What is Marxism 2002?

For anyone who has never been to the conference before, Marxism is an annual
event, held in central London in July. The SWP takes over the whole campus
complex around the University of London Union, the School of Oriental and
African Studies and the Institute of Education to hold the conference. The
dates this year will be 5-12 July and the SWP provides free accommodation
for anyone who needs it. Every year over 5000 trade unionists [some of us],
anticapitalists [THAT'S US!], students [some of us] and activists [THAT'S US!] converge on Marxism to hear hundreds
of speakers. This year, speakers will include Tony Benn (who always plans
his holidays around the event!), Susan George, Tariq Ali, George Galloway
***and the mother of Carlo Giuliani (the activist who was killed in Genoa)***.

Each day there are around eight meetings running simultaneously with five
sessions a day (around 250 meetings altogether!). Topics in last years
timetable ranged from big rallies (e.g. Liz Davies & John Rees on Socialists
and the General Election, Eamonn McCann on Bloody Sunday or Paul Foot on
Blair's first four years) to more esoteric meetings such as "John Coltrane:
jazz, racism & resistance", "Antonio Negri & the rise of Autonomism" and
"The Human Genome Project". There is also entertainment (films, plays and
music) in the evenings. (This year's timetable will be coming out in a
couple of weeks.) People can book for either the weekend or the week -
student tickets are £35 (week) or £26 (weekend). People can book through the
student office (020 7515 2646) or the Marxism office (020 7538 2707) or over
the internet at www.swp.org.uk/marxism

[Tony Benn is really good. Last year, he gave a really good talk - I agreed with everything he said apart from his opinion that the only way forward for the anticapitalist movement is to reclaim the labour party as a voice for the oppressed - clearly that's not going to happen and nor would it do much good if it did, but apart from that he does have a lot of good things to say. To those of you who are anarchists and sceptical about events such as this and would rather do your own stuff, well yeah do your own stuff but come to this as well as it's interesting and you can get into heated debates and stuff - there's always a really interesting mix of people as well].

Come to Marxism 2002! :-)