On September 24 and 25, the conference “Marx in Compostela: New Voices in the Critique of Political Economy” will be held in the Assembly Hall of the Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences.
Over recent decades, various readings of Karl Marx’s mature work have emerged, marking a fundamental break with the interpretations that became orthodox during the last century. These include Robert Brenner and Ellen M. Wood’s Political Marxism; Open Marxism in the UK, led by authors such as Simon Clarke and John Holloway; John B. Foster and Paul Burkett’s Ecomarxism; Social Reproduction Theory as developed by Tithi Bhattacharya and Sue Ferguson; and the German Neue Marx-Lektüre (New Reading of Marx). Despite their differing starting points, all these approaches focus their analytical attention on Marx’s mature work: the project of the Critique of Political Economy. Moving away from the economistic, determinist, or substantialist readings that dominated previous decades, these approaches place the historical specificity of capitalist societies—and the relationship between the materiality of human reproduction and the determinations imposed by capitalist social forms—at the center of their inquiry.
In the wake of the Great Recession, there has been a resurgence of interest in Marx’s thought—and, more specifically, in the diverse theoretical contributions grouped here under the banner of the Critique of Political Economy. Accordingly, this event has a twofold objective. First, it aims to demonstrate the relevance of the analytical and methodological framework of the Critique of Political Economy for understanding our contemporary world, as well as its applicability to various fields of analysis, such as the ongoing ecological crisis, new feminist waves, and the housing crisis. Second, it seeks to foster synergies among researchers from diverse fields who share a common methodological foundation, with the aim of consolidating shared lines of research for the future.
