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Historical Materialism Australasia 2014
The third annual conference of Historical Materialism Australasia takes place this Friday and Saturday, September 5-6, in Sydney. The agenda looks extremely exciting, with a closing plenary on ‘Feminising Emancipation' and roundtable discussions on Thomas Piketty's...
How relevant are the unions?
Tad Tietze and I have an article on the state of the unions in the wake of the Qantas job cuts, which has been stirring up some discussion at The Guardian‘s Comment Is Free section. Here’s a preview, and you can read the full article here. It is no...
Anti-politics: Elephant in the room
‘They don’t represent us’ —Spanish Indignados protest *** This post was originally published at Left Flank. *** By ELIZABETH HUMPHRYS & TAD TIETZE At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In other...
Russell Brand, let’s get this done.
This post was originally published at Left Flank. *** OK Russell, let’s get this done. I’m in Europe and the crisis is everywhere. I landed in Greece and it hit me in the face: people trying to generate an income in any way they can; road works half complete and not...
The Australian Global Justice Movement
In the lead up to doing a PhD, I completed a Masters by Research at the University of Technology in Sydney (UTS). It took a long time - a very long time - as I undertook the research whilst working full time. It has been extremely pleasing therefore, to see two pieces...
Iraq and the Australian anti-war movement
This post was originally published at Overland Journal. *** This is the speech I gave on Monday this week, at the forum ‘IRAQ 10 years on: Remembering when the world said NO to war’ — organised by the Sydney Stop the War Coalition. Soon after the fall of the Berlin...
Leo Panitch’s critque of the state
These are some early thoughts on Leo Panitch's work on the nature of the state, who I see as the best contemporary proponent of aspects of the work of Poulantzas and Miliband. There is further work to do on the critique of the concept of 'relative autonomy', but also...
Unfree Labour in a Capitalist Mode of Production?
This month I guest edited, with Jonathon Collerson, an issue of the Journal of Australian Political Economy (JAPE) on new research in Marxist political economy. It arose, in part, from a conference Jonathon and I organised in 2011 titles 'Capital Against Capitalism'....