Anarchism-Communism conference

The following is probably somewhere on this website already, but if not:

> PLEASE CIRCULATE AS WIDELY AS POSSIBLE
>
>
> Call for Papers for Panel on “Libertarian Communism”
>
> 1st Anarchist Studies Network Conference
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> 4th-6th September, 2008
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> Department of Politics, International Relations, & European Studies,
> Loughborough University, UK
>
> Anarchism and Marxism are routinely depicted as being irreconcilable
> and hostile worldviews in introductory texts, histories of socialism,
> and in much of the dominant literature. While anarchists and Marxists
> share the end goal of a post-capitalist society defined in part by the
> common ownership of the means of production, the abolition of the wage
> system and the destruction of the state, differing perspectives on the
> role and nature of the state and the agents and the organizational
> forms required to carry out a radical social transformation are often
> cited as key areas dividing anarchists from Marxists both in theory
> and practice. A turbulent history between the two from the schism in
> the First International to the proletarian revolutions at the
> beginning of the 20th century, notably in Russia and Spain, would seem
> to further bolster the assertion that anarchism and Marxism are
> incompatible.
>
> However, a cursory glance at radical social movements through the last
> century reveals a number of individuals and organizations that defy
> strict classification into either camp. Joseph Dietzgen, William
> Morris, Anton Pannekoek, Guy Aldred, Daniel Guerin, Maximilien Rubel,
> and Noam Chomsky, among others, have to varying degrees combined an
> anarchist critique of hierarchy and authoritarian social and political
> relations with a Marxist critique of the capitalist mode of production
> and alienated labour. Similarly, the anarchist/Marxist distinction
> has been blurred by organizations and radical social movements ranging
> from the Industrial Workers of the World and the Anti-Parliamentary
> Communist Federation to post-68 European autonomist social struggles
> and the Zapatistas. Recently, John Holloway, author of “Change the
> World Without Taking Power”, has stated that in the post-Soviet era
> “the old divisions between anarchism and Marxism are being eroded.”
>
> The tendency for various anarchisms and marxisms to converge has been
> largely overlooked in the academic community. To these ends, the
> libertarian communist panel aims to investigate the intersections
> between historical and contemporary anarchist and Marxist currents
> including, but not limited to, anarcho-communism, revolutionary
> syndicalism, autonomist and libertarian Marxism, council communism,
> social ecology/communalism, and Situationism. Possible topics might
> include:
>
> - anarchist and Marxist perspectives on revolutionary organization
> - the work of Martin Glaberman, Cornelius Castoriadis, Maurice
> Brinton, and/or other heterodox Marxists emerging from post-WWII
> Trotskyism
> - anarchism, autonomism, and class struggle organizing outside of the
> “point of production”
> - the dialectic of spontaneity and organization in emergent social
> forms – councils, syndicates, communes, assemblies, informal workplace
> organization
> - the history of the German autonomen
> - anarchist and Marxist theories of the state and capital
> - the work of Murray Bookchin
> - theories of workers’ self-management and non-market socialism
>
> For further information about this panel, please contact Saku Pinta
> (s.a.m.pinta@lboro.ac.uk) or Dave Berry (d.g.berry@lboro.ac.uk)
>
> For further information about the conference, see
> http://www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk/HomePage
>