Workers' Liberty 'the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself' Workers' Liberty Australia

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Workers' Liberty public meeting 4pm Sunday 10 September 2000 La Notte Café 140 Lygon St Carlton Profit-hungry international big business is hundreds of years old. In the last ten years or so, however, its development, proliferation and expansion has reached a new level, prompting large-scale reorganisation by the capitalists, and the emergence of a new anti-capitalist movement which - for the first time in radical politics - directly targets GLOBAL capital.

At the same time as capital has become more global geographically, it has also become more global socially. In a process parallelling early capitalism's "enclosures" of the common land, more and more parts of life are subject to the rule of the capitalist market - buying, selling, contracting-out.

To orient ourselves in the arguments, debates, and initiatives about taking the new movement forward, we need first to understand where we are. What is fundamentally and specifically new about global capital in the year 2000?

What are the connections between the two ways capital has become more global, geographical and social? Is the world working class declining or expanding?

Should we aim to stop or push back globalisation, or to construct a workers' globalisation in struggle against capitalist globalisation?

Come and join a discussion looking at some of the background issues of economic and social theory behind the headlines. Martin Thomas, author of many articles (eg Capital writ large , Globalisation and its discontents, New forces and passions) on globalisation and the analysis of capitalist economics, will lead off the discussion.

e-mail: wlaus@ozemail.com.au.

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