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The Necessity of Social Control by István Mészáros

Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants

During these remaining eight sessions we will do an ongoing close reading of Mészáros’ The Necessity of Social Control (Monthly Review Press). This read in order to better understand the fundamental contradictions of capitalism, the forms of domination and exploitation inherent in its logic, historical efforts to develop an alternative economy and society, and the challenge of sustainable development and substantive equality. We aim to develop our own knowledge of the necessary conditions for emancipation and discuss the relevance of the text for our lives today.

$15.00 – $35.00

Old and New Contradictions: Opening Socialist Register 2022 Session—The Crisis of Centrism

The stage is set well for Socialist Register No. 58 in the Preface by Greg Albo and Colin Leys:   “current multi-dimensional crisis, the center-right consensus that was struck around the neoliberal policy regime has been steadily splintering, with a phalanx of far right and neo-fascist groups inserting themselves into electoral politics and gaining prominence ‘in the streets’ (not least in motley demonstrations against pandemic measures of any kind, from lockdowns to masking). The observation that capitalism is always characterized by just such economic and political polarizations has preoccupied – even haunted –socialist analysis from its very origins: in Marx’s and Engels’ memorable phrase of revolutionary optimism in The Communist Manifesto, ‘the more or less open civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and … lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat’. In the much picked-over chapter in Marx’s Capital on ‘The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation’, the language is just as vibrant but now stark in its imagery: ‘The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and therefore also the greater the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productivity of itslabor, the greater is the industrial reserve army…. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time the accumulation of misery, the torment of labor, slavery, ignorance, brutalization at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.’

$4 – $39

Marx’s Grundrisse: Last two weeks until spring term

Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants

“Forces of production and social relations – two different sides of the development of the social individual – appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high…” —Karl Marx, The Grundrisse

$12.00 – $24.00

Marx’s Grundrisse: Last two weeks until spring term

Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants

“Forces of production and social relations – two different sides of the development of the social individual – appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high…” —Karl Marx, The Grundrisse

$12.00 – $24.00

After the Pandemic: Rebuilding the Medicare for All Movement

The Covid crisis drove home both the absurdity of linking healthcare to employment and the importance of treating healthcare as a decommodified public good. But the politics of the emerging post pandemic period are not conducive to big, transformative initiatives like Medicare for All.

$3 – $11

Socialist Register 2022 — Polarization and Socialism: The Direction Forward

It is a truism that electoral politics and political identity in the USA and Europe today are polarized to a degree unknown since the 1930s. It is a commonplace among the pundits of the ruling class that somehow “both sides” must return to “moderate” common sense to avoid a violent rupture of our society. They seldom question the underlying causes of this polarization, let alone whether it is rooted in the very nature of late capitalism.

This is not the case with the contributors to the 58th volume of Socialist Register. From different perspectives, they ask us to think about the deep social contradictions exposed by increasing polarization of the most economically developed societies along lines of wealth, race, gender, nation-state, and region. Members of this class meet once each month for four months to discuss selected articles from SR 58 with editor Greg Albo, joined by various authors organized around the following themes on one Sunday a month from March 20 through May 115, 2022. The recording of the February 20 session is available by writing to info@marxedproject.org

$7 – $34

The Solutions are Already Here with author Peter Gelderloos

Across the world, grassroots networks of local communities are working to realize their visions of an alternative revolutionary response to planetary destruction, often pitted against the new megaprojects promoted by greenwashed alternative energy infrastructures and the neocolonialist, technocratic policies that are the forerunners of the Green New Deal.

Gelderloos interviews food sovereignty activists in Venezuela, Indigenous communities reforesting their lands in Brazil and anarchists fighting biofuel plantations in Indonesia, looking at the battles that have cancelled airports, stopped pipelines, and helped the most marginalized to fight borders and environmental racism, to transform their cities, to win a dignified survival.

$3 – $11

Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim Our Digital Future from Big Tech

James Muldoon shows how grassroots communities and transnational social movements can take back control from Big Tech. He reframes the technology debate and proposes a host of new ideas from the local to the international for how we can reclaim the emancipatory possibilities of digital platforms. Drawing on sources from forgotten histories to contemporary prototypes, he proposes an alternative system and charts a roadmap for how we can get there.

$3 – $11

The Marx Revival: John Bellamy Foster and Marcello Musto

The Marx Revival: Key Concepts and New Interpretations

A focus on Ecology with John Bellamy Foster and a presentation on Communism with Marcello Musto.
“Scornful neglect and intemperate hostility, haughty dismissal and marginal course adoption, selective co-optation and selective bowdlerization: these are some of the strategies of establishment intellectuals over the years in response to the challenger of the thinker born 204 years ago in Trier. Yet, here we are near the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, and it sometimes seems that Karl Marx’s ideas have never been as topical, or as commanding of respect and interest, as they are today.” —Marcello Musto, from the Preface, The Marx Revival

$3 – $11

Socialist Register 2022 — Polarization and Socialism: The Direction Forward

It is a truism that electoral politics and political identity in the USA and Europe today are polarized to a degree unknown since the 1930s. It is a commonplace among the pundits of the ruling class that somehow “both sides” must return to “moderate” common sense to avoid a violent rupture of our society. They seldom question the underlying causes of this polarization, let alone whether it is rooted in the very nature of late capitalism.

This is not the case with the contributors to the 58th volume of Socialist Register. From different perspectives, they ask us to think about the deep social contradictions exposed by increasing polarization of the most economically developed societies along lines of wealth, race, gender, nation-state, and region. Members of this class meet once each month for four months to discuss selected articles from SR 58 with editor Greg Albo, joined by various authors organized around the following themes on one Sunday a month from March 20 through May 115, 2022. The recording of the February 20 session is available by writing to info@marxedproject.org

$7 – $34