The Workers and Punks’ University May Day School: TRANSITION, AUSTERITY AND PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION – LEFT ANSWERS
April 26, 2013 - May 1, 2013
Capitalism reveals itself in the time of crisis. As Marx and Engels have stressed in The Communist Manifesto, a crisis would seem, from the standpoint of earlier epochs, an utter absurdity. A capitalist crisis is an epidemic of over-production that entails social devastation, destruction of living conditions and overall immiseration of the working masses; precisely this is underway in Europe right now.
Record-high unemployment, particularly in the peripheral countries and among the young, severe and uncompromising austerity measures dictated by the infamous troika, and massive class struggles are among central features of the Great Recession in which we live. In order to save itself and become profitable once again, capitalism must continue with the massive destruction of productive forces and living conditions of the working class. What the ruling class is trying to achieve could be characterised as a reprise of primitive accumulation. This year’s May Day School is devoted precisely to these issues.
