Event organised by Manchester University Press.
Though his work has been both praised and criticized, Karl Marx is considered one of the most influential figures in the modern era. But in the twenty-first century, the legacy of Marxism is now contested, with some seeing it as Eurocentric and irrelevant to the wider global struggle.
In Global Marxism, Simin Fadaee argues that Marxism remains a living tradition and the cornerstone of revolutionary theory and practice in the Global South. She explores the lives, ideas and legacies of a group of revolutionaries who played a significant role in contributing to counter-hegemonic change. Figures such as Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, Ali Shariati and Subcomandante Marcos did not simply accept the version of Marxism that was given to them – they adapted it to local conditions and contexts. In doing this they demonstrated that Marxism is not a rigid set of propositions but an evolving force whose transformative potential remains enormous.
This global Marxism has much to teach us in the never-ending task of grasping the changing historical conditions of capitalism and the complex world in which we live.
In this panel discussion event, an all-female panel will discuss Marx’s enduring influence, as well as whether writing about Marxism is a male dominated space, and whether women can offer new perspectives. There are very few women who have written books on Marx/Marxism, far fewer than by men, and this event aims to highlight the brilliant research and writing being done by the panellists.
Featuring:
Simin Fadaee is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester and President of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements. She is the author or editor of several books, including Marxism, Religion and Emancipatory Politics (2022) and Understanding Southern Social Movements (2016).
Ana Cecilia Dinerstein is Chair of Political Sociology and Critical Theory at the University of Bath. She has written profusely on labour, subjectivity, labour utopia, the movement of the unemployed in Argentina, social movements in Latin America, hope and Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of hope, critical theory, open Marxism, decolonial and decolonising approaches. At the centre of her research is the quest to understand and explain how people outside institutionalised politics can affect social and political change, through a focus on social movements.
Kate Hardy is Professor of Global Labour at the University of Leeds. She is a scholar of work and employment with an interest in working conditions, collective organizing, gender and self-employment in gendered and marginal forms of employment. Her major work to date has addressed the sex industry and other forms of low paid women’s work, such as early years and childcare. Overall, her research is driven by the key notion that examining the labour processes and relations in more marginalized forms of work can theoretically enrich and conceptually deepen understandings of work and employment.
Helen Yaffe is Senior Lecturer (Economic & Social History) at the University of Glasgow. Her teaching focuses on Latin American and Cuban development. At the LSE, she taught the history of economics and the political economy of late development. She is the author of Che Guevara: The Economics of Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and We Are Cuba! How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World (Yale University Press, 2020).
