Capitalism and Class in Contemporary Social Movements

In recent years, within social movement debates we have witnessed a growing interest for capitalism and class. Much attention has been paid to the way in which the crisis of capitalism has been one of the drivers of new social movements against austerity and inequality from the Indignados and Occupy Wall Street to the Gilets Jaunes in France and the Farmers Movement in India. Further, we are witnessing a revival of labour movements (and their partial victories in the case of Amazon workers), after years of latency (at least in the global North); researchers have been raising questions about the class base of new social movements such as environmental movements (and its spin offs in the case of Fridays for Future); the relationship between capitalism and the climate crisis has become a central discussion point in the climate movement and scholars such as Thomas Piketty have called for the urgency of socialism in our time. In this panel we will explore the returning importance of economic and material questions in social movement research, and the recurring relevance of Marxism in related debates. We shall explore how the transformation of contemporary capitalism and of class structure has a bearing on the way in which social movements operate, the kind of collective identities they put forward and the futures they envision.