New York-based Marxist Loren Goldner is giving a series of talks in London this month
Best known for his prescient and revelatory analysis of the global credit bubble of the last thirty years, Goldner has revived and synthesised the theoretical insights of Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Marx and CLR James suppressed by orthodox Marxism and the mainstream Left to offer a rigorous and revolutionary critique of contemporary life, politics, economy and culture.
This is a rare opportunity to hear one of today’s most interesting left communist analysts discuss a broad spectrum of his research and writing.
There are 3 talks at 2 venues:
- From Mass Strike to Casualization and Retreat: The Korean Working Class, 1987-2007
Saturday January 19th 2008, 6pm – Housmans Bookshop
This talk will focus on the recent history of class struggle in Korea, from mass strikes, wage increases and radically democratic unions in the late 1980s - mid ‘90s to casualisation and bureaucratisation today when as many struggles take place between regular and casualized workers as against capital itself. (More below)
Housmans Bookshop ,
5 Caledonian Road,
Kings Cross, London
N1 9DX. Entry: Free
How to get there: http://www.housmans.com/contact/index.htm
- Class Struggle and the Adamic Imagination in Herman Melville
Monday January 21st 2008, 7pm – Housmans Bookshop
1848-1850 witnessed the birth of communism, modern art, the end of classical political economy, and the formulation of the entropy law, or 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. This talk explores the mid-19th century crisis of the bourgeois ego, and the emergence of the working class onto the stage of world history, as echoed in Melville’s novels. Against the cliché of the US as lagging behind Europe on the long parliamentary march to socialism, a Melvillean, and un-orthodoxly Marxist account emphasizes instead the radically anti-statist character of the multiracial working class as portrayed in Moby Dick, and manifest in the struggles of the 70 years after 1850 in the US. (More below)
Housmans Bookshop ,
5 Caledonian Road,
Kings Cross, London
N1 9DX. Entry: Free
How to get there: http://www.housmans.com/contact/index.htm
- Fictitious Capital and Today’s Global Crisis
Tuesday January 22nd 2008, 7pm – The Whitechapel Centre
The fallout from 2007’s credit crunch becomes daily more visible as the global financial system goes from shock to recoil to shock. To understand the stakes of the current crisis and the possible impact – both from the perspective of capital and of the working class – one needs to understand the nature of the 30-year-plus ‘fictitious capital’ bubble whose bursting we may now be witnessing. If this is indeed the end of that long and perverse combination of boom and depression in which capital has ‘successfully’ cannibalised itself, what will ‘the new 1973’ – or ‘new 1929’ be like? How is the global balance of power likely to be affected? (More below)
The Whitechapel Centre,
85 Myrdle Street (off Commercial Road), Whitechapel, London E1 1HQ
UK. Entry: Free.
How to get there: http://linkme2.net/co
Getting to the talks:
Housmans bookshop. Tube: 5 mins walk from Kings Cross. Directions: http://www.housmans.com/contact/index.htm
The Whitechapel Centre. Tube: 10 mins walk from Whitechapel or Aldgate East tube stations. DLR: Shadwell. Bus: 15, 25, 254, 106.
Map: http://linkme2.net/co
More information
T: 44 (0)20 7377 6949. E: ben@metamute.org
About Loren Goldner:
Loren Goldner is a writer and activist who divides his time between New York and Seoul, South Korea. He has written on various economic, political and cultural matters over the past three decades. He is currently writing a book on the Korean working class. Most of his work is available on the Break Their Haughty Power web site at: http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner
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