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Perth
The Marxist Summer School is coming to Perth!
21st century capitalism is a horror show. War, climate catastrophe and surging inequality define a system built on the exploitation of the many and the profits of a few.
Nearly 200 years ago, Karl Marx closely studied capitalism and identified it as a brutal, exploitative system designed to generate profit for a tiny minority, while the majority were mere cogs in a machine. Marx also identified that this system had to be overthrown entirely for there to be true liberation for the working class. Today, Marx’s writings continue to ring true.
The Summer School is a 4-week course to understand Marxism and the capitalist system. Starting November 20, we’ll be understanding the death drive of capitalism that creates war and oppression, while learning how we can fight for a socialist society.
When: Once a week from Thursday November 20, starting at 6pm.
Where: WA State Library
Tickets: $15, one ticket enrols you in the entire course!
Program
Session 1 – Competition, crisis, waste and war: An introduction to the capitalist system
6pm Thursday November 20
There’s a system that creates the most unequal societies humanities have ever seen. There’s a system that engenders deadly wars catastrophic to human life. There’s a system that is destroying the planet through runaway climate crisis. That system is called capitalism. It’s not new, is highly adaptable and sophisticated, and has been around for hundreds of years. But it is also not indestructible.
Marxism is a theory that came out of the modern workers’ and socialist movement of the early 19th century. To this day, it remains the most powerful theoretical framework ever developed to understand how this system works – and how to fight it. Join this first class to explore how capitalism operates, why it’s a wasteful and crisis-prone system, and the internal elements the system generates which can lead not just to capitalism’s downfall, but its’ replacement with a system based on human need and genuine justice.
Readings:
- “The irrationality of capitalism” by Tom Sullivan
- “Capitalism’s trash and terror economy” by James Plested
- “Competition: capitalism’s irrational engine” by April Holcombe
Session 2 – What is socialism and how can we get there?
6pm Thursday November 27
Capitalism has to go. But how do we achieve this? For as long as capitalism has existed, people have struggled to overthrow the system and build a society built on democracy and equality. But how we can create a socialist society in capitalism’s place is not obvious at all. Marx identified that mass working class revolution was necessary to overthrow the capitalist system.
This session will discuss the Marxist theory of socialism, revolution and what it will take to overthrow capitalism.
Readings:
Session 3 – The capitalist roots of gender and sexual oppression
6pm Wednesday December 3
Everything in society is highly gendered. Our upbringings and our behaviour is gendered. The amount of respect and dignity that people can expect from society is influenced by their gender. The gender pay gap between men and women is significant, and not shrinking. All of this reflects the everyday sexism of society. For all the partial gains that have been made, women still are denied a life where they can expect genuine social equality with men.
Marxists make a unique argument about where these various expressions of sexism come from. For all the diversity in society in the forms of oppression and discrimination against women, there is a fundamental element that gives rise to these systems – the class structure of society. This session will be about the capitalist roots of gender and sexual oppression, and how we can win women’s liberation.
Readings:
- “Capitalism can’t end women’s oppression” by Louise O’Shea
- Red Flag Radio – “The system behind sexism”
Session 4 – Imperialism, colonialism and occupation: How capitalism breeds war
6pm Thursday December 11
One of the key spheres of the capitalist system that socialist have to understand is imperialism. For centuries, capitalists have used the might of their states and militaries to occupy, colonise and control their rivals all at the cost of working class lives internationally. How revolutionaries should understand and confront this imperialist system has been at the core of Marxist politics throughout the history of the socialist movement, from World War I to Gaza in 2025. This session will discuss the Marxist analysis of imperialism.