This talk will survey conservative arguments against social levelling, from Edmund Burke onwards, alongside and in contrast to communist critiques of equality (above all Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme and Lenin's State and Revolution) which link our customary conceptions of equality and redistribution to bourgeois conceptions of rights and capitalist forms of value. The aim will be to try and think through what is at stake in contemporary movements for social justice beyond demands for rights and redistribution.

Alberto Toscano is a professor of Sociology at Goldsmith's in England. His most recent book is: Fanaticism - On the Uses of an Idea.  A recent interview with him discussing the book can be found here, an interview with him in the Guardian is here, and a video of a talk here.