Timetable of the camp
(preliminary)
| Time | Workshop | Info | Room | Language | Level | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9.15-9.30 Uhr | Morning plenary | |||||
| 9.30-12.30 Uhr | Reflection meetings | More information to follow! | DE/ENG | |||
| 12.30-14.30 Uhr | BREAK | |||||
| 14.30-16.15 Uhr | Social Oppression 1: Marxism and the Concept of Gender | The different currents and waves of the women’s movement have produced different concepts of sex and gender, as well as different forms of inclusion and exclusion. As revolutionary feminists, we distinguish between sex, gender, and gender identities. But what does that mean? Who is a woman or a man? How do these categories relate to one another, and what are the weaknesses of essentialist or radically constructivist concepts of sex and gender? In this workshop, we want to take up these questions in a systematic way. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |
| Social Oppression F1: Elevating Submission: The Women’s Politics of the Right | Among young people, we are living through a real polarisation. In Germany, the strongest force among young women voting for the first time is the Left, while among young men voting for the first time it is the AfD. But can that be reduced to this alone? If we look at the right and the far right parties, we see women in the front ranks. Meloni in Italy, Alice Weidel in Germany, Marine Le Pen: in the New Right, women are often visible and central. They mobilise deliberately as women, address themes that supposedly “concern women”, and at the same time push for a social and political rollback. That raises a central question: why do women support movements that in fact attack and seek to restrict their hard won rights and self determination? And from what perspective does the right do women’s politics? | Seminar room ? | DE | Advanced | ||
| Anti-racism 1: What is racism? | Racism is everywhere. From a left perspective, that is not especially hard to recognise. What is much harder for many people is explaining what racism concretely is. What forms of racism are there, and what distinguishes them? How did racism arise historically, and what role did it play in the development of capitalism? What function does racism have under capitalism, how do we fight it, and what conclusions follow from that for the workers’ movement? This workshop will take up these questions in a way that is friendly to beginners and clarify basic questions of a Marxist understanding of racism and anti-racism. | Seminar room ? | DE | Introductory | ||
| Anti-Racism F1: Racism, Capitalism and Imperialism | More information to follow! | Seminar room ? | ENG | Advanced | ||
| 16.45-18.30 Uhr | Social Oppression 2: Sexual oppression of youths | A central part of life for youths under capitalism is youth oppression: we are denied the right to decide over our own affairs, including with whom and when we are allowed to have sex. The bourgeois state decides that through various laws. We want to examine what position revolutionaries must take on this. One thing is clear: we cannot rely on the bourgeois state and its legal system, and it has no right to decide over us, our bodies, and our sexuality. But how do we bring that into line with the fight against sexual violence and age based power dynamics, which bourgeois minimum age laws for sexual acts are at least formally meant to protect against? Do we fight for the abolition of these laws? | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |
| Social Oppression F2: Switzerland: From the Women’s Strike to the Care Strike! | With the women’s strikes that have flared up again in Switzerland since 2019, we are dealing with the biggest mobilisations in the country and also with the biggest European mobilisations against the social oppression of women. On 14 June 2027, different collectives and trade unions are calling for a “care strike” that aims to bring the struggle off the streets and into the workplaces. But how can the movement move from one day demonstrations to a shutdown of production and reproduction? What questions does the movement raise about equality and liberation, and how are they being answered? And what programme do we stand for? | Seminar room ? | DE | Advanced | ||
| Anti-Racism 2: Border Regimes, Militarization and Racist Fortress Politics | Never before have so many people been displaced worldwide, while the number of fortified border installations has increased fivefold since 1990 and the profits of the global arms industry have climbed to record levels. The Schengen area is also being restricted inside the EU, with conservatives and the right coordinating that in the back rooms of the European Parliament. How are war and racist border regimes connected or, put differently, how are foreign and domestic policy connected in the heart of the imperialist beast? What perspectives do revolutionaries on the left take on the question of open borders and full citizenship rights for all? How do we relate to the arms industry and rearmament? These are the questions we want to discuss in this workshop. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| Anti-Racism F2: The Political Economy of Racism | The bourgeois nation-state is the ideal collective capitalist of the bourgeoisie attached to it. Although it sets out from the perspective of generalising rights to all citizens, it formally excludes from those rights people who are equal before the law. Modern racism therefore serves as a tool of division, imperialist oppression, and the devaluation of labour power through racist splitting. Even though there is no scientific or biological basis for race theories, racism still fulfils an important social function for the ruling class in class society. In this workshop, we want to present our theses on racism on the basis of a political economy of racism. | Seminar room ? | ENG | Advanced | ||
| 18.30-19.30 Uhr | BREAK | |||||
| 19.30-21.00 Uhr | Social Oppression 3: Fighting digital sexual violence | The overwhelming majority of deepfakes are pornographic. That shows that every technology meets the social reality in which it arises. In a society shot through with patriarchal structures, digital sexual violence reveals the abyss this world creates and reproduces every single day. These are not isolated cases. This has a system behind it. At the same time, we can see how limited the possibilities are in this country when it comes to fighting back. The case of Colline Fernandes brought into public view what almost every woman has to endure. But how can the fight against sexual violence be waged? What demands do we raise toward the workers’ movement and the state? | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |
| Social Oppression F3: Disability and ableism | Under capitalism, disability is treated as an individual problem: as the physical, psychological, or cognitive limitation of particular people. But in truth, disability is socially determined, because under capitalism labour power becomes a commodity, and anyone who does not match average productivity, anyone who needs more breaks, more support, or more adaptation, is pushed aside by the logic of profit making: miserable wages, workshops, special schools, dependence on precarious social benefits, and the constant pressure to prove one’s usefulness. Ableism is therefore not just a matter of false prejudice. It is a material line of division within the working class, used to discipline that class itself. At the same time, capitalism produces disability through dangerous work, stress, poverty, hunger, and an underfunded healthcare system. In this workshop, we want to discuss: what is disability from a Marxist point of view? What role do school, workplace, state, and family play in the oppression of disabled people? And how do we connect the fight against ableism with the fight for a socialist society? | Seminar room ? | DE | Advanced | ||
| Anti-racism 3: Black Antifascism — Bill V. Mullen | In 2025, Donald Trump declared Antifa a terrorist organisation. Our comrade Bill V. Mullen, a member of our US section Socialist Horizon, will present central ideas from the book Black Antifascism, which he co-edited. Starting from the history and theory of Black antifascism, he will discuss its relevance today and shed light on the links between fascism, colonialism, and capitalist rule. At the same time, he traces a long tradition of resistance, from abolitionism and anti-colonial struggles to Black Lives Matter. The focus includes thinkers such as Angela Davis, George Jackson, and Assata Shakur, who understood antifascism as part of a broader struggle against racist, militarist, and state oppression. In view of the global shift to the right and the attacks on antifascist movements, we want to discuss together what political answers are necessary today and what perspectives an internationalist antifascism can open up. | Seminar room ? | ENG | General | ||
| Anti-Racism F3: Bourgeois or Revolutionary Anti-Racism | More information to follow! | Seminar room ? | ENG | Advanced | ||
| Time | Workshop | Info | Room | Language | Level | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9.15-9.30 Uhr | Morning plenary | |||||
| 9.30-10.45 Uhr | School Work and Counter-Power 1: Communist Politics in Schools | Building proletarian counterpower against bourgeois rule is a central task for revolutionaries. But that power grows above all from the social position workers occupy in the process of production. In this workshop, we want to examine whether and how this concept can be applied to our schools and to students. Can one speak of counterpower even though students do not possess economic power in relation to the bourgeois state? What steps are needed to practically challenge the power of the capitalists in our schools? | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |
| Intervention in Die Linke: How to wage the revolutionary struggle within the PDL? | Over the last few years, the Left has doubled its membership. While tens of thousands joined it as an opposition force against the government, strategically it remains oriented toward participation in governments at federal and state level. This question hangs over every conflict in the party like the sword of Damocles, whether over Zionism and anti-Zionism or over support for the infrastructure and rearmament package in the Bundesrat. While the party bureaucracy is fighting that conflict bitterly through conference resolutions or party expulsions, there is still no systematic approach in the party left. In this workshop, we therefore want to map the situation in the party: where are internal conflicts emerging? What experiences are comrades making in local branches, working groups, and movements? Where are the strengths, the blockages, and the open fields of struggle that revolutionaries should take up? This is especially pressing after the Palestine Solidarity Federal Working Group managed to mobilise roughly a third of the votes against the leadership motion at the federal party congress in June. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| ISL 2: Class Struggle and Revolutionary Organisation of the ISL in Kenya | The International Socialist League has around forty sections on five continents. We joined this young project of revolutionary regroupment on the basis of a common transitional programme. But what does that mean concretely in a country like Kenya? Kenya is a key state in East Africa, marked by colonial history, neo-colonial dependence, hunger crises, IMF policy, police repression, and mass protests. Against that backdrop, the Permanent Revolutionary Congress, the Kenyan section of the ISL, raises the question of revolutionary leadership. How can struggles against high food prices, imperialist dependence, and state violence be linked to the fight for socialism? What role do students, trade unions, informal settlements, and social movements play? And what could a revolutionary action programme look like, one aimed at class struggle and a socialist federation of Africa? We want to discuss that with a comrade from the PRC. | Seminar room ? | ENG | General | ||
| Stalinism 1: Degeneration of the Soviet Union | The Russian Revolution of 1917 is the highest act in human history so far. It created the possibility of a transitional society, the Soviet Union. But the break with the programme of the international overthrow of capitalism, the victory of Soviet Thermidor, and with it the theory of socialism in one country, set the Soviet Union on the road to degeneration. Where did the causes of that lie? How could a new bureaucratic caste develop and assert itself? And how did revolutionaries relate, and how do they still relate, to the Soviet Union? In this workshop series on the history and practice of Stalinist Menshevism, the revolution’s executioner, we want to take up these questions. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| 11.15-12.30 Uhr | School Work and Counter-Power 2: How Do We Fight Anti-Muslim Racism and Zionism in Our Schools? | Anti-Palestinian racism is everywhere, not only in the form of state repression in our streets or demonisation in the bourgeois press and on talk shows, but also in our schools: bans on Palestinian flags and kufiyas in Berlin schools, or the hijab as in Austria; direct racist attacks on Palestinian students who are active against the genocide; and at the same time a supposedly “differentiated” view of the “conflict”, right up to open solidarity with Israel and student exchange programmes with the apartheid state. None of this is an accident. We want to look at the close connection between German schools and Zionism, and discuss how we as students can organise against it. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |
| Intervention in Die Linke: How to wage the revolutionary struggle within the PDL? | Over the last few years, the Left has doubled its membership. While tens of thousands joined it as an opposition force against the government, strategically it remains oriented toward participation in governments at federal and state level. This question hangs over every conflict in the party like the sword of Damocles, whether over Zionism and anti-Zionism or over support for the infrastructure and rearmament package in the Bundesrat. While the party bureaucracy is fighting that conflict bitterly through conference resolutions or party expulsions, there is still no systematic approach in the party left. In this workshop, we therefore want to map the situation in the party: where are internal conflicts emerging? What experiences are comrades making in local branches, working groups, and movements? Where are the strengths, the blockages, and the open fields of struggle that revolutionaries should take up? This is especially pressing after the Palestine Solidarity Federal Working Group managed to mobilise roughly a third of the votes against the leadership motion at the federal party congress in June. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| ISL 3: Escalation in the FIT-U: The Struggle for a Workers’ Party | Argentina may be the place where Trumpism falls. With the “chainsaw”, President Milei is trying to push through neoliberal economic programmes and social devastation at breakneck speed. But there is resistance. The Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores, Unidad, an alliance of several Trotskyist organisations, faces major challenges in the middle of the deep political and social crisis, but also major opportunities: in recent months we have seen mass protests and tectonic shifts in the political landscape in Argentina. A Milei election victory, the break up of Peronism, and the FIT-U’s rise in the polls. PTS member Myriam Bregman is the country’s most popular politician in the current polls. Our sister section, the MST, is part of the FIT-U and is organising strikes at the country’s biggest hospital and at the universities against the cuts. Hundreds of thousands are taking to the streets on a regular basis. But how can the movement become an organised force against the government of social devastation? What role does the question of building a workers’ party play in that? Comrades from the MST will take up these questions at our camp. | Seminar room ? | ENG | General | ||
| Stalinism 2: The regime and doctrine of Stalinism | In the second workshop of our Stalinism series, building on the historical introduction to the betrayed revolution, we want to take up the programme of Stalinism. Through its counterrevolutionary consolidation in the 1930s, the purges in its own ranks, and peaceful coexistence with the imperialist world system, core elements of revolutionary Marxism and the method of Bolshevism had to be destroyed. How did the revolutionary Leon Trotsky understand that development, and how do we analyse the Stalinist regime? This talk is devoted to the programme of Stalinism and sets it against the theory of permanent revolution. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| 12.30-13.30 Uhr | BREAK (slightly shorter because of the free afternoon) | |||||
| 13.30-15.15 Uhr | Skills: Demo tactics | In this track, we want to teach each other practical organising skills. Whether on demonstrations, in writing, in public speaking, in producing political videos, in selling newspapers, or in the tricks and details of political work at university, there is something here for everyone. Afterwards, our free afternoon begins, with a trip to the nearby lake, games, or simply a nap on the grass. | Seminar room ? | DE | ||
| Skills: Rhetoric and public speaking | In this track, we want to teach each other practical organising skills. Whether on demonstrations, in writing, in public speaking, in producing political videos, in selling newspapers, or in the tricks and details of political work at university, there is something here for everyone. Afterwards, our free afternoon begins, with a trip to the nearby lake, games, or simply a nap on the grass. | Seminar room ? | DE | |||
| Skills: Article writing | In this track, we want to teach each other practical organising skills. Whether on demonstrations, in writing, in public speaking, in producing political videos, in selling newspapers, or in the tricks and details of political work at university, there is something here for everyone. Afterwards, our free afternoon begins, with a trip to the nearby lake, games, or simply a nap on the grass. | Seminar room ? | DE | |||
| Skills: Approaching people, organising, and selling the newspaper | In this track, we want to teach each other practical organising skills. Whether on demonstrations, in writing, in public speaking, in producing political videos, in selling newspapers, or in the tricks and details of political work at university, there is something here for everyone. Afterwards, our free afternoon begins, with a trip to the nearby lake, games, or simply a nap on the grass. | Seminar room ? | DE | |||
| Skills: Recording videos | In this track, we want to teach each other practical organising skills. Whether on demonstrations, in writing, in public speaking, in producing political videos, in selling newspapers, or in the tricks and details of political work at university, there is something here for everyone. Afterwards, our free afternoon begins, with a trip to the nearby lake, games, or simply a nap on the grass. | Seminar room ? | DE | |||
| Skills: University Work | In this track, we want to teach each other practical organising skills. Whether on demonstrations, in writing, in public speaking, in producing political videos, in selling newspapers, or in the tricks and details of political work at university, there is something here for everyone. Afterwards, our free afternoon begins, with a trip to the nearby lake, games, or simply a nap on the grass. | Seminar room ? | DE | |||
| Ab 15.15 Uhr | Free afternoon! |
| Time | Workshop | Info | Room | Language | Level | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9.15-9.30 Uhr | Morning plenary | |||||
| 9.30-10.45 Uhr | Iran 1: Iran 1978: Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the Islamist Regime | The Islamic Republic of Iran emerged from the defeat of the socialist revolution of 1978. That revolution successfully drove the Shah, the Pahlavi dynasty, out of the country and smashed the army and secret police, but it failed to complete the revolution, which allowed the capitalist theocratic regime under Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini to prevail. Subordination to the national bourgeoisie, and therefore to Khomeini’s leadership, dealt the death blow to the socialist left in Iran. But how exactly was this faction able to prevail from within the mass movement? What role did Marxist forces play, and how much influence did they have? | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |
| Youth 1: What Is Youth? | Instead of seeing youth simply as an age bracket, we should understand it as a product of capitalist valorisation. Youth is a phase of training, discipline, and preparation for one’s later place in class society. Proletarian youth are meant to be prepared for the demands of production, while the youth of the ruling class are educated to rule. School, family, and state organise this phase. At the same time, youth looks very different internationally. In the imperialist centres, the transition into working life is getting longer, while in many semi-colonial countries long periods of education are barely affordable. So what does it mean to speak of “youth” at all? What differences arise from class, state, and the imperialist world system? And why does revolutionary politics need its own understanding of youth? | Seminar room ? | DE/ENG | General | ||
| Die Linke 1: Can the Bourgeois State Be “Rebelliously Governed”? | Not governing is not a solution either? This year, elections to the Berlin House of Representatives are coming up, and the Left could become the strongest force. The polls, and not only the polls, are putting the Left Party before the question of government. But can participation in a left government under capitalist conditions really lead to a break with austerity policies and social inequality, or does it ultimately mean administering the existing order? Within the Left, the theory of “governing rebelliously” is an attempt to give the old capitulation to objective constraints and co-administration a radical face. In this workshop, we want to criticise that theory, but also ask under what conditions a left party can participate in a government at all, and with which forces. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| Imperialism 2:
Critique of Sub-Imperialism | The concept of sub-imperialism tries to capture the fact that some semi-colonies are not merely puppets of the imperialist centres. Countries such as Turkey, Brazil, India, or South Africa can act as regional powers, strengthen their own capital, and take part in the exploitation of other countries. For revolutionaries, one conclusion follows from this: we must not dress up the expansionist policy of such states as anti-imperialism. At the same time, this is exactly where the danger of the concept lies. If sub-imperialism becomes a general in between category, the basic contradiction between the imperialist centres and dominated nations begins to blur. It becomes even more problematic when the term is used to cover both regional powers without any world political capacity of enforcement and imperialist newcomers. In this workshop, we want to discuss what the concept can explain, where it leads us astray, and what consequences follow from this for revolutionary anti-imperialism. | Seminar room ? | ENG | General | ||
| Basics 3: What Is Dialectical Materialism? | Marxist philosophy is not abstract play. It is a tool for understanding social developments and situating them politically. In this workshop, we introduce the mode of thought of Marxism: dialectical materialism. We clarify some basic questions: what are contradictions? How do they drive every process? And why is this an indispensable approach for revolutionary Marxists in particular? As a central example, we look at human history: the transition between different social formations and the question of why socialism offers an answer to the contradictions of capitalism that surround us everywhere. | Seminar room ? | DE | Introductory | ||
| 11.15-12.30 Uhr | Iran 1: Iran 1978: Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the Islamist Regime | The Islamic Republic of Iran emerged from the defeat of the socialist revolution of 1978. That revolution successfully drove the Shah, the Pahlavi dynasty, out of the country and smashed the army and secret police, but it failed to complete the revolution, which allowed the capitalist theocratic regime under Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini to prevail. Subordination to the national bourgeoisie, and therefore to Khomeini’s leadership, dealt the death blow to the socialist left in Iran. But how exactly was this faction able to prevail from within the mass movement? What role did Marxist forces play, and how much influence did they have? | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |
| Youth 2: How Does Youth Fight, and What Does It Fight For? | Young people stand again and again in the front ranks of struggle: against war, racism, cuts to education, unemployment, police violence, authoritarian governments, and the attacks of capital. Even though young people are shaped by the class relations in which they grow up, they often experience oppression in especially direct ways: in school, at university, at work, in the family, in the streets, and in the trenches. Past defeats, reformist routine, and the feeling that nothing can change anyway have not yet done as much damage. That is why youth movements can unleash enormous dynamism. But how does anger become a force that can win? What role do committees, strikes, occupations, youth organisations, and the link with the working class play? And what demands must youth fight for if it wants not just to defend its future, but to shake capitalism itself? | Seminar room ? | DE/ENG | General | ||
| Die Linke 2: Left-Wing Municipal Politics: Co-Managing Misery? | After looking in the previous block at the theoretical justifications for participation in government, this workshop turns to the Left’s real work on budgetary and municipal questions. What are the traps, how do we want to fight them, or is that even possible? What battles in and around the Left should revolutionaries wage? And what would a revolutionary municipal programme look like? | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| Imperialism 3: Climate Crisis and the Re-Division of the World: The Global Energy Economy | Whether interrupted gas pipelines or a blocked Strait of Hormuz, in times of sharpened struggle over the redivision of the world we can see more and more clearly how dependent the world economy is on global trade and commodity chains, and at the same time how important territorial independence in energy sources becomes for bloc confrontations. Even more, we can see how meaningless any climate target becomes in the face of capitalism’s crisis tendencies. In this workshop, we want to take up the ecological and geostrategic side of imperialism and ask what significance the energy economy has in times of war and crisis. | Seminar room ? | ENG | General | ||
| Basics 4: How Do We Get to a Communist Party? | The struggle for a revolutionary party is the highest task of revolutionary Marxists. But why? What does a party of a new type mean in Lenin’s sense? What importance does democratic centralism have in such a party, and how does it relate to an international organisation? Are there stages in building parties, or do they simply grow numerically and, as they do, gain more influence over the struggles of the working class and its vanguard? In this concluding workshop of the fundamentals track, we want to answer the decisive question of our time. As with all fundamentals workshops, you can bring your questions, and no special prior knowledge is required. | Seminar room ? | DE | Introductory | ||
| 12.30-14.30 Uhr | BREAK | |||||
| 14.30-16.15 Uhr | Iran 2: The international left and the war against Iran | Around the turn of the year, we saw mass protests in Iran against inflation and the regime. Those protests showed the fragility of the regime, and they were drowned in blood. The US and Israel used the repression at home as a justification to attack Iran. In the end, thousands were killed under the bombs of imperialist aggression, while the Iranian state was able to stabilise itself. We stand for the defeat of the aggressors, without politically subordinating ourselves to the Iranian regime. Victory against them is justified, despite the theocracy. But what is the character of the war against Iran? How does the political left relate to it? These are the questions we want to take up in this workshop. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |
| Youth 2: How Does Youth Fight, and What Does It Fight For? | Young people stand again and again in the front ranks of struggle: against war, racism, cuts to education, unemployment, police violence, authoritarian governments, and the attacks of capital. Even though young people are shaped by the class relations in which they grow up, they often experience oppression in especially direct ways: in school, at university, at work, in the family, in the streets, and in the trenches. Past defeats, reformist routine, and the feeling that nothing can change anyway have not yet done as much damage. That is why youth movements can unleash enormous dynamism. But how does anger become a force that can win? What role do committees, strikes, occupations, youth organisations, and the link with the working class play? And what demands must youth fight for if it wants not just to defend its future, but to shake capitalism itself? | Seminar room ? | DE/ENG | General | ||
| Die Linke 3: Neo-Kautskyism: Back to the Minimum-Maximum Programme? | The dead live longer than expected. As long as the social basis of reformism, the labour aristocracy, continues to exist, and revolutionary Marxism remains weak, generations of the workers’ movement are threatened with repeating the political mistakes of the past on a new historical level. That also lays the basis for centrism, an eclectic and vacillating current between reform and revolution. Karl Kautsky, the chief theorist of Marxism in the early German SPD, was an expression of German centrism. Unlike Lenin, he treated parliament not as a tribune of class struggle but as one of its arenas, as an instrument to be democratised. With the US DSA, the Belgian Workers’ Party, ROOD in the Netherlands, or smaller currents inside the Left such as Licht und Luft, we can see that the ideological critique of centrism has to be renewed on the basis of the day to day questions of class struggle. This workshop is an attempt in that direction. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| Imperialism 4: Walter Rodney: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa | Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is one of the most important works of anti-colonial political economy. In this workshop, we will deal with Rodney’s analysis of the historical role of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism in the making of global capitalism. Rodney shows that Africa’s so called “underdevelopment” is not a historical accident or a geographical fate, but the result of systematic exploitation by the capitalist centres of Europe. At the same time, he explains why racism is not the cause, but a tool, of economic domination. Together we want to discuss key theses of the book and draw out their significance for today’s global inequality, imperialist dependency, and the understanding of racism under capitalism. | Seminar room ? | ENG | General | ||
| Stalinism 3: 70 years since the Hungarian Revolution | Seventy years ago, the Hungarian Revolution, the Hungarian Uprising, took place in October 1956. It unfolded in the context of so called de-Stalinisation under Khrushchev and fought for political reforms in the Soviet republics, such as stronger rights of national independence and other democratic rights such as freedom of speech, of the press, and of assembly, but also the right to strike. Carried by workers’ councils, the Hungarian Revolution showed both the possibility and the necessity of political revolution in the Soviet Union. In the end, the crossroads opened up clearly: the full implementation of the programme of socialism, or the danger of counterrevolutionary restoration. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| 16.15-16.45 Uhr | BREAK | |||||
| 16.45-18.30 Uhr | Iran 3: A Programme for Permanent Revolution in Iran! | The Iranian revolution lives on. Over the last decade, we have seen uprisings and strikes in Iran that show this clearly: the Iranian revolution is not a question of the past, but one of the most urgent questions of the present. The experiences of revolution and counterrevolution, of war and civil war, show clearly that the leadership crisis of the workers’ movement must be overcome in order to connect the struggle to overthrow the regime with the fight against imperialist aggression. This workshop seeks to develop a programme for permanent revolution in Iran. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |
| Youth 3: Trotskyists and Youth | Large revolutionary youth organisations such as the Communist Youth International never existed in the Trotskyist tradition. Even so, there have been constant debates over what role young people should play in revolution, in the party, and in class struggle. Are they only the party’s next generation, or an independent motor of revolutionary sharpening? In this workshop, we want to look at the answers Trotskyists have given to these questions since the founding of the Fourth International. That also means looking at the mistakes of other Trotskyist organisations: adaptation to reformism, false ideas about youth movements, or the absence of independent youth work. But the core question is what we draw from that for our own position: how can revolutionary youth work be independent, internationalist, and at the same time firmly connected to the struggle of the working class? | Seminar room ? | DE/ENG | General | ||
| Die Linke 4: With What Programme Do We Organise the Left Within Die Linke? | To this day, no determined revolutionary faction has formed within the Left that wages a systematic struggle against the party’s politics of class conciliation. If the Left is not to serve merely as a left fig leaf for parliamentary strategy, revolutionaries need a clear orientation: toward class struggle, anti-militarism, international solidarity, and a break with illusions in government. In this workshop, we therefore want to discuss the traps and past efforts of Leftists in the Left, but also the current debates around building it. What programme do we need? What should revolutionaries do in such a faction, in the party, and in the present fields of struggle? And how can the fight inside the party be connected to building a revolutionary organisation? This workshop is also meant to bring together the three previous discussions. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| Imperialism 5: Pan-Africanism: history, present, and character | In the struggle for the independence of the African continent, the label Pan-Africanism gathers together different oppositional nationalist currents such as those associated with Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Nasser, or al-Gaddafi. Even where these are anti-imperialist currents, they still obscure the class question and are expressions of bourgeois nationalism. Marxist theorists such as C. L. R. James tried to connect them with Marxist class analysis. This workshop offers an introduction to the history, the present, and the character of Pan-Africanism, and to why we reject it as Marxists, but also what impulses for thought it can still offer us. | Seminar room ? | ENG | General | ||
| Stalinism 4: Collapse and restoration of capitalism | For Trotsky, the Soviet Union became a degenerated workers’ state shortly after its emergence, ultimately trapped in an intermediate stage between the rule of the proletariat and that of the bourgeoisie, with a bureaucratic caste at its head. Internationally, that caste acted as a form of Bonapartism and defended existing gains against capitalist restoration from outside, while internally maintaining its dominance and preventing the working class from taking political power. That contradiction had to be resolved one way or another, and it was. But how did the Soviet Union collapse? How could capitalism be restored over one sixth of the globe? What role did Stalinism play in that? And how did different currents of Trotskyism relate to this world historic turning point? | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| 18.30-19.30 Uhr | BREAK | |||||
| 19.30-21.00 Uhr | Anti-militarist Youth Panel | Tens of thousands of students have taken to the streets against the reintroduction of conscription in Germany. That shows that the militarisation of youth is meeting resistance. But the question is how school strikes can become a movement that really challenges militarism. The Bundeswehr is no longer present only outside barracks. It advertises in schools, at job centres, on screens, and at careers fairs. At the same time, the first weapons factory since the Second World War is being built in Berlin, and even walking past it is being criminalised. The state is preparing young people to be burned up for the interests of German imperialism. We need something stronger than moral outrage or individual conscientious objection. We need strike committees in schools, mass assemblies, actions against Bundeswehr propaganda, and links to the working class and its trade unions. At the same time, the question arises what role large left youth organisations such as the Left Youth can play. What demands, what structures, and what strategy does an anti-militarist youth movement need? We want to discuss that with invited comrades. | Seminar room ? | DE/ENG | General | |
| Palestine Panel | The Palestine movement has brought millions into the streets worldwide against genocide, occupation, and the complicity of the imperialist states. In Germany too, it has continued to resist despite massive repression, racist incitement, and the equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism. At the same time, the movement faces strategic questions: how can moral outrage and regular protests become a force that really puts pressure on governments, universities, arms corporations, and trade unions? How can broad united fronts be built without blurring revolutionary positions on the one state solution, the right of return, and permanent revolution? What role do direct actions, boycott campaigns, workers’ actions, and international coordination play? On this panel, we want to take stock of the movement with invited comrades and discuss how the struggle for a free, secular, and socialist Palestine can be carried forward. | Seminarraum? | DE/ENG | General | ||
| Time | Workshop | Info | Room | Language | Level | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9.15-9.30 Uhr | Morning plenary | |||||
| 9.30-12.30 Uhr | Anti-militarism 1: War, war tactics, and proletarian military policy | Track 1: Anti-militarism: The question of war is highly relevant. Last autumn, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said: “We are not at war, but we are no longer at peace either.” Regional wars with global effects are increasing, and every new one has the potential to become a global war. In this full day workshop track, we want to take up many different aspects of war. We begin with a historical and methodological section on war and capitalism, and on revolutionary Marxist resistance to war and within the military. How do revolutionaries relate to different wars, and are there just wars? In the second part, we turn to the current movement against war, above all the school strikes against conscription. This movement expresses a mood among young people. But how do we relate to the question of refusal? What is the present character of the Bundeswehr in a time defined by struggle over the redivision of the world and by the arms race? Are we pacifists? In the final part, we will look at approaches to anti-militarist work in the class and in the army. The key question throughout is: how can we build a movement that sees the main enemy not in the trench opposite, but in its own ruling class? And beyond that: how can we turn imperialist war into class war? | Seminar room ? | DE | Introductory | |
| Palestine 1: History and Present of the Liberation Struggle | Track 2: Palestine: It did not begin on 7 October. The history of Palestine is a history of decades of resistance to colonial oppression and apartheid. From the beginning, the Zionist project was built on the expulsion of the Palestinians. In this full day workshop track, we want to take up the question of Palestine’s liberation. But resistance to Zionism is criminalised in Israel and here as well. Even the leadership of the Left positions itself against anti-Zionism. So what is the history of Palestine and of the struggle for liberation? What are Zionism and anti-Zionism? In the second block, we will examine the concept of settler colonialism in greater depth and discuss the founding and continued existence of Israel as a settler colonial project. In the final section, we will take up questions of the programme of liberation. Where does the international solidarity movement stand? What lessons can we draw from initiatives such as the Global Sumud Flotilla? How do we relate to bourgeois and nationalist forces that take part in the struggle and at times lead it? And what does this struggle mean for the programme of permanent revolution and the socialist federation of West Asia? | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| The Working Class in Germany 1 + 2: Deindustrialisation of Europe? + The Stoppable Rise of the AfD Among Industrial Workers | Track 3: The Working Class in Germany: Germany is in a structural crisis. Almost every day we hear of new waves of threatened layoffs. German imperialism has been pushed from export world champion into stagnation, weakened by bloc confrontation. In this full day workshop track, we want to take up central questions of German imperialism. Where are Europe and Germany heading? The crisis and the policies of the trade unions also amount to an earthquake inside the workers’ movement. In the polls, the AfD is now the second strongest force among industrial workers, and this mood threatens to consolidate itself organically, since works council elections will be held in many companies in 2026. What does the AfD’s work in factories and unions look like, how is the DGB fighting it, and what is our perspective? After that, in the third block, we turn to the crisis of reproduction. Under capitalism, the bulk of reproduction costs is left to the classes themselves, which produces structural crises under conditions of ageing societies and social devastation in healthcare. But how do we as Marxists analyse reproductive labour, and how does its share develop in relation to productive labour in times of structural change? In the last block, we then turn to Germany’s demographic development and the looming pension reform of the black red government. Work until you drop? Privatisation of pension insurance? What does that mean for the workers’ movement and the unions? | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| The Re-Division of the World 1: The USA and the Struggle for the “Western Hemisphere” | Track 4: Redivision of the World:
In this full day workshop track, we want to take up the struggle over the redivision of the world. The antagonism between Chinese and US imperialism runs through the political and economic questions of our time. With the second Trump administration, the return to backyard politics is becoming unmistakable. Under the slogan of the Donroe Doctrine, US imperialism justifies territorial and power claims across the Americas, whether in Greenland or Cuba. But what is the condition of US imperialism, and what strategic orientation lies behind it? In the second and third blocks, we will turn to flashpoints of conflict. In times of sharpened confrontation, it is often regional powers that try to widen their room for manoeuvre, and Pakistan is one such case. At the beginning of the year, military conflicts flared up with Afghanistan, and last year with India. The country moves from one declared state of war to another. Our comrades from RSM will report on class struggle and the tasks of revolutionaries in Pakistan. In the final block, the war over Ukraine will be brought into focus. Increasingly turned by Trump into a plaything on the world political table, Ukraine has been fighting a justified war against Russian occupation for more than four years, while the imperialist powers also use it as a justification for rearmament. But how do we analyse the situation in Ukraine, and what tasks follow from it? | Seminar room ? | ENG | General | ||
| Marx21 and Cliffism | Marx21, or socialism through campaigns and networks? Around three years ago, the largest Trotskyist organisation in Germany split into three camps. Marx21 is the biggest and most opportunist split. It is an organisation that no longer actively refers back to its origin in Cliffism, but remains politically shaped by it all the same. With the growth of the Left Party, Marx21 has been able to regain momentum, and at the same time it serves as a left flank for the party apparatus. In this workshop, we want to subject Cliffism as a current within Trotskyism to criticism, and then focus on what is specific about Marx21. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| 14.30-16.15 Uhr | Anti-militarism 2: School Strike Movement: A Critique of Refusal and Pacifism | Seminar room ? | DE | Introductory | ||
| Palestine 2: What is settler colonialism? | Seminar room ? | DE/ENG | General | |||
| The Working Class in Germany 3: The Crisis of Social Reproduction | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |||
| The Re-Division of the World 2: Pakistan Between a Course Towards War and Class Struggles | Seminar room ? | ENG | General | |||
| 16.45-18.30 Uhr | Anti-militarism 3: Revolutionary work in the army | Seminar room ? | DE | Introductory | ||
| Palestine 3: Strategy and tactics in Palestine’s international liberation struggle | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |||
| The Working Class in Germany 4: Pensions and Old Age Under Capitalism | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |||
| The Re-Division of the World 3: Ukraine: Imperialism, National Self-Determination and a Revolutionary Solution | Seminar room ? | ENG | General | |||
| 19.30-21.00 Uhr | Closing Plenary: How Do We Get to a New International? | The crisis of capitalism is international, and so is the leadership crisis of the workers’ movement. Reformist apparatuses administer defeats, adapt to the rightward shift, or subordinate themselves to the imperialist rules of the game. At the same time, the revolutionary left remains fragmented, often trapped in sectarian self assertion around its own tradition. Our entry into the International Socialist League is therefore part of a strategic reordering: the international regroupment of revolutionaries on a programmatic basis, with common practice and democratic centralism. But what does that mean concretely? How can organisations with different traditions build a new common revolutionary tradition without blurring differences or falling into the mere addition of existing groups? What role do shared assessments of the central questions of class struggle play, from Palestine to Ukraine to the assessment of old and new imperialisms? In the closing plenary, we want to discuss these questions together with comrades from other sections. | Seminar room ? | DE/ENG | General | |
| Ab 21.00 Uhr | Party! |
| Time | Workshop | Info | Room | Language | Level | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9.15-9.30 Uhr | Morning plenary | |||||
| 9.30-10.00 Uhr | Clear and clean rooms | |||||
| 10.00-12.30 Uhr | “Red Groups” in Germany: Between Popular Front and Left Radicalism | Are we witnessing a revival of Stalinism in Germany? Out of the crisis of post-autonomism, the so called red groups have shot up in recent years like mushrooms, as new far left forms of a Third Period Stalinism. These forces, which often limit themselves to a maximum programme and neighbourhood work, have become an attraction for some radicalising young people because they relate less to the everyday fight against the bourgeois leadership in the workers’ movement and instead act here and now as mini mass parties whose reach is supposed to grow gradually. As if Lenin had already known and addressed such forces more than a hundred years ago, we want to take up this form of left radicalism, whether in its Hoxhaist, Maoist, or classic Stalinist form. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |
| The Left Opposition in the Soviet Union | In resistance to the rise of a Soviet bureaucracy in the CPSU and the Soviet Union, the Left Opposition formed in April 1926. It fought against the dismantling of the gains of the October Revolution and against the regression toward the programme of the old social democracy of the Second International in Comintern clothing. It was an expression of left communist resistance within the ranks of the Bolsheviks. But what was its programme, and what were its political weaknesses and mistakes? One hundred years later, we have to admit that it was unable to prevent the degeneration of the Soviet Union and, dragged behind it, the Communist International. Only one part of it remained committed to the struggle for an International Left Opposition and, in the end, to building a new Fourth International. | Seminar room ? | ENG | General | ||
| REVOLUTION Programme: For a Revolutionary Programme of Youth! | Revolution needs a programme, but REVO needs a new one as well. The international communist youth organisation REVOLUTION is currently discussing a new programme draft. What is our assessment of the situation of youth in Germany and Austria, and internationally as well? What ideologies are acting on young people? How can the struggle for a youth international be connected to building a world party of socialist revolution? And what updates do we need since our last programme? We want to take up these and other questions in the presentation of our new programme and answer them together with you. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| Ab 12.30 Uhr | Clean up together |
| Time | Workshop | Info | Room | Language | Level | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13.00 Uhr | Registration | |||||
| 15.00-15.30 Uhr | opening session | Seminar room ? | DE/ENG | General | ||
| 16.00-18.30 Uhr | Imperialism 1: Imperialism Theory Explained Simply | Imperialism is the highest and final stage of capitalism. Lenin published his analysis of the development of capitalism in 1916 under that thesis. In this introductory workshop, we want to show: what are the key elements of Lenin’s theory of imperialism? Why is imperialism not just a matter of policy, but a world system in which the world is completely divided into oppressor and oppressed nations? Why do people also speak here of monopoly capitalism, and what exactly is a monopoly? What does the theory of imperialism mean for the question of socialist revolution? What does an understanding of imperialism mean for us today? | Seminar room ? | DE | General | |
| Economics of Crisis 1: Where Is the World Economy Heading? | Handelskriege, Aufrüstung, geopolitische Konflikte und anhaltende wirtschaftliche Stagnation prägen die Weltlage. Doch sind diese Entwicklungen nur das Ergebnis politischer Entscheidungen oder Ausdruck tiefer liegender Widersprüche des kapitalistischen Systems? Der Workshop untersucht die aktuellen Krisentendenzen der Weltwirtschaft und geht den Ursachen von Überakkumulation, sinkenden Profitraten, Verschuldung, Inflation sowie der verschärften Konkurrenz zwischen den Großmächten nach. Zudem wird die Verbindung von wirtschaftlicher Krise, autoritären Entwicklungen und internationalen Konflikten diskutiert. Ein kurzer Exkurs widmet sich der Entwicklung Chinas und seiner Rolle in der Weltwirtschaft. Welche Bedeutung hat sowohl der wirtschaftliche Aufstieg als auch das abkühlende Wirtschaftswachstum Chinas für die globale Konkurrenz der Großmächte und die zukünftige Entwicklung des kapitalistischen Weltsystems? | Seminar room ? | ENG | Advanced | ||
| ISL 1 Programme and Politics of the International Socialist League (ISL) | At its third world congress in December 2025, the International Socialist League adopted a new programme. On that basis, and after months of debate and common interventions, we as sections of the former League for the Fifth International joined the ISL-LIS. But what is the basis of this programme? How can it serve as a guide to action and as the foundation of a shared democratic centralism? How do we want to intervene with it in the leadership crisis of the workers’ movement? And what is our new programme actually about? In this workshop, we want to introduce the methodological and programmatic foundations of our international organisation. | Seminar room ? | DE | General | ||
| Basics 1 + 2: What Does Class Struggle Actually Mean? + How Does the Capitalist Economy Work? | “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter 1). Capitalism has torn the mystical veils off class antagonisms and brought forth naked exploitation. At the same time, it has generalised its relations of production and brought into being a class, the proletariat, that is capable of consigning class society to the bonfire of history. But what does class struggle mean, and why do we think it is the driving force of social change? Why do we stand unconditionally on the side of the working class? And what are classes in the first place, and why is their existence today denied so fiercely? | Seminar room ? | DE | Introductory | ||
| 19.30 - 21.00 Uhr | Get-to-know-each-other session / Presentation of the organising groups | |||||