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Socialist Register 2021: Ursula Huws on Reaping the Whirlwind
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsGreg Albo and Steve Maher will introduce Socialist Register 2021—Beyond Digital Capitalism followed by Ursula Huws presenting on her essay, “Reaping the Whirlwind: Digitization, Restructuring, and Moblization in the Covid Crisis”
The Time of Our Lives with Bryan Palmer
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAt the current historical conjuncture, time has become the challenge for socialists to address, not only because it defines what does and does not constitute the working day, but because it is increasingly obvious that time and its organization defines life itself. Will time continue to be compressed into capital’s needs, or will it be reimagined as liberation, struggled through and over in ways that enhance the project of human emancipation?
Interpretation Machines: Contradictions of “Artificial Intelligence” in 21st Century Capitalism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhat are capitalist concerns getting into in the embrace of so-called artificial intelligence? What is capital getting the world into? In approaching these questions, it may be useful to set aside the term "artificial intelligence" in favour of "interpretation machines."
Socialists on Social Media Platforms and Imagine Platform Socialism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhile digital platforms are enabling socialists to communicate in ways that were not possible in the pre-digital world of mass media, they are supplements to – not substitutes for – building democratic and sustainable socialist organizations and militant working-class movements.
A People’s Guide to Capitalism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDespite the efforts of mainstream commentators to convince us otherwise, many are asking questions about why the capitalist system has produced such vast inequality and wanton disregard for its own environmental destruction. This book offers answers to exactly these questions on their own terms: in the form of a radical economic theory. The 14-week class which begins in early January will feature a close reading and discussion of the entire book with explication and references to additional materials related to this study.
A New Digital Taylorism? with Matt Cole, Hugo Radice, Charles Umney
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsIn his analysis of the workplace, Marx concludes that “Large-scale industry possesses in the machine system an entirely objective organization of production, which confronts the worker as a pre-existing material condition of production:”, and defines this condition as the real subsumption of labor. A hundred years later, his analysis informed modern socialist studies of labor and the struggle for workplace.
Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 1, Special 4 week
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsStarting this Saturday there will be a new four-week session on Saturday evenings from 6 to 8 pm covering Chapter One of Volume One of Karl Marx's Capital. All are welcome to attend. Register here on The MEP site.
The Big Tech Monopolies and the State with Grace Blakeley
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAs the effects of the coronavirus pandemic swept through the global economy, the average observer could have been forgiven for missing a critical piece of news: by May 2020, the combined market capitalization of the four largest US tech companies reached one fifth of the entire S&P 500. Four companies – Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook – now account for 20 per cent of the combined value of the 500 largest US corporations – an unparalleled level of market concentration. Forty years these corporate entitites were either just beyond being plucky start-ups, or did not even exist.
Capital, Volume 1, Part 2
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsSession 2 will complete the analysis of Part I: Commodities and Money, starting with Chapter 2: The Process of Exchange followed by the historical development of the money form in the circulation of commodities. This in turn leads to the Transformation of Money into Capital, positioning the reader to analyze the specific social relations of capitalist production (wage labor and owners of capital) in relation to the forces of production, the means of production.
Reinventing the Welfare State: Book + talk special
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWith positivity and rigor, Ursula Huws will outline a ‘digital welfare state’ for the 21st century, which would involve a repurposing of online platform technologies under public control to modernise and expand public services, and improve accessibility.
Socialist Register 2021: Beyond Digital Capitalism (the entire series)
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsBeyond Digital Capitalism: New Ways of Living Continues on April 27 with another final session on May 2 There are tickets for each session for those who are unable to be present for this series. The series tickets provide entrance to the remaining 6 presentations with discussions. “In addressing how far digital technology has become ... Read more
The Cost of Free Shipping: Amazon in the Global Economy
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWith cutting-edge analyses, this book looks at the many dark facets of the corporation, including automation, surveillance, tech work, workers' struggles, algorithmic challenges, the disruption of local democracy and much more. “The Cost of Free Shipping” shows how Amazon represents a fundamental shift in global capitalism that we should name, interrogate and be primed to resist.
Re:sources / Re:lations with Working Group on Globalization and Culture
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture will share our collective research on two ubiquitous words of our contemporary vocabulary: resources and relations this coming Sunday, June 6/
THEMATIC CLUSTERS: On Sunday June 6, we will present the two clusters: Source Memory: Relating Archival Contradictions and The Relations of Human Resources.
Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsBy engaging in what Karl Marx called a workers' inquiry, workers and militant co-researchers are studying their working conditions, the technical composition of capital, and how to recompose their own power in order to devise new tactics, strategies, organizational forms and objectives. These workers’ inquiries, from call center workers to platform, trucking, cleaning, logistics, mining, auto factories, teachers, and adjunct professors, are re-energizing unions, bypassing unions altogether or innovating new forms of workers' organizations.
Pluto Wildcat Series: Final 2 sessions—Augmented Exploitation and Wobblies of the World
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThese books uncover the radical militancy which characterises international workers struggles, both contemporary and historical. Looking at diverse topics including proletarianisation and class formation, mass production, gender, affective and reproductive labour, syndicalism and independent unions, and labour and Leftist social and political movements, it is the most comprehensive exploration into workers’ organisation being developed today. All books from the series are available at the MEP on-line book store.