AI versus Labor: Luddism and Beyond
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants8 weekly sessions starting Oct 1. Is Artificial Intelligence (AI, sic) really the dire threat to the future of humanity as even some of its proponents claim, or is it a more mundane and familiar threat to working people who face loss of their livelihoods and/or further speed-up and alienation? The entire history of industrial capitalism is punctuated by recurring waves of automation to reduce labor costs and turnover time, each time provoking strong resistance by the affected workforce. This reading group will probe the history both of AI and computer technology specifically and of working-class resistance to capitalist automation in general.
Studies in Marx’s Capital
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsFollowing up on the MEP's long-running study group on Karl Marx's Grundrisse, we have been reading closely and discussing Marx's 'Theories of Surplus Value' and related works. At present we are reading selections from David Harvey's 'The Limits to Capital,' and we plan to read Soren Mau's 'Mute Compulsion' and Beverley Best's 'The Automatic Fetish.'
Book Talk: On the History of Capitalist ‘Reforms’
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsGiampaolo Conte presents 'A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms', just published by Routledge. Conte's historical research demonstrates that the chief purpose of such reforms has been to integrate semi-peripheral states into the capitalist world-economy.
Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ – An Epilogue and a Prologue
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsHegel for Radicals resumes on October 19 with a nine-week course co-hosted by Alex Steinberg and Matthew Strauss. We will read and discuss the Introduction and Preliminary Concepts from Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, sometimes called “The Shorter Logic.” The material we will be discussing can stand alone as an Introduction to Hegel’s magnum opus, The Science of Logic. But for those who have already studied the Science of Logic with us this can serve as completion of the Circle of the dialectic.
Book Talk: Liberating Abortion
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsRegina Mahone presents Liberating Abortion, a galvanizing history recentering people of color to put forth a timely argument that we must liberate abortion for all. Mahone and co-author Renee Bracey Sherman illustrate the long racist history that brought us to this moment, uncover the hidden figures who laid the foundations that activists and storytellers are building on today, and explain how abortion has been and remains essential to the health of our communities.
Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAn open-ended reading group on Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life - a major manifesto of humanist Marxism and a clarion call for revolutionary praxis through sustained critique of daily living. “Lefebvre pushed philosophy out into the streets,” the critic McKenzie Wark has written; his work has influenced fields as diverse as sociology, cultural studies, architecture and urban planning, as well as movements including the Situationist International and the activists of May 1968.
Annual Pass
This pass constitutes an annual donation to help sustain the Marxist Education Project's classes and events during an entire year from the month of purchase. (For example, a pass purchased on October 7, 2024, will be valid until October 31, 2025.)
Historical Roots of American Fascism and Political Strategy Today
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThe new season of the Political Strategy reading group will explore in depth six major waves of struggle and counter-revolution in the United States, from the early decades of the republic to the present. With each new era, we will use readings and discussion to address three major points of analysis: Sources, strengths, and strategies ... Read more