In the spring of 2002, representatives of the journals Viento Sur (Spain), Erre (Italy), Historical Materialism, International Socialism Journal (UK), Actuel Marx, ContreTemps, and Critique Communiste (France) met in order to constitute a European network - as a first step - of critical Marxist publications.
Called Project K (as in Klasse, Kapital, Kampf, Kommunismus, or Kafka !), this project intends to contribute to an internationalisation of the renewal of critical Marxism, by circulating texts,research papers and salient controversies. It hopes to brush the spirit of the age and the dominant ideologies against the grain. Rooted in the forms of resistance to capitalist globalisation and to the new imperial militarism, it will try to address the uncertainty of the present through the creative tension between a problematic legacy and future that is yet to be constructed.
Rejecting equally both the illusion of a blank slate or the notion of absolute novelty, and dogmatic routinism, the network affirms its fidelity to a tradition that has been enriched by the experiences of the past century, while simultaneously affirming its openness to the major questions of the current conjuncture. Its aim is to offer a space of encounter and dialogue between different cultures and trajectories, to bridge between activist commitments and academic research, to create a link between generations whose constitutive experiences differ greatly, to help the circulation of ideas between arenas of debate that are too often imprisoned by national provincialism or disciplinary rigidities.
In an age when the world is undergoing major transformations, when the social and ecological crisis demonstrates that the reign of capital survives only at the cost of growing irrationality and violence, when the planet is increasingly subjected to a state of exception and permanent warfare, the effort to understand this uncertain present is more than ever necessary in order to pass from resistance to an alternative.
We have set ourselves an initial programme of work by taking as our point of departure those questions that must be addressed if a radical Left is to be refounded that is equal to the social, ecological and cultural challenges of this epoch.
We will address issues such as the new sociologies and modes of struggle, imperialism and sovereignties, wars and militarism, the market and property forms, totalitarianisms and libertarian traditions, the ecological divide, the media’s penetration of the world, equality and universality.