Seminars and Talks
Events
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Karl Marx in America with Andrew Hartman
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeA video of this October 26, 2025, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. Historian Andrew Hartman introduces his new book, Karl Marx in America. To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation, but Marx’s ideas have inspired ... Read more
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Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary, with Mitchell Abidor
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeJoin us for a conversation with Mitchell Abidor, author of the forthcoming book, "Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary."
Today, thanks to his classic memoirs and novels, Victor Serge is highly esteemed by virtually all segments of the left. But who was this man, who led such a thrilling life on the frontlines of history? -
Hubert Harrison: Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism
Recording available on YouTubeA video of this November 8, 2025, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. Brian Kwoba's recently published Hubert Harrison: Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism introduces the working-class journalist, activist, and educator Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927), who generated an array of visionary solutions to the systemic injustices of his day. After blazing a trail ... Read more
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Capitalism and the Politics of Nature with Alyssa Battistoni
Recording available on YouTubeRescheduled to November 16 / In her new book 'Free Gifts,' Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to place value on nature. But the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. Recovering and reinterpreting classical economists' idea of "free gifts of nature," Battistoni builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking.
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Slavery and Capitalism: A Book Talk by David McNally
Recording available on YouTubeA video of this November 29, 2025, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. A book talk by David McNally on Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History. McNally injects new life into Karl Marx’s writings on enslavement and labor, presenting a new, systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery—using colonial ... Read more
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Hegel, Marx, and Capital
Recording available on YouTubeAndy Blunden presents insights from two new books on Marx's use of Hegel's Logic in the writing of Capital.
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Reading ‘Karl Marx in America’
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupAn eight-week study of Andrew Hartman's recently published Karl Marx in America. To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation, but Marx’s ideas have inspired a wide range of people to formulate a more precise sense of the stakes of ... Read more
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Roundtable on Venezuela, Oil, and Global Politics
Recording available on YouTubeA video of this January 21, 2026, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. A conversation among leading left critics of the Trump administration's attack on Venezuelan sovereignty and its attempt to seize that nation's oil wealth. Matt Huber challenges interpretations of these events as simply another case of "blood for oil." Steve Maher ... Read more
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Extraction: A Book Talk with Author Thea Riofrancos
Recording available on YouTubeVirtual EventBook Event or PanelThea Riofrancos, author of 'Extractions,' unpacks the challenges of "green capitalism" through the lens of lithium, a so-called "critical mineral" essential for its role in decarbonizing one of the most polluting sectors: transportation.
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Protective Presence in the West Bank
Recording available on YouTubeBook Event or PanelLive event concluded, but you may watch the recording on YouTube. The only people standing beside the Palestinians of the West Bank as they defend themselves from ethnic cleansing are protective presence activists. Celeste Marcus and Mitch Abidor have both spent time in the West Bank doing protective presence, accompanying Palestinians in their fields and ... Read more
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Approaching the Limit: Panel 1, Thresholds
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingBook Event or PanelIn two linked panels, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture explores the limits and limitations of our world—sensory, spatial, temporal, social, cultural, political. I their geographical and methodological variety, our papers collectively map out the terrai of this keyword, and seek to determine the bounds, so to speak, of studying, theorizing and making culture at the limit.
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Approaching the Limit: Panel 2, Extremities
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingBook Event or PanelIn two linked panels, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture explores the limits and limitations of our world—sensory, spatial, temporal, social, cultural, political. I their geographical and methodological variety, our papers collectively map out the terrain of this keyword, and seek to determine the bounds, so to speak, of studying, theorizing and making culture at the limit. This second panel questions the socio-spatial manifestations of the limit and its political and property avatars: the border the boundary, and the zone.
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Marx and the Body with Søren Mau
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingIn this talk, Søren Mau will argue that Marx's writings on the body have been underestimated and that a critical reconstruction of his analysis contains the basis for a theory of the corporeal roots of historicity and freedom. Throughout the history of Western thought, the body has often been overlooked, devalued, or treated with mistrust ... Read more
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Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeA panel celebrating the 2026 edition of Socialist Register. The newly published 2026 volume of Socialist Register - entitled "Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins" - interrogates anew the notion that global capitalism is in its end time (a recurring theme among Marxists since 1848). At the heart of this concept are indications that capital accumulation is running up against some inherent limits. just as the hucksters of private capital are crowing that so-called Artificial Intelligence will usher in a capitalist utopia of unlimited prosperity (for whom?).
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Porn, Gambling, and the American Psyche with Dennis Broe
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingNovelist and film critic Dennis Broe takes a critical look at the pornography and gambling industries - the new bread and circuses, only without the bread. With the American empire in decline and with working and living conditions worsening for most American workers as prices rise, wages stagnate and AI comes for their jobs, these ... Read more
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