From Catastrophe to Struggle: Rethinking Capitalism amid Wars and Disasters

HM Istanbul 2026 Final Declaration

From 3 to 5 April 2026, hundreds of people from every continent came together at HM Istanbul 2026. Convened at Istanbul Bilgi University, Santral Campus, the conference took place under the theme “From Catastrophe to Struggle: Rethinking Capitalism amid Wars and Disasters.” Across 127 panels and with 456 speakers, the conference brought into dialogue a wide range of struggles, experiences, and critical perspectives on war, ecology, authoritarianism, class, gender, race, social reproduction, and resistance.

This gathering was significant not only because of its scale, but because it created a space to reconnect questions too often treated in isolation: War and ecological destruction, the rise of far right, authoritarianism and dispossession, food and energy regimes, feminist struggle and class politics, social reproduction and imperial violence. In a period when catastrophe is no longer an exception but increasingly a mode of rule, HM Istanbul 2026 insisted on the need for a shared analytical and political horizon. Our conference itself emerged from within these very dynamics. It was made possible under precarious conditions, through collective labour, commitment, and solidarity.

For many of us, “wars of capitalism and resistance” are not abstract theoretical questions, nor are they matters belonging to distant geographies or past times. They are a living reality, both past and present, unfolding in the here and now. Across different places and in different forms, wars and resistances shape bodies, labour, everyday life, memory, and the horizon of the future.

When we speak of the wars of capitalism, we speak of imperialism. We speak of uneven and internally interconnected social relations of class and power that cut across national borders and cannot be reduced to methodological nationalism. In this sense, war is not limited to military confrontation between states. It is also class war; it is an assault on social reproduction; it is ecological destruction; it is the devastation of the infrastructures of life, the commons, and the relations of solidarity that make collective existence possible.

Today, it is no longer possible to treat war, ecological destruction, authoritarianism, deepening inequality, migration regimes, the care crisis, and the different forms of social disintegration as separate processes. Each appears as a distinct expression of capitalism’s crisis-ridden mode of reproduction. Catastrophe is no longer an external disruption to the system. It is increasingly becoming one of the system’s governing logics. In this sense, destruction is not merely an outcome. It also becomes a terrain for new rounds of accumulation: war feeds reconstruction contracts, disaster feeds urban transformation, food crisis feeds concentration in agriculture, and energy crisis feeds new forms of extractivism.

This is why it is no longer sufficient to explain catastrophe through mismanagement, poor policy choices, corruption, or authoritarian excess alone. These are important, but they do not exhaust the problem. What lies beneath them is a deeper structural dynamic: capital expands by fragmenting, exhausting, and reorganizing life. It works through the commodification of nature, the precarization of labour, the dismantling of the public, and the invisibilization of social reproduction. War, ecological crisis, the intensification of women’s care burdens, and the transformation of borders into death zones are therefore not separate tragedies, but interconnected moments of the same historical system.

For this reason, we must also question the meaning of peace. Peace is often presented as the opposite of war, yet under capitalism it can become the continuation of violence by other means. It can appear as postwar reconstruction business, as pacification, as counter-insurgency, as a new terrain of accumulation, or as a mechanism for disciplining class struggle and other struggles for liberation and equality. So-called peace processes may obscure the crucial political question: whose peace, which peace, and at whose expense? We therefore insist that peace cannot be treated as an abstract or neutral category, but must be understood in relation to its material, political, and class content.

One of the most important openings of this year’s conference was the renewed discussion of ecology, food, and agriculture. The ecological crisis must not be reduced to environmental degradation in the narrow sense. The transformation of soil, water, forests, pastures, coasts, and agricultural production is inseparable from the crisis of social reproduction. It means the disintegration of rural labour, the liquidation of small producers, the conversion of food into a speculative commodity, the intensification of forced migration, the erosion of local forms of life, and the further intensification of care burdens. The destruction of nature and the destruction of the social fabric are directly linked.

We see this clearly in Turkey and across the world. Mining projects, energy investments, tourism concessions, mega-infrastructure projects, and urban and rural land regimes do not merely consume nature. They reorganize social life itself. When a forest is destroyed, what is lost is not only trees. Water regimes are altered, agricultural production contracts, local economies collapse, migration begins, women’s unpaid labour intensifies, and local cultures are weakened. When coastlines are opened to capital, what disappears is not only a landscape, but access to the commons. Ecological struggle is therefore not simply a defense of nature in the abstract. It is a struggle to defend the material foundations of life.

A feminist perspective is indispensable both for understanding the present catastrophe and for building a struggle against it. Wars, disasters, economic crises, and ecological destruction never affect everyone equally. They deepen gendered inequalities. Women take on more unpaid labour, are pushed further into precarious sectors, are more harshly affected by displacement and poverty, and face heightened risks of violence. As public services shrink, the burden of care is shifted back into households, and in most cases onto women. The crises of our time must therefore be understood as crises of social reproduction as much as crises of production, accumulation, and rule.

One of the central questions that emerged throughout this conference is the question of political strategy. What forms of resistance, solidarity, and internationalism can we build today? The answer cannot lie in the flat and reactionary formula that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” nor in political identification with one or another authoritarian regime, fascist force, or capitalist state. Nor can it lie in a politics confined to reacting to isolated events and immediate incidents. What we need instead is a political horizon capable of tracing the connections between different wars, between regional conflicts, between interlocking forms of oppression and domination, and between the struggles that arise against them.

This is precisely why a new synthesis is needed. For too long, fields of struggle have often been fragmented into separate languages and separate political compartments: ecology in one place, labour in another, feminist struggle elsewhere, urban struggle elsewhere still. Yet capital attacks all these terrains at once. It comes as a mining license, a starvation wage, a trustee regime, a deportation system, misogynist family policy, war budgets, or a post-disaster economy of plunder. If the attack is combined, the response must also be combined. The political value of this conference lay precisely here: in trying to read catastrophe not through isolated symptoms, but through the interconnected logics of capital accumulation, state violence, class relations, gender regimes, and imperialist competition.

We also insist that the deepening catastrophe cannot be answered by green capitalism, technocratic transition agendas, or imperial strategies of decarbonization built on new forms of plunder. What is now packaged as energy transition, critical minerals, carbon markets, and technological modernization is too often a reorganization of the geography and techniques of exploitation rather than a break from them. 

Against this, we affirm the need for public planning, the prioritization of social need, the defense of the commons, the decommodification of energy and food, the socialization of care, and the strengthening of democratic participation. The question is not only what kind of technology is used, but what kind of social order is being built. The issue is not only what is produced, but for whom, for what purpose, at what scale, and under whose control.

Such a horizon refuses to separate anti-war struggle from anti-fascist struggle, or class struggle from struggles shaped by gender, race, ecology, and social reproduction. It calls for forms of resistance that are not only oppositional but also affirmative, regenerative, and durable. It calls for struggles that do not simply denounce destruction, but work to create new forms of collective life, new relations of solidarity, and new possibilities for liberation and equality. In an interconnected world marked by radically uneven conditions of living and dying, only such a political imagination can begin to confront the material foundations of war, fascism, dispossession, and destruction.

HM Istanbul 2026 should therefore be understood not as a closure, but as a moment in an ongoing process of political dialogue, collective reflection, and shared struggle. The discussions opened here must continue across geographies, movements, and experiences. They can help us explain more powerfully why anti-war struggle is also ecological struggle; why feminist struggle is also labour struggle; why food sovereignty is inseparable from democratization; why disasters are not natural but political; and why fighting against the catastrophe is a class question.

As a first step in carrying these discussions forward, an Abstract Book will be prepared in order to bring together and preserve the contributions, debates, and intellectual and political encounters that emerged throughout the conference.

We extend our sincere thanks to all speakers, participants, chairs, and volunteers whose labour, care, and commitment made HM Istanbul 2026 possible. We also thank Istanbul Bilgi University for its support and hospitality, and all those institutions -Praksis, TSBD, SAV, Eğitim Sen Istanbul Branch 6, Mülkiyeliler Birliği- who worked with us throughout this collective process.

Historical Materialism Istanbul 2026

Organizing Committee

Conference Programme

We are delighted to share the programme for the Historical Materialism Istanbul 2026 conference with you. As the Organising Committee, we kindly ask you to check the programme frequently, as it may be subject to change.

Deadline for HM Istanbul extended!!!

Due to overwhelming demand, we have decided to extend the deadline for submitting paper/panel proposals to 12 December 2025.

Please note that there will be no further extension.

For paper proposals, please use this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd4YfMfCPcepobqT7j5hLiTBieiHaexLW3BzaM2CtND1SUNRQ/viewform.

For panel proposals, please use this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd2rOUQNuec6bkZtJ0FK-ULzyY8Bi2oZGbETXDu_iK8hbAmog/viewform.

Call for Papers

Historical Materialism Istanbul 2026

From Catastrophe to Struggle: Rethinking Capitalism amid Wars and Disasters

📍 Bilgi University, Santral Campus
📅 3–5 April 2026

Co-organized by:
Praksis Journal · Turkish Social Sciences Association · Sosyal Araştırmalar Vakfı (Social Research Foundation, SAV) · Mülkiyeliler Birliği · Eğitim Sen Istanbul Branch No. 6

From Catastrophe to Struggle: Rethinking Capitalism amid Wars and Disasters

Historical Materialism Istanbul 2026 convenes at a time of unprecedented global crises, marked by intensifying wars, ecological disasters, fascist and authoritarian resurgence, and overlapping capitalist shocks. Across the world, crises and disasters, ranging from genocidal wars, authoritarian weaponization of law, technocratic peace projects to climate-induced catastrophes, are systematically transformed into sites of uneven capital accumulation, markets of irrational thought, and instruments of political control. At the same time, old and new forms of anti-war, anti-racist, anti-fascist, feminist, ecological, and anti-capitalist struggles and solidarity actions have emerged around the world.  

This conference invites contributions to examine these processes in their concrete articulations through the critical framework of historical materialism, by attending to not only the mechanisms of exploitation, destruction, and domination, but also the spaces and practices of resistance that emerge during moments of crisis. In doing so, we also seek to explore how such conjunctures may generate counter-hegemonic dynamics—forms of collective reproduction, cooperative production, commoning, and solidarity-based economies that create alternative circuits of value and life beyond capital. 

Contributions that examine the intertwined logics of disaster capitalism, war economies, and ecological exploitation are particularly invited. This includes analyses of capital accumulation during crises, a reexamination of the capitalist shock strategies in contemporary contexts, and an examination of the role of privatization, indebtedness, and neoliberal interventions in reconstruction. The critical exploration of the political economy and legal infrastructure of war and imperialism is of particular concern, with a specific focus on post-war “reconstruction economies” (e.g., in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Palestine). Other areas of interest include the nexus of war contractors, the military-industrial complex, and finance capital, as well as the economic forces that shape peace processes.

Another focal point pertains to the crisis of social reproduction and the mechanisms of authoritarian control. We hereby extend a cordial invitation to submissions that explore the gendered and racialized dimensions of crisis, including care work and the invisibility of women’s labor in contexts of war, disaster, and displacement, as well as the reproduction of life in refugee camps. Contributions addressing the political instrumentalization of law and the impunities enjoyed by criminal and genocidal states within the current international legal architecture are welcome. We further invite analyses that focus on feminist strikes, queer protests, and solidarity practices of care. This axis necessitates an examination of disciplines, security measures, and militarization, including states of emergency, the securitization of urban space in the aftermath of disasters, and the exploitation of migrant labor within war and disaster economies. Additionally, it is crucial to address the rise of fascism and nationalism as instruments of crisis management.

Ultimately, the objective is to prioritize resistance and emancipatory futures. This entails the mapping of resistance through trade unions, social struggles, and solidarity networks facing war and disaster, as well as practical alternatives such as cooperatives and grassroots rebuilding. The ultimate objective of this endeavor is to theorize a liberatory vision of peace that transcends the constraints imposed by neoliberal governance and capitalist reconstruction. This vision is informed by anti-militarist and anti-fascist struggles, feminist, ecosocialist, and decolonial imaginaries, with the aim of forging solidarities that can transform war and disaster into catalysts for collective emancipation.

In addition to our main theme, we are organizing the following streams. Please read their Call for Papers before you submit:

• Marxism, Religion and Culture
• Ecology, Food, and Agriculture 
• Marxism and Technology 
• War, Capital and Law
• Race, Gender and Social Reproduction 
• Marxist Theories of Fascism and Authoritarianism 
• Critical Political Economy 
• Advancing the Frontiers of Marxist Philosophy

Whilst we encourage papers and panels that address these themes, as always, the Historical Materialism Istanbul conference seeks to provide a space for critical Marxist theory and research across the globe and a range of disciplines and interests, so submissions on other themes are welcome.

Conference fees:

	Global North	Global South	Turkey
Full-waged	125$	60$	1250TL
Low-waged	75$	30$	500TL
Unwaged	25$	10$	Gratis

• Historical Materialism 2026 is produced by militant labour and we are open for solidarity donations. As the Organizing Committee, we can provide receipts for your donations.

Important Dates:

Deadline for Submissions is extended to 12 December 2025.

For paper proposals, please use this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd4YfMfCPcepobqT7j5hLiTBieiH
aexLW3BzaM2CtND1SUNRQ/viewform.
For panel proposals, please use this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd4YfMfCPcepobqT7j5hLiTBieiHaexLW3BzaM2CtND1SUNRQ/viewform.

The organizational committee of Historical Materialism Istanbul 2026 can be reached at: hmistanbul.conference@gmail.com

Please note that individual papers and panels should include:

• Names of participants with e-mails and affiliations, and clear indication of a corresponding author where there is more than one participant
• Title of paper or panel – In the case of a paper an abstract of no longer than 300 words. In the case of panels, an overarching description of 300 words and as relevant, abstracts for individual papers.
• The official language of the conference is English. Please note that this year, there will be a limited number of panels held in Turkish. Regardless of the presentation language, all abstracts must be submitted in English.

Partial submissions may be rejected if they are incomplete.

We still believe that this particular format of the in-person conference offers a unique and irreplaceable form that brings together comrades, enables discussion, helps the dissemination of new and original research, creates research networks and communities, and builds solidarity. This is why we will not normally accept online presentations. We would also note that we do engage in online broadcasts and podcasts all year round for such sessions.

As in the past, the conference ethos is strictly egalitarian. This means everyone is invited to contribute in a comradely spirit, the conference is open to all currents of critical Marxist theory and we expect all presenters to attend the entire conference, not just their own session (with no ‘cameo appearances’). The conference is an important part of the broader Historical Materialism project – including the journal, the book series, and the global network of HM conferences – and we want to encourage all conference participants to get involved with these different elements, for example by submitting their conference paper to the journal.

This conference is organised under the aegis of Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory (http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/), which supports a journal (http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/journal) a book series (https://brill.com/view/serial/HM) and Marxist conferences across the globe.