Globalization
Grundrisse: The Chapter on Money (The first two notebooks)
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
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?
A Guide to The Communist Manifesto with Phil Gasper
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsIF YOU CANNOT OURCHASE ON OUR SITE, TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE AT EVENTBRITE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/203494927807
Since Phil produced this edition, the English-reading left has had an authoritative introduction to history’s most important political document, with the full text of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. This beautifully organized and presented edition of The Communist Manifestois fully annotated, with clear historical references and explication, additional related texts, and a glossary that will bring the text to life for students, as well as the general reader. Since it was first written in 1848, the Manifesto has been translated into more languages than any other modern text. It has been banned, censored, burned, and declared “dead.” But year after year, the text only grows more influential, remaining required reading in courses on philosophy, politics, economics, and history.
50 Years of Anti-Imperialist Writing: Galeano, Rodney, and Ghosh
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA reading group to celebrate and reflect on two classic works of anti-imperialist writing first published fifty years ago but with an ongoing worldwide impact: Eduardo Galeano’s OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA (1971) and Walter Rodney’s HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA (1972). Extending our scope to Asia and bringing matters up to the present day, we will conclude by reading Amitav Ghosh’s just-published THE NUTMEG’S CURSE: PARABLES FOR A PLANET IN CRISIS.
A People’s History of Detroit
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsMark Jay and Philip Conklin outline the complex sociopolitical dynamics underlying major events in Detroit's past, from the rise of Fordism and the formation of labor unions, to deindustrialization and the city's recent bankruptcy. They demonstrate that Detroit's history is not a tale of two cities—one of wealth and development and another racked by poverty and racial violence; rather it is the story of a single Detroit that operates according to capitalism's mandates.
50 Years of Anti-Imperialist Writing: Galeano, Rodney, and Ghosh
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA reading group to celebrate and reflect on two classic works of anti-imperialist writing first published fifty years ago but with an ongoing worldwide impact: Eduardo Galeano’s OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA (1971) and Walter Rodney’s HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA (1972). Extending our scope to Asia and bringing matters up to the present day, we will conclude by reading Amitav Ghosh’s just-published THE NUTMEG’S CURSE: PARABLES FOR A PLANET IN CRISIS.
50 Years of Anti-Imperialist Writing: Galeano, Rodney, and Ghosh
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA reading group to celebrate and reflect on two classic works of anti-imperialist writing first published fifty years ago but with an ongoing worldwide impact: Eduardo Galeano’s OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA (1971) and Walter Rodney’s HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA (1972). Extending our scope to Asia and bringing matters up to the present day, we will conclude by reading Amitav Ghosh’s just-published THE NUTMEG’S CURSE: PARABLES FOR A PLANET IN CRISIS.
50 Years of Anti-Imperialist Writing: Galeano, Rodney, and Ghosh
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA reading group to celebrate and reflect on two classic works of anti-imperialist writing first published fifty years ago but with an ongoing worldwide impact: Eduardo Galeano’s OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA (1971) and Walter Rodney’s HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA (1972). Extending our scope to Asia and bringing matters up to the present day, we will conclude by reading Amitav Ghosh’s just-published THE NUTMEG’S CURSE: PARABLES FOR A PLANET IN CRISIS.
50 Years of Anti-Imperialist Writing: Galeano, Rodney, and Ghosh
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA reading group to celebrate and reflect on two classic works of anti-imperialist writing first published fifty years ago but with an ongoing worldwide impact: Eduardo Galeano’s OPEN VEINS OF LATIN AMERICA (1971) and Walter Rodney’s HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA (1972). Extending our scope to Asia and bringing matters up to the present day, we will conclude by reading Amitav Ghosh’s just-published THE NUTMEG’S CURSE: PARABLES FOR A PLANET IN CRISIS.
The Necessity of Social Control by István Mészáros
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDuring 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.
The Necessity of Social Control by István Mészáros
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDuring 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.
Late Capitalist Fascism
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYWhat if fascism can no longer be confined to political parties or ultra nationalist politicians but has become something much more diffuse that is spread across our societies as cultural expressions and psychological states? This is the thesis developed by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, who argues that late capitalism has produced hollowed-out and exchangeable subjectivities that provide a breeding ground for a new kind of diffuse, banal fascism.
The Necessity of Social Control by István Mészáros
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDuring 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.
Insurrecto with author Gina Apostol in conversation with Patricia McManus
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYGina Apostol’s Insurrecto is a harrowing depiction of the nearly 125-year history of U.S. intervention, occupation, and domination in the Philippines.
“Of course, as opposed to the colonizer, the world of the colonized is visibly and thus irreparably multiple – because included in the world of the colonized is the world of the colonizer.”. —“How Do We Know the Things That Make Us?”, An essay from Gina Apostol