Brecht’s Communist Manifesto Today!

Poetry, Utopia, Doctrine

Darko Suvin with Pratyush Chandra, Bill Henning, Javeed Malik & Neeraj Malick, and Christopher Winks

“Poetry and communism: forms for emancipatory egalitarian longing. As vectors of desire, they intertwine frustration and hope, utopia and organization, bread and roses. They call us to attend to the past, not just to survive, but to establish again the revolutionary horizon we need to live. Communism and poetry: Darko Suvin shows us how they are the same.”     —Jodi Dean, author of Comrade: An Essay on Political Belonging

A POEM • WHAT EXISTENTIAL ANTI-UTOPIA MEANS FOR US • BERTOLT BRECHT: (THE MANIFESTO) •  COMMENTS ON BRECHT’S MANIFESTO •  WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” —1848 Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels.

Come join in a celebration and reclamation of the challenge Marx and Engels gave humanity in the original 1848 Communist Manifesto, reclaimed and rewritten anew in poetry by Bertolt Brecht in the 20th century. Thanks to Darko Suvin, poet and revolutionary intellectual, Brecht’s unpublished work has been translated into English and is here, ready to be appropriated by us of the 21st century. The Marxist Education Project is proud to present a reading and discussion of Brecht’s work and its meaning for us at a time when all of humanity, our earth, and all life as we know it is threatened by the moribund laws of self-seeking capitalist private property. Brecht premises his poem on the practical reality, only fully in place after WWII, of a globalized capitalized world. Marx understood that capitalist relations would globalize our societies and earth and saw this taking place, but during his lifetime this had not yet been fully achieved. Now, having occupied our earth, today, the Bezos and company are exploring the possibilities of extending their private interests into our universe all for their personal aggrandizement and under the dictates of money making more money, accumulation for the sake of accumulation. Our guest speakers and discussants will explore the relations of poetry, the meaning of utopia and anti-utopia, and doctrine as we re-envision the emancipatory project and the necessity of self-consciously identifying the difficult tasks of transitioning specific to our particular country’s development while always in relation to and for the mutual development of each and all. Interestingly, Brecht closes his Manifesto replying to Marx and Engels closing line in their Manifesto, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win,” by answering, “How may the workers break their own class chains? Only by breaking everybody’s chains.” Marx once said that there are historical moments when the working class must gain class-consciousness and become historical subjects. We are at just such a historical moment.

Are we up to the task?

This event is sliding scale: $23 for those who can afford front row orchestra seating / $3 General Admission a / $0 General Admission b

With registration a link for the event will be provided in time for attending this event.