Anej Korsika: Political implications of crisis analysis; interpretations of cognitive labor 10/2012
Channel: SkriptaTV
Date: 02/05/2013

Organizacija: Centar za radničke studije (CRS) / Organized by: Centre for labour studies (radnickistudiji.org)
19-20.10.2012.
Radnički dom, Zagreb, Croatia
Conference: TWO DECADES AFTER THE END OF SOCIALISM

All successor states of Yugoslavia have traveled along broadly similar trajectories, both with regard to socio-economic development, and their political and ideological framing and interpretation in mainstream discourse. Socio-economically, the restoration of capitalist relations of production, in combination with a progressive assimilation to (neo)liberal market regimes with the EU and other capitalist core regions, has led to widespread deindustrialization, social polarization and rising indebtedness (both public and private). These processes have been strengthened institutionally and ideologically via reference to the necessities of 'modernization' along neoliberal lines. The ultimate political goal of 'European integration' shared amongst most members of the political and intellectual elites of Yugoslavia's successor states has functioned both as driving force and last instance of legitimation of these processes. At the same time, the social implications of capitalist restoration and the subscription to a neoliberal 'modernization' agenda (encouraged and actively promoted by MMF led 'structural adjustment' and EU guidelines on policies favoring a deepening of market-based 'solutions' to economic and even social issues), have largely been left politically unquestioned and inadequately theorized. The ideological criminalization of Marxism, due to its association with Yugoslav socialism, and the parallel and related rise of nationalism in the late eighties and nineties, has effaced and almost entirely obfuscated the question of class -- ironically, precisely at the point of its historical reemergence as immediate social reality. Intellectual conformism and a general climate of ideological suppression of anti-capitalist ideas and traditions of thought have played a significant role in the suppression of issues related to class and social justice. The ebbing of the nationalist tide, however, did in no way improve this situation. It was rather the (neo)liberal intelligentsia that managed to establish itself both as opposition and alternative to nationalism. In the process, socialist ideas were again ideologically denounced, as merely another shape of 'collectivist totalitarianism', allegedly closely ideologically related to nationalism.

The aim of the conference is to provide a platform for exchange of ideas, theoretical work and research projects from a critical (dominantly but not exclusively -- Marxist) perspective in relation to the central issues and questions of the post-socialist period. In the context of a still hegemonic anti-Marxist 'common sense', both in academia and in public discussions, the conference is to function as one of a series of focal points for the development of a potentially counter-hegemonic new post-Yugoslav theoretical Left, critical of capitalist restoration and its socio-economic and political consequences. The idea is to present theoretically and empirically well-founded research from a Left perspective to counter predominant nationalist and/or (neo)liberal narratives on both the decline of Yugoslavia and the social, economic and political trajectories of its successor states. Our goal is to gather critical researchers from various post-Yugoslav states and present research on the subject of the pattern of economic integration of the successor states into European and world capitalism, the new international division of labor established after the demise of really existing socialism, and the nature of changes in regimes of reproduction of labor power in this geo-economic and regional context.

http://radnickistudiji.org/konferencija/
https://www.facebook.com/events/558506364175414/