Multi-session Classes
Fascism, Antifascism, Gaza, and Political Strategy
Where does the rising wave of authoritarianism and "late fascism" fit in the global relations of force at work today? And what paths of resistance work in response? The war in Gaza has brought to a head the left’s strategic dilemmas facing new, overt forms of fascism. Questions include the historical relationship of settler ... Read more
Reading Science Fiction Politically: Diverging Futures
In Palestine +100: Stories from a Century after the Nakba, edited by Basma Ghalayini, as well as other recent books, Palestinian authors have begun to discover the power of science fiction. "Everyday life, for is a kind of dystopia." In this situation, "The real future --the actual future -- is unknowable. But for SF writers, ... Read more
Summer Noir 2024
The MEP Literature Group’s Summer Noir tradition of enjoying the bracing vitality of pulp continues with six short novels on the themes of difficult trips and political mayhem. Be warned: Do not expect happy endings in novels featuring corruption, futility and deception. Enrollees need not attend all sessions; to accommodate summer travel, we selected short ... Read more
Hegel for Radicals: The Science of Logic III
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's recurring series Hegel for Radicals concludes our reading of Hegel's magnum opus, The Science of Logic, Part III. Familiarity with this work greatly aids any reading of Marx's Capital. Alex Steinberg guides participants past the legendary obstacles to understanding this unsurpassed presentation of dialectics. Its depth and systematic structure is without parallel in any other of Hegel's works.
The Circulation of Capital: Volume II of Marx’s Capital
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA weekly study group covering Marx's Capital, Volume II, The Process of Circulation of Capital. In this volume, Marx addresses the question: How can the reproduction of society as a whole take place, if there is no conscious social planning that ensures that all needs are met, in the necessary proportions, such that life can persist and the capitalist relations of production be sustained? We discover the answer, but we also learn of new contradictions and sources of crisis inherent to capitalist society.
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.
Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ – An Epilogue and a Prologue
Hegel for Radicals concludes the current series with a nine-week course co-hosted by Alex Steinberg and Matthew Strauss. We are reading the Introduction and Preliminary Concepts from Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, sometimes called “The Shorter Logic.” This material 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.
Marx Miniseries: The ‘Resultate’
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's Capital Studies Group presents a miniseries on the chapter Marx omitted from published editions of Capital. Titled "Results of the Immediate Process of Production" and often referred to by the German 'Resultate', this long chapter can be read as a bridge between volumes 1 and 2 of Capital.
Reading Gramsci for Today’s Movements
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAn ongoing study group on the Prison Notebooks and other works of Antonio Gramsci. We explore Gramsci's themes and concepts, including state-civil society relations, historical bloc, hegemony, spontaneity, strategy and tactic, and language. We follow Gramsci’s philological method, addressing such areas as linguistics, cinema, critical theory, literature, journalism, comics, animation, plastic arts, mass media and Machiavellian political studies.
Celebrating 75 Years of Palestinian Literature – Final Series
Three weekly sessions on Thursdays at 7 pm US ET, Starting January 9 The MEP’s months-long reading of Palestinian literature concludes in January with a reading of the recently issued memoir My Palestine: An Impossible Exile by Mohammad Tarbush. This highly praised memoir written by a man born during the Nakba and who died after ... Read more
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.
Literature of Burundi – A poorly reported conflict
Thursdays in February, Starting February 6, at 7:00 pm US ET In February, the Literature Reading Group will leave countries with extensive literature translated into English for Burundi, an East African nation considered the poorest country in the world. Burundi has had only two novels translated into English. Both novels take as a backdrop the country’s ... Read more
Reading Science Fiction Politically: In Ascension
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants"To build a better future, we have to envision it first." Reading science fiction, discussing it together, and reading it politically, offers one tool for "envisioning" a future worth building. This fall, we continue our explorations of diverse points of view of social conflict and resolution, possible and imagined just worlds, here on Earth and perhaps afar.
‘Citizen Marx’ with author Bruno Leipold
Recording available on YouTubeWhat better time than the present moment to revisit Karl Marx’s commitment to the democratic republic as a necessary (if not sufficient) step on the path to human freedom? Author Bruno Leipold presents his recently published 'Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought.'
Historical Roots of American Fascism: Manisha Sinha–Rise and Fall
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsTake part in the Political Strategy Study Group’s sweeping look at the history and political significance of the major waves of struggle and counter-revolution in the United States. Our Reconstruction Era study now focuses on W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction and Manisha Sinha’s The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920. We will use ... Read more