Capitalism and Robbery: The Planetary Mine

Convened by Fred Murphy and Gerardo Rénique

This eight-week study group will consider how capitalism is rooted in robbery—of the earth, of the water, air, and soil of communities, of the livelihoods of working people. Such theft is becoming more massive in scale and more technologically sophisticated, but is also evoking new forms of popular resistance – as we will read in Martín Arboleda’s innovative new contribution to international political economy, Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism.

I see the mountains fall, the terrain open up in angry dark cavities, the desert, the temporary shacks. The mineral is fired and beaten and handled to become military ingots, battalions of merchandise. The ships depart. Wherever the copper arrives, as utensil or wire, no one who touches it sees the rugged solitudes of Chile, or the small houses at the edge of the desert … —Pablo Neruda, Ode to Copper

Online participation by Zoom teleconferencing can be arranged.

FRED MURPHY has led numerous study groups at the Marxist Education Project since 2015. He studied and taught Latin American history at the New School for Social Research. In the 1980s he traveled in Latin America as a journalist for several socialist publications.

GERARDO RÉNIQUE teaches history at the City College of the City University of New York. He is a frequent contributor to Socialism and Democracy and NACLA: Report on the Americas. His research interests include the political traditions of popular movements in Latin America, and race, national identity and state formation in Mexico.

Contributions:
Classroom attendance, sliding scale: $65 / $80 / $95
Remote participation via Zoom, sliding scale: $40 / $50 / $60
No one is denied participation for lack of ability to pay