The capitalist war on science
Sunday August 30 at 2pm edt | 1pm cdt | 11am pdt

@ Resistance Press Bookroom 
427 Bloor St West and on zoom

Trump has launched unprecedented attacks on science and academic institutions, terminating or freezing over 7,000 research grants and firing over 25,000 scientists and researchers from government positions. Many were targeted purely because their proposals contained keywords offensive to the government’s far-right ideology, regardless of whether they were even studying social disparities. Medical science was also slashed under anti-vaccine conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Is this assault really unique to Trump? From 2007-2014 similar tactics abounded under the Harper government, who ended large swaths of funding and muzzled scientists from discussing their research. Under Carney, too, funding is shifting away from areas like climate change and sustainability, and towards militarism, resource extraction, and private-sector technologies. 

Since the Industrial Revolution science has been shackled to capitalism’s demands for ever-increasing production—resulting in innovation but also a narrowing of inquiry to subjects likely to yield profits. What could science look like if freed from these bonds? And how do we fight both far-right anti-intellectualism and the entrenched bourgeois system?

Suggested readings

• Explaining Trump’s anti-science moves By Undercover Scientist
• Who Owns Knowledge? - Science Under Capitalism and Socialism  by Alice Malone
• Defunding Science, Stifling Dissent: Lessons from Aotearoa By Max Soar and Courtney Addison
• Engels and natural science by Paul McGarr

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