Seminars and Talks
Book Talk: Liberating Abortion
Recording available on YouTubeRegina 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.
A Prime Competitor: Understanding Amazon’s Market Power
Recording available on YouTubeStephen Maher and Scott Aquanno present an innovative analysis of Amazon's market power, drawing on major themes from Marx's Capital, volume 2. In a recent contribution published by Canada's Socialist Project, they challenge understandings of "monopoly" common in mainstream economics as well as among sections of the left.
Translating ‘Capital’ for the 21st Century
Recording available on YouTubeThe appearance of a new English-language edition of Marx's Capital, Volume I, translated and edited by Paul Reitter and Paul North, has been a momentous occasion. Join a conversation with Reitter, North, and noted Marx scholar Michael Heinrich on the challenges of translating Marx for 21st century readers, the weaknesses and strengths of earlier translations, and the ways the new edition can help us understand Marx's analyses of capital and value.
Reading Capital in an Age of Climate Change
Recording available on YouTubeMatt Huber highlights the relevance to the climate crisis of key concepts from Marx's 'Capital' such as value, the hidden abode of production, surplus-value, the accumulation of capital, primitive accumulation, and the expropriation of the expropriators.
LA Is Burning with Dennis Broe
Recording available on YouTubeDennis Broe examines the history of LA wildfires to shed light on the ingrained power, the structural class and racial imbalances, and the wanton devastation of a city organized not for its people but for its elites.
Bertolt Brecht’s Anti-Capitalist Aesthetics
Recording available on YouTubeAnthony Squiers presents an overview of Brecht’s revolutionary Marxist aesthetic and examine its usefulness as a weapon in today's struggles.
‘The Late Marx’s Revolutionary Roads’ with author Kevin Anderson
Recording available on YouTubeKevin Anderson presents his newly published book, 'The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads,' based on systematic analysis of Karl Marx’s "Ethnological Notebooks" and related Marx texts from his final years, 1869-1883.
State of Emergency in US Higher Education
Recording available on YouTubeAlan Wald presents an overview of the state of emergency in higher education in the United States that recalls earlier eras of extreme political repression, such as McCarthyism in the 1950s. Students, faculty, and staff at US colleges and universities who stand up for Palestinian human rights and stopping the genocide in Gaza are being threatened with deportation and punished by the administrations.
Trump, the State, and Global Capital
Recording available on YouTubeLooking at the early weeks of the Trump regime through a Marxists lens presents a major challenge, but who better to meet it than Steve Maher and Clara Mattei, whose historical analyses of finance capital and the capitalist state have garnered well-deserved praise. Join us as we engage Steve and Clara in an open-ended conversation aimed at bringing some clarity to the burgeoning chaos that is shaking up U.S. and global capitalism and the imperialist state system.
60 Years Since the April Revolution in Santo Domingo
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsJoin us on May 3 for a panel to commemorate the 6oth anniversary of the April Revolution in Santo Domingo and discuss its political implications, the role of working-class Afro-Dominicans, women, LGBTQ people, Haitian internationalist fighters, socialists, writers and artists as well as the worldwide international solidarity movement that ensued in the face of imperialist onslaught.
‘Roses for Gramsci’ with Andy Merrifield
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAuthor Andy Merrifield presents 'Roses for Gramsci,' a remarkable personal journey through the life and writings of the great Sardinian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci.
Through the Lens of Spectacle: Panel 1, Oversight
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants“The spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep,” Guy Debord declared in The Society of the Spectacle (1967): it is “a permanent opium war.” A half-century later, the specter of the spectacle continues to haunt Marxist cultural studies. In two linked panels, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture proposes to track “the worldwide division of spectacular tasks” from lens manufacture to retail logistics, stadiums to camptowns, polar expeditions to spring festivals, as well as revolutionary specters in novels and borders, assassinations and squares.
Through the Lens of Spectacle: Panel 2, Witness
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants“The spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep,” Guy Debord declared in The Society of the Spectacle (1967): it is “a permanent opium war.” A half-century later, the specter of the spectacle continues to haunt Marxist cultural studies. In two linked panels, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture proposes to track “the worldwide division of spectacular tasks” from lens manufacture to retail logistics, stadiums to camptowns, polar expeditions to spring festivals, as well as revolutionary specters in novels and borders, assassinations and squares.
Trotsky in New York Walking Tour
Join Alex Steinberg and Daniel Lazare for a historical walking tour of Lower Manhattan as we explore some of the places where Leon Trotsky visited and worked during his nine week stay in New York in early 1917.
Aristotle, Hegel, Marx: A Philosophical Dialogue
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsJoin us for a dialogue on philosophical themes featuring the authors of two forthcoming books. Michael Lazarus is the author of 'Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx,' and Jensen Suther is the author of 'True Materialism: Hegelian Marxism and the Modernist Struggle for Freedom.'