Covid and Capital
Revolution in the Virocene: Near (or Nearing) the End of Time
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsIn an instant, the mantra of there is no alternative has been replaced by whatever happens, nothing will ever be the same. The ideology that says radical transformation is unrealistic has been irrevocably discredited. The bonds and rituals of everyday life have been loosened, fragmented and disjointed. What seemed inevitable and iron clad now feels flimsy as nation states globally scramble to find solutions that don’t exist. This opens up a space for thinking, and for politics. This new situation underscores a critical need for both practical intervention and an attempt at building a convergent philosophy that anticipates the praxis of the future.
Ecosocialism in the Shadow of Covid
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWe will read and discuss three books: The Corona Crash (Verso), by Grace Blakeley, details how the pandemic is ushering in a new era in which the corporate economy collapses into the arms of the state, and behemoths like Amazon and Netflix balloon in profit and power. White Skin, Black Fuel (Verso), by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, takes a comprehensive look at how extreme-right currents are responding to ecological crises with with authoritarian and xenophobic proposals while remaining ardent supporters of fossil capital – black fuels to support white supremacy. And A People’s Green New Deal (Pluto), by Max Ajl, engages critically with various Green New Deal proposals and sketches out a radical alternative committed to degrowth, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology.
Ecosocialism in the Shadow of Covid
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWe will read and discuss three books: The Corona Crash (Verso), by Grace Blakeley, details how the pandemic is ushering in a new era in which the corporate economy collapses into the arms of the state, and behemoths like Amazon and Netflix balloon in profit and power. White Skin, Black Fuel (Verso), by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, takes a comprehensive look at how extreme-right currents are responding to ecological crises with with authoritarian and xenophobic proposals while remaining ardent supporters of fossil capital – black fuels to support white supremacy. And A People’s Green New Deal (Pluto), by Max Ajl, engages critically with various Green New Deal proposals and sketches out a radical alternative committed to degrowth, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology.
Brecht’s Communist Manifesto Today!
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsBrecht closes his Manifesto replying to Marx and Engels closing line in their Manifesto, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win,” by answering, “How may the workers break their own class chains? Only by breaking everybody’s chains.” Marx once said that there are historical moments when the working class must gain class-consciousness and become historical subjects. We are at just such a historical moment. Are we up to the task?
The Condition of the Working Class in Turkey
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsMoving beyond headlines and personalities, uncovered are the real working class conditions in modern Turkey. Combining field research and interviews, cutting-edge analyses of workplace struggles, trade unionism, the AKP’s relationship with neoliberalism, migration, gender, agrarian change and precarity, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on workers are presented succinctly. Brought together by a broad range of Turkish activists and scholars who consider what the dynamics and contradictions of working-class resistance against Turkey’s neoliberal authoritarian regime have become.
After the Pandemic: Rebuilding the Medicare for All Movement
On-Line via Zoom New York, NYThe 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.
Socialist Register 2022: Polarization and Socialism: The Direction Forward
On-Line via Zoom New York, NYVISHWAS SATGUR on Epidemiological Neoliberalism in South Africa
JAMES SCHNEIDER and HILARY WAINWRIGHT on Finding a Way Forward: Lessons from the Corbyn Project
ADOLPH REED, JR. and TOURE REED on “Race” and Racial Justice under Neoliberalism
SAM GINDIN on American Workers and the Left after Trump: Polarized Options
Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-Pandemic
On-Line via Zoom New York, NYVideo available: https://youtu.be/FlJYh3VDWNU
William I. Robinson's new book Global Civil War provides a big-picture account of how the coronavirus pandemic and new digital technologies have drastically transformed capitalism and the entire global economy and society. Analyzing the concentration of power and control in the hands of corporate conglomerates, tech giants, megabanks, and the military-industrial complex, the book documents the extent of unprecedented global inequalities as the mass of humanity faces violent dispossession and uncertain survival. The book issues a dire warning against the emergence of a dystopic digitalized dictatorship but also finds great hope and inspiration in the burgeoning social movements of the poor and the dispossessed as humanity descends into global civil war.
Mutant Ecologies in the Age of Genomic Capital
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsIn their new book Mutant Ecologies: Manufacturing Life in the Age of Genomic Capital, Erica Borg and Amedeo Policante assess recent developments in genomic science, genome editing and the biotech industry, presenting a critical cartography of the shifting landscapes of capital accumulation conjured by such innovations. Discussants: Ariel Salleh and Stuart Newman.