Left Forum panels from Marxist-Humanist Initiative

I recently enjoyed watching these videos of some Left Forum panels sponsored by the Marxist-Humanist Initiative.

Is Socialism Possible?

Shockingly the answer is “yes”. This actually two panels featuring quite a variety of speakers including Michael Albert, Andrew Kliman, Anne Jaclard, etc. I’d actually heard a similar talk by Kliman a couple times before but I think this is the only on-line video of the talk. Kliman presents a very specific analysis of Marx’s concept of how to eliminate socially necessary labor time, as outlined in the Critique of the Gotha Program. This analysis strongly influenced my recent video on socially necessary labor time.

It’s also nice to see anarchist guru Michael Albert up there with marxist-humanists, to see some dialogue happening on these questions of emancipatory socialism. There is some good critique of the Left Forum in this panel.

Another panel I am still making my way through is “The Great Recession and Its Aftermath”. This features some pretty big names in the Marx world, Fred Moseley, Andrew Kliman, Alan Freeman, and David McNally… all heavy cats whose work I admire. Moseley gives a talk about unemployment figures, arguing that unemployment is a lot higher than the official stats and will last for over a decade. This is similar to a talk I saw him give last fall at the November crisis conference that I spoke at. Kliman talks about his empirical work on the rate of profit and defends his thesis that a long term fall in the rate of profit underlies the current crisis. I have mentioned this work many times before on this blog. David McNally takes a different tack than Kliman on the causes of the crisis so there is some good interchanges here. Alan Freeman talks about… well I haven’t gotten that far in the video yet. I’m looking forward to finishing it. I hope there is a good debate at the end, or maybe a fistfight (just kidding).