Fourth World Congress on Marxism

Prof. Peter Mayo was invited speaker at the World Congress of Marxism which took place at the University of Beijing on 11 and 12 October. He spoke in the session on Marxism and Ecological Civilisation. The event was organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Given the taxing nature of the otherwise covered trip to Beijing, Professor Mayo opted to deliver and engage in the debate online. He spoke about the EU's Lifelong Learning international policy discourse and ecology with due attention to Antonio Gramsci's theoretical affinity, in his conception of hegemony with what elsewhere would be called a ' Learning Society' and on Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels with regard to Capitalism's tendency to separate humans from Nature which they refute, considering humans immersed in and not apart from Nature which is in flux.

He drew on the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Capital Vol 1 and Engels' Dialectics of Nature in his exposition. Reference was made to the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and their implications for Lifelong Learning. He argued for this to be achieved, Lifelong Learning must be rid of its 1990s+ economistic, neoliberal baggage and be reconceptualised holistically and geographically transcending the ' North' -' South' divide.