BROCK SOCIALIST CLUB:
The BSC has organized numerous educational events, conferences and debates at Brock University since 1997, including talks by Bryan Palmer, Leo Panitch, John Clarke, Joe Flexer, George Hewison, Tom Riley, Jan Norden, Jack Heyman, Sandor John, Josh Decker, Takuya Sato, Masami Asakawa, Robert Brenner, Ernest Tate, Vivek Chibber, Murray Smith, Jonah Butovsky, Ifeanyi Ezeonu, Tamari Kitossa, Catherine Nason, Jordan Briggs, Alex Grant, Michael Roberts, Raju Das and many other scholars and activists identified with the socialist left.
BSC Statement of Purpose (2015)
Email contact: brocksoc@gmail.com
INTERNET LINKS:
INTERVIEW WITH MURRAY SMITH ON “WORKWEEK” PROGRAM OF PACIFICA RADIO NETWORK, AIRED JANUARY 27, 2022: https://soundcloud.com/workweek-radio/ww-1-27-22-covid-billionaires-twilight-capitalism-karl-marx-decay-of-profit-system
Book Launch for Twilight Capitalism: Karl Marx and the Decay of the Profit System (Fernwood, 2021). The video below is a YouTube recording of the May 11, 2021 event, which featured co-authors Murray Smith and Jonah Butovsky discussing the book with moderator Tim Hayslip.
Karl Marx at 200 — A Bicentenary Conference — a one-day conference that took place on October 19, 2018 at Brock University, featuring presentations by British macroeconomic analyst and Marxist economist Michael Roberts and Professor Raju Das of York University, among others. The conference was sponsored by the Brock Socialist Club, the Centre for Research in the Social Sciences, and the Departments of Sociology, Political Science and History. The video below is a recording of the keynote address by Michael Roberts, author of The Long Depression (2016) and Marx @ 200 (2018).
Living Legacies of Russia’s Socialist Revolution — A Century of Struggle, 1917-2017 — a one-day conference that took place on November 11, 2017 at Brock University, featuring a keynote address by Professor Bryan Palmer (Trent University) and panel talks by Josh Decker of the International Bolshevik Tendency, Alex Grant of Fightback (International Marxist Tendency) and Murray Smith. This event was sponsored by the Brock Socialist Club, CUPE 4207, the Department of Sociology, the Department of History, and the Department of Labour Studies.
‘Dialectics of Social Development’: Marxist vs. Postcolonialist Perspectives — a Brock Socialist Club event featuring a talk by Vivek Chibber (Professor of Sociology, New York University, and author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital) with contributions by Brock sociologists Ifeanyi Ezeonu, Janet Conway and Murray Smith. Co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology, the Department of History and the Social Justice Research Institute, this event took place at Brock University on March 24, 2017.
Beyond Occupy: Class Struggle Unionism and the Fight to Change the World — a Brock Socialist Club event featuring talks by Bryan Palmer (Professor of History, Trent University), Murray Smith (Brock Sociology Department), and Jack Heyman (long-time socialist and trade union activist who played a leading role in organizing the historic shutdown of West Coast ports on May Day 2008 in protest against the United States government’s imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). This event occurred on March 9, 2012, and was co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology, the Centre for Labour Studies, CUPE 4207 and the Brock University Faculty Association.
LINKS TO AUDIO RECORDINGS:
Leon Trotsky: A Biography. Aired on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio network in November 1972, this docu-drama, written and researched by Mitch Podolak and Murray Smith, features dramatic re-enactments of the major events of the great revolutionary’s life, interviews with followers who knew him, and a recording of Trotsky’s long-distance speech to a public meeting of the U.S. Socialist Workers Party on the occasion of the founding of the Fourth International in 1938 — one of the very few available recordings of Trotsky speaking in English.
Leon Trotsky: A Biography
‘Global Economic Slump: Causes, Results and Prospects — Perspectives from the Socialist Left’. An Evening of Discussion with Robert Brenner and Murray Smith. This highly successful event took place on November 14, 2014 at Brock University, with sponsorship from the Department of Sociology, the Department of Economics, the Social Justice Research Institute, the Centre for Labour Studies, the Council for Research in the Social Sciences, CUPE 4207, and the Brock Socialist Club. (Note: only an audio recording of this event is available.)
*Podcast* (Brenner & Smith on the Global Economic Slump)
Visual supplements to the audio recording podcast:
Smith Power-Point Presentation
LINKS TO INFORMATION ABOUT MURRAY SMITH’S BOOKS:
Fernwood Publishing:
Twilight Capitalism: Karl Marx and the Decay of the Profit System (2021)
by M. Smith, J. Butovsky & J. Watterton
https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/twilight-capitalism
Brill Academic Publishers:
Invisible Leviathan: Marx’s Law of Value in the Twilight of Capitalism, 2018 (hardcover edition)
In this updated and expanded edition of Invisible Leviathan, Murray E.G. Smith critically explores and makes significant contributions to the debate surrounding Karl Marx’s ‘capitalist law of value’ and its corollary, the law of the falling rate of profit. A powerful case is presented that capitalism has exhausted its potential to contribute to human progress. Humanity confronts a fateful choice: to allow this obsolescent system—which necessarily measures ‘wealth’ in terms of ‘abstract social labour’ and money profit—to destroy human civilisation; or to make the leap toward a global, egalitarian-socialist society in which the satisfaction of human need is the starting-point and the all-round development of each and every human individual the goal of the socio-economic life process.
First published in 1994 as Invisible Leviathan: The Marxist Critique of Market Despotism Beyond Postmodernism by University of Toronto Press. This second and revised edition includes a new Foreword by Michael Roberts, and a Preface to the Second Edition.
Canadian Scholars Press International: Marxist Phoenix (2014)
Fernwood Publishing: Global Capitalism in Crisis (2010)
University of Toronto Press; JSTOR: Culture of Prejudice (2003)
Canadian Scholars Press: Early Modern Social Theory (1998)
RECOMMENDED LINKS (MARXIST ARCHIVE & RADICAL-LEFT JOURNALISM):
The Next Recession: Michael Roberts’ Blog
LINK TO INTERESTING INTERVIEW WITH MARXIST ECONOMIST ANWAR SHAIKH:
AUDIO RECORDING OF ON-LINE MEETING ON COVID-19 CRISIS:
PRESENTATION & DISCUSSION ON COVID-19 CRISIS:
COVID-19 online public meeting
LINK TO “INTRODUCTION TO MARXIST ECONOMICS PRESENTATION”:
LINKS TO SOME OSTENSIBLY TROTSKYIST SITES:
International Bolshevik Tendency
International Committee of the Fourth International – World Socialist Web Site
International Communist League – Fourth Internationalist (Spartacist)
Internationalist Group – League for the Fourth International
International Marxist Tendency
International Socialist Tendency: http://isj.org.uk
Socialist Action (USA and Canada)
LINKS TO OTHER LEFT-SOCIALIST SITES:
Against the Current – Solidarity (USA)
Murray E.G. Smith 