How segregation was smashed in southern NSW

Marxism 101: Why only socialism can end oppression

The pandemic has thrown up debates, in Australia and internationally, about how to respond to public health measures. Some have argued that lockdowns and public health restrictions are authoritarian attacks on civil liberties. This session will weigh into these debates, arguing that socialists should support public health measures as necessary to save the lives of workers and the oppressed. It will also put forward that the anti-vax demonstrations are in no way supportable, and instead represent a dangerous new far-right movement.

The left and state restrictions

The new far-right movement and how the left should respond

Pandemic debates: The State, Public Health and Authoritarianism

Today, the capitalist system pushes us further towards climate catastrophe. Capitalism's response to COVID has been a disaster that's prioritised profit over health. All while the billionaire class has got richer than ever.

Another world is possible - and people across the globe are willing to fight for it. Last year saw mass strikes and rebellion in Myanmar, Iran and Sudan, with many of these movements still ongoing in the face of brutal repression and risk for those who resist.

This panel will hear from speakers on the barbarity of world capitalism today and celebrate the resistance of those striking and protesting for a better world. Guest speakers TBC.

Morbid symptoms

Closing Panel: Resisting disaster capitalism

Australia has a new far right. Prompted by the COVID crisis, demonstrations have swept Australia’s capital cities. These have constituted the largest, most consistent and most militant far right rallies since the 1930s. This protest movement has brought together a strange cocktail of open Nazis, wellness gurus, conservative politicans, hard right Liberals as well as disaffected small business owners and some workers. What exactly is uniting these forces? Can and should we understand them all as part of a broad far right? What should we do about them?

Conspiracy, Covid and the Coalition: why are more of its MPs appealing to the alt-right?

Putting the anti-vax rallies in historical perspective

Conspiracy theorists, evangelicals and anti-vaxxers: Why is the far Right growing today?

Part Two: The transformations of Marxism

Capitalism needs to go. But with militant unionism on the decline, decline of left-wing organisation and the capitalist class seeming more powerful than ever, organising resistance can seem like an impossible task. There’s significant pressure to give up, lower our horizons or wishfully hope that someone in power will change things for the better. This session will talk though how socialists should organise today and why it matters to be involved in rebuilding a radical socialist current in Australia.

What should socialists do today?

We need a party to win revolutions, not elections

Why you should be a socialist

Understanding war and imperialism: a case study of the war in Iraq

Socialists look to the mass of workers to change society. Most of the time, however, workers accept the ideology of capitalism, or at least don’t think revolutionary change is possible. These pro-capitalist ideas have a materialist basis. This talk will use Marxist philosophy to explore workers’ consciousness, and how it can change.

Chapter 7, Workers' Power

 Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat (parts 1 and 2)

How Ideas can change in struggle

Marxist philosophy and political consciousness

The world economy can produce enough for everyone but unemployment, low wages and poverty are endemic for billions of people. Even in a rich country like Australia, there are millions of poor and many more are living pay cheque to pay cheque, while Gina Rinehart and her friends accumulate fortunes. This talk will explain how the rich profit from our labour, why the capitalist system lurches periodically into crisis and why we have to get rid of capitalism if we want decent lives for all.

Chapter 1 150 years of Karl Marx's Capital

A Crash Course in Marxist Economics

What are the key causes of recurring economic crises? Many left wing economists have tried to explain crises of capitalism by focusing on the phenoma of underconsumption or financialisation. This session will examine these approaches, which are usually rooted more in Keynesian than Marxist theory. This session also takes place in the light of the recent book, "Twilight Capitalism- Karl Marx and the Decay of the Profit System" by Marxist economists.

An Introduction to the History of Crisis Theories

The Problem Is Capitalism, Not Just the Banks

Twilight capitalism: debates about economic crisis

The largest capitalist powers in the world - the US and China - are increasingly at odds. Veiled threats over Taiwan, boycotts of the Olympics, and military buildup make the possibility of military conflict between these superpowers increasingly possible. How should the left respond to these increasing tensions? This session will put forward a Marxist analysis of the competition between these countries and argue for an internationalist, anti-war stance.

Understanding the US-China conflict

Since the decline of the social movements of the 70s, identity politics has dominated left-wing understandings of oppression. Identity politics views each oppression as distinct, enforced by and to the benefit of those who don’t experience that distinct oppression. At its most right-wing, this is used to just push for diversity in the ruling class. More left-wing versions of identity politics reject ruling class women like Kamala Harris. But what all identity politics is united on is the rejection of a working class strategy for ending oppression. This session will present a Marxist critique of identity politics and outline why this matters for anti-racist and anti-sexist resistance today.

Mistaken identity – or can identity politics liberate the oppressed?

Gender, race and class: A Marxist critique of identity politics

In the early 1960s, a grouping of Italian intellectuals attempted to rediscover the revolutionary heart of Marxism by turning their attention to the tensions and struggles emerging in the large factories in the country's industrial north. These 'workerists' were able to put their politics to the test during a massive wave of strikes and class confrontation which emerged at the end of the decade. But as the struggle receded in the 1970s, many workerist intellectuals abandoned the working class, searching for a new revolutionary 'counter-power' to capitalism, which privileged local autonomous organising, alternative lifestyles and subculture, and even armed struggle against the state. The 'autonomist' politics which emerged still exert an influence on anticapitalist politics today. This talk will provide a critical review of the experiences of the workerist and autonomost tendencies on the Italian far left, two failed experiments in revolutionary politics which crystalised in the context of a historic wave of radical struggle.

History of Contemporary Italy

Tony Negri in Perspective

The Autumn and Fall of Italian Workerism

The New Workerism

Workerists and Autonomists in 1970's Italy

From the day we're born, gender is enforced upon us through a myriad of social conventions. From the way people interact with babies, the toys children are given, to what we're taught about our own emotional makeup and sexuality: gender is forced into every aspect of our lives. This talk will argue that gender is not natural or biological, but socially constructed. More than that, it is constructed today by a capitalist society that puts profits first and relies on the oppression of the working class, women and LGBTI people.

Gender and capitalism

The system behind sexism

The freedom to be: gender oppression and the struggle for trans liberation

Marxism and women's liberation

The social construction of gender

Nations are often presented as natural entities with ancient histories extending into the forgotten past. But the nation states of today are in fact comparatively recent phenomena, first arising as a result of the rise of capitalism in the last few hundred years. Understanding this history has implications for how we approach the questions of nationalism and national movements today. This session will examine this intertwining history of capitalism and nations. 

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism [book]

How the bourgeoisie invented the nation

Imperialism is baked into capitalism. The logic of profit and competition that drives the capitalist system has killed and displaced millions in wars all over the world. Imperialist powers will often couch their aggression in terms of concern for “democracy”, “sovereignty”, or “self-determination”, but none of these are compatible with a system that runs on profits and human misery. 

The ongoing crisis in Ukraine and the emerging US-China conflict will define our age for decades to come and guarantee death and destruction for millions of ordinary people. Socialists need to understand where imperialism comes from in order to build a force capable of fighting it.

No to war, no to imperialism

Biden's plan for the US Empire

Ukraine in the crosshairs

How can socialists understand and resist imperialism today?

The former dictator Ferdinand Marcos' clan have been relentlessly pursuing their ambition to get back into power in the country and have formed an alliance with President Duterte and his clan, who are equally determined to protect their dynasty's hold on power in the upcoming national elections in the Philippines, with the son of the former dictator, Bongbong Marcos Jr. running for President along with the Sara Duterte, the daughter of President Duterte, as his Vice President. These forces represent the most rightwing faction of the Philippine ruling class. The Filipino masses, meanwhile, are completely disillusioned by decades of neoliberal rule that have devastated the socio-economic situation in the country and their very existence, through unemployment, insecure work and low wages, rising poverty, unaffordable and inaccessible basic services, climate change induced disasters, all exacerbated by the pandemic and the Duterte regime's failed pandemic response. Filipino socialists under the Partido Lakas ng Masa (Party of the Laboring Masses -- PLM), supported by several left and green coalitions, are challenging this Marcos-Duterte axis of evil. 

Reihana Mohideen, a socialist and feminist activist and National Council member of PLM, will discuss the positioning of the Philippine left and progressive movements in the upcoming elections and the underlying strategies and tactics that guide them.

The Philippines Left: Strategy and Tactics in the 2022 Elections

Russia's deadly invasion of Ukraine is an attempt to re-establish Russia as the dominant power in Eastern Europe. Putin is an authoritarian dictator willing to lay waste to thousands of lives for the sake of this objective.

In response to the Russian invasion, Australian, US and other Western politicians claim that they are standing up for Ukrainian democracy and self-determination. This is a self-serving lie.

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