Everyday Revolutions 

Saturday, May 31 | 10:00am-11:50am | Room L.76 

Chaired by Leina Bocar; with Dario Azzellini, Diego Ibañez, Marina Sitrin 

Millions of people around the globe have been organizing alternative value systems and social relationships to those of capitalism – revolutionary alternatives – still within capitalism, but against it – aiming to overcome it. These alternatives are part of a process of creating everyday revolutions – beginning to prefigure our desired future while still in the present. These everyday revolutions are one part of a larger anti-capitalist movement. In this panel we will discuss what some of these everyday revolutions look like, as defined by people in movement around the world. The discussion will range from the examples of recuperated workplaces, from Latin America to Europe; the new global movements and the focus on creating horizontal social relationships and the day to day organizing in Brooklyn for housing and self organization. There is no blueprint or academic framework that once met means revolution has been achieved, but rather we see it as an ongoing and changing process in which everyday revolutions is a key element. 
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The Compass and the Map: Anti-Capitalism, Strategy and the Political Imagination 

Saturday, May 31, 2014 | 12:00pm-1:50pm | Room L2.84 

Chaired by Zoltan Gluck; with Manissa McCleave Maharawal, David Harvey, Marina Sitrin, and Preeti Sampat 

In his last essay, "The Future in Question," Fernando Coronil writes of the present moment: "If in the past the Left claimed to have a monopoly on the future, now it can offer but uncertain images of the future. Yet this very lack has opened spaces for the imagination and experimentation. Although the future is not open, it offers openings. And although the final destination may not be clear, the sense of direction is: toward justice, equality, freedom, diversity, and social and ecological harmony. The Left has no map, but it has a compass." This panel takes up the question of the political imagination today. Certainly the Left today seems to lack the unifying map(s) or imaginaries to ground a global struggle to end capitalism. But it may be equally true that a proliferation of radical political imaginaries now abounds as movements and revolts forge their own languages of resistance—zapatismo, horizontalism, commoning, recuperation, right to the city, prefiguation. What is the state of the radical political imagination at the present conjuncture? What images and imaginations of social justice and revolution traffic in our movements and political projects today? How do they relate to older struggles? And what strategies, tactics and organizational forms do they yield? This panel looks at contemporary movements, uprisings, everyday revolutions, and the contradictions of capital to discuss the state of anti-capitalism and the political imagination today. 
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On the Reproduction of Capitalism: Rereading Althusser

Saturday, May 31 | 12:00pm – 1:50pm | Room 1.89 

Chaired by Michael Pelias; with Carlos Frade, Bruno Gulli and Kristin Lawler 

The recent translation into English of Louis Althusser's On the Reproduction of Capitalism coincides with a moment where the reproduction of capitalist societies themselves are increasingly in doubt. This panel will examine the key questions and concepts developed by Althusser and their pertinence and importance to understanding contemporary social formations. 

Sponsored by Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination and Verso Books 
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Art, Class and City 

Saturday May 31, 2014 | 3:20pm-4:50pm | Room 1.93 

Chaired by Martha Rosler; with McKenzie Wark and Sharon Zukin 

It is now part of an accepted urban development strategy that 'creative' people 'pioneer' a neighborhood, which can then be slowly ratcheted up the hierarchy of desirable real estate. This story leaves out the displacement of working class communities, people of color, and sometimes also even certain kinds of artists: not every 'creative' person is a bourgeois with an alternate career path. However, the ambiguous position of a certain kind of art worker needs to be clearly acknowledged here. There may even be an 'art mode of production' via which 21st century commodification now works. In an era when not just neighborhoods but whole cities can become gentrified, what tactics are available for living, working and making in the everyday life of major cities? Is it time to withdraw from the urban space, or reimagine new kinds of responsible and imaginative engagement with it? What can be learned from historical examples from New York or elsewhere? This panel aims at being a modest step towards an inquiry into critical living in the shadow of twenty-first century urbanism. 
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Book Launch Celebration - They Can't Represent Us! Reinventing Democracy from Greece to Occupy 

Saturday, May 31 2014 | 3:20pm-4:50pm | Room 1.105 

Chaired by Camilo Turi, with Dario Azzellini and Marina Sitrin 

How the new global movements are putting forward a radical conception of democracy. Mass movements in disparate places such as Greece, Argentina, and the United States ultimately share an agenda—to raise the question of what democracy should mean. These horizontal movements, including Occupy, exercise and claim participatory democracy as the ground of revolutionary social change today. Written by two international activist intellectuals and based on extensive interviews with movement participants in Greece, Spain, Venezuela, Argentina, across the United States, and elsewhere, this book is an expansive portrait of the assemblies, direct democracy forums, and organizational forms championed by the new movements, as well as an analytical history of direct and participatory democracy from ancient Athens to Zuccotti Park. The new movements put forward the idea that liberal democracy is not democratic, nor was it ever. 

Sponsored by Verso Books 
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Cloud Labor: Working in the Digital Economy 

Saturday, May 31 | 3:20pm-4:50pm | Room 1.113 

Chaired by Sarah Jaffe; with Moshe Marvit, Melissa Gira Grant, and Sydette Harry 

Social media companies seemingly offer free services that allow users to interact and express themselves, while their business models depend on generating revenues from the free work these users put into their platforms. Other new technology companies look to the Internet as a marketplace for a crowdsourced, amateur, contracted labor pool that is underpaid and unregulated. Both of these trends are part of a digital economy where the boundary between labor and play is blurred, where increased "flexibility" and room for creativity are the price for exploitation, and where women often perform the majority of the work. Under these conditions, how can "users" reimagine the content they produce as a source of value? Will this kind of work reinforce gender, racial, and class disparities? How can a dispersed workforce undertake collective action, and can online platforms themselves serve as tools for organizing digital labor? 

Sponsored by: Dissent Magazine 
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Bourgeois, White-Collar, Precariat!: Class in the 21st Century 

Saturday, May 31 | 5:00pm-6:50pm | Room 1.82 

Chaired by Nikil Saval; with Benjamin Kunkel, Alex Foti, Nicole Aschoff 

What is the nature of class in the 21st century? What has happened to the bourgeoisie? Where do white-collar workers belong? Has a new exploited class -- the precariat -- become a reality? 

Sponsored by: n+1 and Jacobin Magazines. 
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Post-Chávez Venezuela: New Directions under the Presidency of Nicolás Maduro? 

Saturday, May 31 | 5:00pm-6:50pm | Room 1.1124 

Chaired by Clara Irazabal; with Steve Ellner, Dario Azzellini, George Ciccariello-Maher, Naomi Schiller, and Arnold August 

In many ways, the challenges faced by Hugo Chávez's successor Nicolás Maduro are a continuation of those dating back to 1998. Nevertheless, the economic crisis caused by shortages and currency speculation is more intense than during the Chávez presidency. The Maduro government's reaction both at the level of discourse and specific actions is also distinct in some ways. The panel will attempt to determine what elements are relatively new. It will discuss the government's activist role against business and political groups responsible for acute shortages, sharp price increases often far above that set by the government, currency speculation and refusal of the opposition to recognize the government's legitimacy. The panel will also analyze the reaction of the radical current of the Chavista movement and many in the rank and file who fear that Maduro's overtures to the opposition signal a softening of government positions and possible concessions to powerful interests. The panel will also examine Maduro's record in combating corruption. In addition, the panel will discuss developments over the last year on the social front, specifically the amalgamation of community councils into communes and the attempts to promote worker participation in the decision making of state companies. Finally, the experiences of Chavista rule, and specifically over the last year, will be examined for what they tell us about the nature of the state in the democratic transition to socialism. 
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Recalling the Future: Strategies and Speculations in Jameson and Spivak 

Saturday, May 31 | 5:00pm-6:50pm | Room 1.87 

Chaired by Richard Dienst; with Sonali Perera, Henry Schwarz, and Terrell Taylor 

This panel explores the need to imagine different and existing modes of collectivity in literature and theory. We will engage with the work of two prominent materialist intellectuals, Fredric Jameson and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, to illuminate the difficult relationship between memories of historical collectivity and Utopian hopes for radical transformation. In the work of Spivak and Jameson, the "classical" Marxist narrative of revolution has been recast along new lines of antagonism and solidarity, traversing subaltern workers, tribal communities, contradictory forms of cooperation and dependency, imperial warfare, and ecological catastrophe. In mapping these dimensions of the contemporary situation, we will call upon the resources of both political strategy and theoretical speculation, with special emphasis on examples from the global South. 
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