The End of Capitalism? At the Crossroads of Crisis and Sustainability

The ongoing global economic crisis has dramatically called into question the future of capitalism - a system that relies on perpetual growth but exists on a finite Earth. In this workshop, participants will take a "big picture" look at the ecological limits and social limits which lie below the current economic crisis and which threaten capitalist growth. These include climate change, peak oil, the Global Justice Movement and resistance from unexpected sources, like the Chinese labor movement. We will then imagine possible non-capitalist futures, both democratic/sustainable and authoritarian/fascist, in order to understand the historic crossroads at which our movements find themselves.

The goal of this workshop will be to broaden and deepen the anti-capitalist analysis of participants, while creating an open but directed space for us to articulate our vision of the world we are working towards, and the major dangers that are in our path. It will be led by youth members of the End of Capitalism Study Group, and build from the ideas of endofcapitalism.com. This will be a participatory workshop, not a speech, and old/dogmatic ideas will be questioned by new critical perspectives, with the goal of discovering deeper truth about our world and our work for social change in the 21st Century.