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FORCES AND RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION, NOW AND THEN

Online discussion with ADRIAN GRAMA și ȘTEFAN GUGA

Wednesday, 10 February, at 7 pm.

Moderator: Alex Cistelecan

Link for the event:
https://zoom.us/j/92356382374

At first glance, it would appear that debates about forces and relations of production, and their mutual relationship, which were once fundamental concepts of historical materialism, have by now all but disappeared from contemporary socio-economic discourse and, implicitly, from the socio-economic reality itself. And yet, their active presence is felt as soon as we scratch a bit the surface of today’s reality.

Wednesday, February 10th, together with our guests Adrian Grama and Ștefan Guga, we will try to take such a look beneath – but also through – the discursive but also effective surface of the moment, so as to investigate, among other things, what would be the scientific accuracy, the technical difficulties, but also the ideological veils of a concept as widely used today as that of productivity? What does it tell us – but also conceals – regarding the economic situation and the specific integration of Romania in the structures of global capital?

How should we account for the recent evolutions in labor relations, but also in class composition, in both sectors usually presented as the great performers of the local economy, namely the good old Fordist auto industry and the shining gig economy of the service sector? What is the historical meaning, but also the veil of mystification, in recent historiography and politics of the people – but also in the anti-populist mobilization of the mainstream –, in the context of the manifest decline of class politics? And last, but surely not least, what social theory remains after all this historical mess, which are the conceptual tools with which we can still hope to capture these shifting realities – and from what institutional context?

The event is part of Orbiting Modernity: from the steam engine to galactic debris project developed by tranzit.ro / Cluj in 2020-2021.
This starting point represents the basis of an educational research project that aims at exposing the way in which global ecology and the impact of human activity on the environment are over-determined by the structural transformations of modern society.

Coordonated by Alex Cistelecan, Dana Domsodi, Attila Szigeti, Attila Tordai-S.

Past events:
Gareth Dale (Brunel University, Londra) - Can we cool a burning planet? Degrowth, technology, and the Green New Deal
Oana Mateescu (University of Bergen) – AI Commons
Natalia Buier (Max Planck Institute Social Anthropology) - Classless train: technology, infrastructure and capitalist ecomodernization

The lecture will be held in Romanian.

Main partner of tranzit.ro is ERSTE Foundation.