Class and Gender
The Invention of the White Race
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsTheodore W. Allen spent 30 years researching the primary sources and writing The Invention of the White Race (2 volumes), which provides a historical materialist analysis of racial oppression and the white identity which emerged as a principal form of social control over rebellious laboring class of European and Africans in the pattern setting colonies of Virginia and Maryland in the late 17th early 18th century.
The Condition of the Working Class in Turkey
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsMoving beyond headlines and personalities, uncovered are the real working class conditions in modern Turkey. Combining field research and interviews, cutting-edge analyses of workplace struggles, trade unionism, the AKP’s relationship with neoliberalism, migration, gender, agrarian change and precarity, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on workers are presented succinctly. Brought together by a broad range of Turkish activists and scholars who consider what the dynamics and contradictions of working-class resistance against Turkey’s neoliberal authoritarian regime have become.
Women Write on the Verge of Historical Change: Last session
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDuring this term, the MEP Literature Studies Group will read novels by women writers which explore the intersections of life in their communities, both at home and in the metropoles of Europe, India and the Philippines. These stories will take us to places and introduce us to people facing many of the dilemmas posed during late-stage capitalism, when the looming tipping points begin to collide. Reading and discussing these important writers could very well bring us to a broader sense of time and place. We will discussion Aminatta Forna and Gloria Apostol on December 2, 9, and 16.
Book Special Redux! Marx Dead and Alive: Reading Capital in Precarious Times
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThis is for ordering the book only. Andy has an upcoming talk on Sunday, January 23. We are offering this important book for $12.00 inclusive of postage (US and Puerto Rico only), until one week after Andy's presentation on Henri Lefebvre and Louis Althusser.
We Are “Nature” Defending Itself: Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsChronicles the story of the ZAD (zone to defend), a resistant land occupation emerging out of a decades-long struggle which stopped a new airport project. Fremeaux and Jordan blend rich eyewitness accounts with theory, inspired by a diverse array of approaches, from neo-animism to revolutionary biology, insurrectionary writings and radical art history.
Power Despite Precarity
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsPower Despite Precarity is part history, part handbook and a wholly indispensable resource in this fight. Joe Berry and Helena Worthen outline the four historical periods that led to major transitions in the work-lives of faculty of this sector. They then take a deep dive into the 30-year-long struggle by California State University lecturers to negotiate what is recognized as the best contract for contingents in the US.
Old and New Contradictions: Opening Socialist Register 2022 Session—The Crisis of Centrism
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThe stage is set well for Socialist Register No. 58 in the Preface by Greg Albo and Colin Leys: “current multi-dimensional crisis, the center-right consensus that was struck around the neoliberal policy regime has been steadily splintering, with a phalanx of far right and neo-fascist groups inserting themselves into electoral politics and gaining prominence ‘in the streets’ (not least in motley demonstrations against pandemic measures of any kind, from lockdowns to masking). The observation that capitalism is always characterized by just such economic and political polarizations has preoccupied – even haunted –socialist analysis from its very origins: in Marx’s and Engels’ memorable phrase of revolutionary optimism in The Communist Manifesto, ‘the more or less open civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and … lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat’. In the much picked-over chapter in Marx’s Capital on ‘The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation’, the language is just as vibrant but now stark in its imagery: ‘The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and therefore also the greater the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productivity of itslabor, the greater is the industrial reserve army…. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time the accumulation of misery, the torment of labor, slavery, ignorance, brutalization at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.’
Part One of Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThese seminars are accessible to people at all levels of familiarity with Gramsci’s work, including those just beginning their studies of Gramsci. This first session will be followed by consecutive sessions.
Building Alternatives in Rojava: Women’s Liberation & Cooperative Economy
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYOur speakers will trace the development of the Kurdish women’s movement and discuss the growth of Rojava’s cooperative economy, highlighting women’s autonomous economic organizing.
Emre Sahin is a participant and researcher of social movements, particularly the Kurdish movement, and a sociologist at Binghamton University.
Meghan Bodette is a researcher focused on Turkey, Syria and Kurdish issues.
The Embrace of Capital with author Don Milligan
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThe "spectre of communism" which Karl Marx confidently evoked in 1848 is now nothing more than a ghostly and ghastly nightmare, without form or substance. This is because working people have developed a love-hate relationship with capitalism. They hate insecurity, inequality, and greed, and love civic and political freedom. They love mass consumption, and accept the logic of commerce. Barreling along through wars, revolutions, epidemics, and crises of all sorts, working people in their millions have consistently dumfounded and dismayed the left, by their refusal to countenance any alternative to the capitalist mode of life. We have to ask: Is it possible to reverse this reality, and once again talk of the necessity of communism?
4 Month Pass Offering Through September 30, 2022
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe four month pass is now $50 less than when initiating these passes. All events, classes and more for stated sliding scale fees until end of day, September 30, 2022.
Iran Awakening: Novels by Iranian Women
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe winter 2023 series of the MEP Literature Group focuses on Iranian women writing since the 1978-79 Revolution whose stories are set in Iran in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will read three novels from the 1920s to the present: 'The Gardens of Consolation,' by Parisa Reza; 'Women Without Men,' by Shahrnush Parsipur; and 'Man of My Time,' by Dalia Sofer.
Woman, Life, Freedom: Iran through the Lens of Antonio Gramsci
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYJuxtaposing documentary video footage with selected readings from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, we will deepen our understanding of the current uprising among women and young people in Iran. Applying Gramsci's dual perspective on Individuality/Universality, Hegemony/Authority, Force/Consent, Terror/Legitimacy, Strategy/Tactic, Agitation/Propaganda, and State/Civil Society, we will examine spontaneous movements, subaltern groups, and the balance of domestic and international forces. Convened and facilitated by Piruz Alemi.
Iran Awakening II: More Novels by Iranian Women
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe spring 2023 series of the MEP Literature Group continues to focus on Iranian women writing since the 1978-79 Revolution whose stories are set inside Iran.
The Spectre Still Haunting: Introducing the Revolutionary Politics of Marx and Engels
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAn introductory reading group for those just getting acquainted with Marxist ideas, based on Marx and Engels' elegant and rousing classic The Manifesto of the Communist Party. We will be guided by China Miéville's thoughtful, provocative meditations on the Manifesto, A Spectre Haunting.