After the eruption of the international financial crisis in 2008, Marx's Capital received renewed academic and popular attention. Leading newspapers throughout the world discussed again the contemporary relevance of its pages. Faced with a deep new crisis of capitalism, many are now looking to an author who in the past was often wrongly associated with the "actually existing socialism"; and who was too hastily dismissed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. For many scholars today, Marx's analyses are arguably resonating even more strongly than they did in his own time. This international conference will bring together several world-renowned sociologists, political theorists, economists, and philosophers, from diverse fields and more than 10 countries with the aim of offering diverse scholarly perspectives and critical insights into the principal contradictions of contemporary capitalism and, in so doing, point to alternative economic and social models. The conference is structured in nine plenary sessions and around several major themes. Among them there are: new interpretations of Capital in light of ecology, non-European societies and gender; the contemporary relevance of Capital; re-reading Capital as an incomplete project after the new critical edition of Marx's complete work (MEGA²); and the global dissemination and reception of Capital. The presenters will critically reconsider Marx's magnum opus as a work that continues to provide an effective framework to understand the nature of capitalism and the transformations of our times.
