The world is out of joint. It has been 10 years since the financial crisis once again made it clear that money and its successful multiplication rule the world. When the previously flourishing growth of financial capital suddenly came to a standstill, the previously advertised financial products suddenly became worthless, individual banks collapsed and others had to be 'rescued' by the state because they were too big to fail, the entire production process threatened to collapse. In capitalism, it became apparent, the wealth of society, its production process and ultimately the lives of people depend on a peculiar, independent movement of valorisation of financial capital.

Climate change, the extinction of species, the uncanny increase in cancer, etc. are warning signs of how the use of nature by the capitalist mode of production, which goes beyond all organic limits, is causing threateningly increasing and irreversible destruction of both the natural foundations of life and of human life itself.

The upheaval of industrial production processes through information and communication technology ('fourth industrial revolution', 'digitalisation'), which is taking place under capitalist command, empowers subjects to an unprecedented extent and integrates them into the business with their data.

From the very beginning, the guardians of academic science marginalised Marx's Capital as a pamphlet, as violating the code of value-free science. In the meantime, Marx and especially his central economic writings have become irrelevant at the university. No wonder, because the university is the place where intelligent characters are ruined. The Marx conference "200 years of Marx, 150 years of Das Kapital - The sting remains!" aims to bring to life the disquiet that Marx's critique of political economy represents and to incite opposition to the prevailing opinion precisely where this opinion is academically dressed up and cemented. The sting becomes palpable when the most precise reading of Marx's texts clears away everything that has been piled up by an often obfuscating history of reception. This is how the revolutionary potential of Marx's theory can and should be uncovered. Marx's theory is still the theory that grasps the essence of capital. The current academic establishment reveals the truth about its function for bourgeois society and its state when it relegates the theory of the essence of contemporary society from the university.

There is no doubt that Das Kapital is neither a theoretically complete nor a perfect nor a timeless work. But we have no better economic theory that grasps the essence of capital. Das Kapital discusses the central theoretical elements for explaining the still prevailing mode of production. The further development of capitalism in the 150 years since the book was published - outlined above: Financial crisis, destruction of nature, digitalisation - throws a glaring light on the fact that it has become a question de vie et de mort to further develop Marx's theory for some spheres, such as that of finance capital, in order not to perish in and with the world that has gone off the rails. Marx could not have anticipated the power that finance capital has gained today. The scale of the destruction of the natural foundations of life that has now taken place is beyond the imagination of a 19th century man and exceeds even that of his contemporaries, especially when, although the information is accessible, they do not want to recognise the extent of the destruction. The principle, namely that capital acts ruthlessly and solely for the purpose of its utilisation against the natural foundations of life, this principle can already be found in Marx, derived from the concept of capital. In view of such quantitatively and qualitatively new manifestations of capitalism, it is vital to expand Marx's theory on the basis of the basic theoretical elements in Capital and also to develop it further in part. For this reason, a simple Marx philology, the musealisation of Capital or the celebration of Marx as a brilliant 19th century thinker who foresaw great things would be wrong.

We are dedicating the planned conference to the sting of disquiet: Marxian theory today, that is: Marxian theory in the face of the further development of capitalist relations, the intensification of the rule of the state and the processes of destruction that threaten us. We divide into individual subject areas. In good academic tradition, the speaker and respondent will give presentations on the individual topics (about 20 minutes each). The subsequent discussion will form the centre of the conference.