Wine & Cheese seminar (Freedom & Equality – two precepts of civil order ), London, 13/1

Freedom & Equality – two precepts of civil order

13. January 2013 12:00 – 20:00 London

Freedom and equality are two fundamental principles that characterise the rule
of the democratic state.

Democratic states value these principles in their constitutions and arrange –
so we claim – both their legal order and the societies they rule over in
accordance with them. On the other hand, these two principles also function
as ideals counterposed to bourgeois society in critiques from the Left. It
seems therefore that both domination and exploitation as well as their
critique are grounded in freedom and equality.

In this one-day seminar, we want to discuss two general questions. Firstly,
we want to investigate what freedom and equality are in capitalist societies.
Though that might seem like a rather abstract question, we claim that
understanding these concepts is important for understanding the capitalist
state and economy. We have prepared theses on what it means for states to
grant their citizens freedom and equality and would like to put those to a
discussion. Secondly, building on this, we want to discuss the viability of
grounding the critique of domination and exploitation in freedom and equality.
Our thesis is that this critique must be based on a rejection of what is known
as freedom and equality in this society irrespective of what an emphatic
meaning of those two
terms could be.

The format of the day will be two three-hour sessions, one on equality, one on
freedom with a break in between to grab a late lunch. Our theses come from
two articles that we are currently preparing for the next issue of Kittens.
That is, we would like to discuss our current drafts with our (potential)
readers.

If you wish to attend please rsvp. We will send our current drafts to those
attending a few weeks before the meeting to allow preparation. For people
from outside London who need a couch to crash, let us know, we will try to
arrange something though we cannot promise anything.
—

from: The Wine & Cheese Appreciation Society of Greater London
.www: http://junge-linke.org/en