The School’s Social Theory Cluster held a symposium celebrating the bicentenary of Karl Marx this week. Guest speakers, representing a range of generational experiences and perspectives, presented papers addressing a series of issues concerned with the contemporary relevance of Karl Marx’s thought and politics.
Participants considered Marx’s importance for understanding the dynamics and experience of capitalism in the twenty-first century, the social impacts of the so-called ‘fourth industrial revolution’ and how we might venture to discern the possible futures (economic, social and political) that lie before us.
Speakers included David McLellan (influential British Scholar of Karl Marx and Marxism), William Outhwaite (critical theorist specialising in the study of Europe and European politics), Gerard Delanty (social theorist specialising in the study of capitalism, cosmopolitanism and sociology of Europe), Melis Menent (recently completed PhD student from University of Sussex specialising in study of constitutional patriotism and Habermasian social theory) and Carl Hughes (just starting a PhD at the University of Liverpool and working with Alan Southern on the relevance of Marx for assessing social conditions in the wake of the fourth industrial revolution).
All the presentations will be linked to articles for a special issue of the Journal of Classical Sociology.