AUSTERITY isn’t working for workers. Adjusted for inflation, the real value of pay has fallen by 7 per cent since the start of 2008, costing the average worker £7,000.

But super-rich incomes have soared. Since the 1980s, top bosses have seen pay rises as high as 4,000 per cent. The average chief executive now earns 145 times more than the average worker’s wage.

At the end of 2012, the real value of wages was more than £50 billion a year lower than in 2008.

The Con-Dem government is using the crisis of its system to enforce permanent austerity, slash public services, break with the welfare state and roll back every advance made by workers since 1945.

At the same time we face a crisis of political representation with a further stripping away of Labour’s internal democracy and the Collins report’s relegation of the role of unions to that of a naughty stepchild in the party which they founded. 

Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have systematically failed to offer real policy alternatives to attacks on working-class living standards over the last four years, preferring to stand on the sidelines awaiting either an implosion of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition or a groundswell of popular dislike of Tories that will see Labour thrust back into power — without ever having made any promises to the working-class and labour movement.

But the fightback is growing. The People’s Assembly is gathering wide support. 

Fifty thousand people turned out for the march against austerity last month and local groups are springing up in towns and cities across the country.

Unions are taking action for jobs and pay and to defend the NHS, education and public services.

The need has never been stronger for a wider understanding and recognition of the importance that Marxist ideas and analyses can play in learning from the struggles of the past and shaping the struggles of the future. 

The renewed interest in the ideas and work of Marx since the capitalist crisis hit in 2008 is understandable given the “surprise” expressed by bourgeois economists and politicians across the globe at the failure of their doomed economic model. 

Other than the occasional begrudging “think-piece” in the capitalist media in the immediate aftermath, getting these ideas and approaches on the agenda continues to be a real struggle.

Marxism is not intended to be a separate, stagnant field of stale academic pursuit — it is a living, breathing theory, which can only continue to exist in this century and beyond if it is being combined with the individual and collective experiences of workers’ and people’s struggle. 

The themes, sessions and speakers at this year’s 21st Century Marxism event in Clerkenwell, London, this weekend embody this approach to analysis and struggle.

The event will begin with a book launch of a seminal new title from the last communist premier of the German Democratic Republic Hans Modrow, which debunks and counters some of the myths that still pervade around perestroika and the GDR. 

The honourary chair of the German Left Party, Die Linke, will also be speaking alongside representative of the Palestinian People’s Party in the UK Nasri Barghouti, Communist Party international secretary John Foster and Tudeh Party of Iran international secretary Navid Shomali at the international rally being held from 5.30-7pm at the St James Church Crypt on the Green, just round the corner from the Marx Library which is also open to people unable to attend the rest of the day’s sessions.

CP chairman Bill Greenshields and Hope Not Hate activist — and daughter of famous East End Communist MP Phil Piratin — Jean Geldart are among those discussing whether Ukip’s recent success in the European elections was just a blip. 

A panel of trade unionists including Sertuc secretary Megan Dobney, co-founder of the NUT London women’s network Kiri Tunks, Northern TUC chairman Martin Levy and CP trade union co-ordinator Anita Halpin consider the how and the what of the role of unions both at work and in communities today. 

Morning Star columnist and left Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn teams up with CP general secretary Rob Griffiths to consider what the point of democracy is.

International Transport Workers Federation spokesman Jeremy Anderson and former European Transport Workers leader Graham Stevenson look at the impact and role of “just in time” production and logistics on capitalist economics and on society at large. 

Participants at this year’s 21st Century Marxism won’t just be there to absorb and listen to debate, there will be plenty of opportunities for them to muck in and share their experiences. 

Morning Star circulation organiser Bernadette Keaveney encourages participants to “Ask not what the Star can do for you,” while the People’s Assembly spotlight provides a forum for activists to share their experiences — both positive and negative — of building local groups. 

Transport workers’ leader Manuel Cortes leads a workshop on public ownership, considers Labour’s limp proposals and what we can learn from the past experience of running services for the benefit of people rather than profits. 

Also being launched this weekend is the first in what promises to be a long-running new series of online Marxist education being organised by the MML. The Intro2Econ series which runs across the weekend will provide a taster of what’s to come as the movement starts to find its way in using the web as an educational rather than just agitational and organisational tool. 

A coterie of communists, socialists and progressives coming from overseas — as well as a few from Britain — will focus on the battles being waged in the Ukraine, Palestine, Iraq and Latin America, to name but a few.

We may even have a surprise guest speaker join us on Saturday evening from the Palestine rally in Parliament Square — though world events may understandably prevent this from coming to fruition. 

Cuba Solidarity Campaign national secretary Bernard Regan and Venezuela Solidarity Campaign secretary Francisco Dominguez are among those considering paths to progress in Latin America.

Renowned author and Morning Star stalwart Louise Raw will be alongside National Assembly of Women executive member Rose Keeping and CP women’s organiser Liz Payne to consider what it means to be a feminist in 21st-century Britain. 

It promises to be a packed and vibrant weekend full of ideas, debate, culture, fun, comradeship as well as a few opportunities to fill your bookshelves or T-shirt drawers. 

All communists, socialists and progressives will find a warm welcome at this festival of Marxist ideas in a truly iconic and historic part of London.

For full details of the programme visit goo.gl/HeV1xc. Weekend tickets are available on the day at £20/£10 and one-day tickets are £12/£6. Saturday’s evening rally and social are free. The event runs from 11.15am till late on Saturday and 10.30am-4pm on Sunday.