The stories we are usually told about the financial crisis place it beyond our control – it is intricate hedge funds and sub-prime mortgages, it is a lack of regulation, it is greedy bankers, it is extreme capitalism. The ‘solutions’ that governments and the media are pushing, such as stimulus packages and false promises of ‘saving jobs’, remain in a capitalist logic.

We need something more. This could include struggles, on our own terms, against unemployment and increased work rates, racism, and the escalation of sexualised and gendered divisions of labour. We must place the current crisis within the ongoing struggles of people across the planet.

This means asking questions. What are the origins of the crisis? How is it affecting workers? What is the relationship between the current crisis and earlier times of working class resistance?  How are resistances  being organised, and how can they be strengthened? How can we deepen solidarity and work together?

The only real crisis that capitalism faces is the refusal and resistance of ordinary people, in our daily lives.

This conference aims to critique the current wave of responses to capitalism’s current predicament. It is an opportunity to collectively analyse its ‘new clothes’. As ordinary people ourselves, it is a chance to strategise together for solidarity with emerging and ongoing struggles for workers autonomy and control, peoples’ freedom of movement, sustainability, sovereignty and self determination.

10am-6pm September 12-13@ the Redfern Community Centre, 29 Hugo Street, Redfern. Just across from Redfern station

A Callout to Discuss, Debate, & Organise

Governments, capital and the bosses are trying to make us pay for their crisis. We can’t pay and we won’t. We think that it is crucial that all people outraged and motivated to respond to the crisis come together to work on establishing common political grounds from which to fight back and turn the bosses’ crisis into a working class offensive. We think it would be useful to come together based in a politics of respect both for different strategies, diverse tactics and open constructive debate.

 This is a callout and invitation to be involved in organising a conference which will discuss, debate and ultimately aim to assist in developing strategies and responses to the global economic crisis. It is also an invitation to put on a workshop during the conference. It will be held in Sydney from August 8-9. This is not an academic conference, there is no need to submit a paper. It is an attempt to come together on equal terms, as workers who are engaging with and finding ways to confront the crisis.

 The structure of the conference will be as participatory and democratic as possible, hopefully functioning as a space for the collective construction of knowledge, sharing of experiences and ideas for class struggle. There is as yet no formal proposal for the establishment of a network, organisation or organisations to come out of the conference. Such proposals would be welcome.

 The success and usefulness of this conference depends upon all of us coming together with respect, and in solidarity. If you are interested and have the time, please put on a workshop or a discussion.

Some proposed ideas/categories for workshops:

 understanding the crisis; how do we see  it from a working class perspective?

 workplace struggles & organising in the workplace

history of unemployed workers’ struggle; refusal of work & right to work struggles in periods of economic downturn; workfare, welfare & class struggle

 the role of unions and the ALP; and their relation to working class struggle

how climate change is connected to the economic crisis & how governments are trying to make working class people pay for it

migrant, precarious & flexible work as an important site of class struggle; crisis and precarity as general condition and what this means for chances  for rebellion

 critiques of social democracy and the tendency towards it within the left; is it possible to struggle for more than just saving the jobs? And what does this mean and how would it look?

 unemployment and race; recession and racism; resisting nationalism

 these are just some ideas, workshop proposals can fall within or beyond these initial categories…