Past Events

Europe in a Vortex of Crisis: Authoritarian neoliberalism, the advance of the far right, and dilemmas for the left More than a decade after the global financial meltdown, Europe is in the midst of a series of crises that is even difficult to enumerate: the rise of far right and fascist forces; the inequalities and welfare state cuts from unending austerity; migration flows without a strategy for integration with numerous states in violation with the EU’s own policies; tariff wars…

Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, entrenched his increasingly authoritarian power in a snap election on June 24th, winning a majority government in alliance with the neo-fascist Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP). The election, marred by repression and irregularities, was held amid a State of Emergency that has seen the unprecedented jailing of journalists, scholars, and political opposition. Nevertheless, the pro-Kurdish, radical left People’s Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi, HDP) won enough seats to enter parliament, despite widespread repression and…

Despite fierce opposition from big business and the media, Andrés Manuel López Obrador is likely to be elected President of México on July 1 and win majorities in both houses of Congress. How did this rejection of the major parties come about? Is he a “leftist,” or “populist” as widely purported in the North American press? What kind of change can be expected? How might this affect the future of NAFTA and the immigration crisis? What obstacles will the new…

Recent Marxian theories of social media are varied, ranging from studies of platform ownership structures to state and corporate surveillance to the exploitation of user or “prosumer” “labour”. This session of The Capitalism Workshop takes social media platforms to be a heuristic device for developing knowledge about the dominant form of the capitalist mode of production and the reigning neoliberal ideology more generally. Drawing upon Marxian concepts such as the distinction between productive and unproductive labour, absolute and relative surplus…

Join us for the Toronto launch of a unique book: Free Public Transit – And Why We Don’t Pay to Ride Elevators. Edited by Judith Dellheim of Germany’s Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and Jason Prince, of Concordia University in Montreal. It is a collaborative result of an international network of scholars and activists working for fare-free public transit. The book includes overall analysis of public transportation and describes and discusses various efforts in cities around the world to build movements for…

 The Capitalism Workshop celebrates the publication of Border Capitalism, Disrupted, an insightful ethnography of precarious migrant labor at the Mae Sot Special Border Economic Zone on the Myanmar border in northwest Thailand. Building upon workerist and autonomist theory and grounding it in ethnographic fieldwork, Stephen Campbell highlights the ways in which workers’ struggles have catalyzed transformations in labour regulation at the frontiers of capital in the global south. In this session of The Capitalism Workshop, Campbell discusses the everyday practices…

Over the past decade, critical studies of extraction have highlighted the intensified exploitation of non-human natures that characterize contemporary neoliberal capitalism. This new extractivism, associated particularly with territorially-extensive mining operations, expresses a particular set of ecological contradictions associated with the late ‘anthropocene,’ or alternatively the ‘capitalocene.’ In this session of The Capitalism Workshop, Anna Zalik theorizes and discusses Canada’s role in the recent, controversial denationalization of the Mexican energy. Two pertinent questions are addressed: 1) What does an analysis of…

This panel explores the complex relationship between artists and organized labour, culture and class politics. Between the 1980s and early 2000s, major labour arts initiatives including the founding of the Mayworks Festival and the establishment of the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre took place. Recently, the decline of organized labour has diminished support for labour arts initiatives. Part of the problem is the political undervaluing of culture by unions. Culture is okay when class struggles are going well but are often dispensed with when the going…

Liter-ally: Poetry Towards Renewal brings together Toronto-based poets to address the opportunity and challenge of Left renewal. How are poets rethinking politics on the left? What role might poetry play in left politics today? Poetry as art. Poetry as thought. Poetry as resistance. Join us for an evening of readings and spoken word performances by a former poet laureate, a hip hop artist and more. Featured poets: George Elliott Clarke – Giovanna Riccio – Honey Novick  – Jennifer Alicia  – Khalid Esmail  – Yavar Khan Qadri  – Mohommad Ali…

Drawing the Left exhibit opening and reception, featuring cartoons by and discussion with Union Art Service (UAS) collective members. The Drawing the Left exhibit highlights cartoonists of the Union Art Service (UAS) collective. UAS was founded by Cy Morris and Mike Constable shortly after the 1976 General Strike against Pierre Trudeau’s contract busting Wage Controls. The Wage Control act marks the birth of a neoliberal agenda that saw all the major news media like the Toronto Star and The Globe…