Political Economy
Animals, Capitalism, Marxism: A Conversation
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDinesh Joseph Wadiwel and Alex Blanchette explore the potential and limits of Marxist theory for addressing the roles and fates of nonhuman animals, as well as ways to connect anticapitalist struggles to animal liberation and environmental justice. Wadiwel is the author of Animals and Capital and Blanchette is the author of Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm.
David McNally: Marx and Colonialism
Video available on YouTubeDavid McNally joins our 10th anniversary celebration of the MEP with a keynote talk on "Marx and Colonialism: The End of Capital and the Beginning of a Journey."
Marxism and Planetary Crises: New Works, New Debates
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's Ecosocialist Study Group resumes consideration of capitalism's catastrophic impact on the Earth's climate and other critical systems, and ecosocialist strategies to challenge it. In eight weekly sessions beginning April 24, we will address important new work in ecological Marxism and environmental justice.
Marxism and Planetary Crises: New Works, New Debates
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's Ecosocialist Study Group resumes consideration of capitalism's catastrophic impact on the Earth's climate and other critical systems, and ecosocialist strategies to challenge it. In eight weekly sessions beginning April 24, we will address important new work in ecological Marxism and environmental justice.
Studies in Marx’s Capital
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsFollowing up on the MEP's long-running study group on Karl Marx's Grundrisse, we have been reading closely and discussing Marx's 'Theories of Surplus Value' and related works. At present we are reading selections from David Harvey's 'The Limits to Capital,' and we plan to read Soren Mau's 'Mute Compulsion' and Beverley Best's 'The Automatic Fetish.'
Reading Marx’s Capital Volume I
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsParticipants in this class are closely reading and discussing Volume I of Karl Marx’s 'Capital, A Critique of Political Economy.' At present we are reading Part Seven, "The Process of Accumulation of Capital."
The Circulation of Capital: Volume II of Marx’s Capital
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA weekly study group covering Marx's Capital, Volume II, The Process of Circulation of Capital. In this volume, Marx addresses the question: How can the reproduction of society as a whole take place, if there is no conscious social planning that ensures that all needs are met, in the necessary proportions, such that life can persist and the capitalist relations of production be sustained? We discover the answer, but we also learn of new contradictions and sources of crisis inherent to capitalist society.
AI versus Labor: Luddism and Beyond
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants8 weekly sessions starting Oct 1. Is Artificial Intelligence (AI, sic) really the dire threat to the future of humanity as even some of its proponents claim, or is it a more mundane and familiar threat to working people who face loss of their livelihoods and/or further speed-up and alienation? The entire history of industrial capitalism is punctuated by recurring waves of automation to reduce labor costs and turnover time, each time provoking strong resistance by the affected workforce. This reading group will probe the history both of AI and computer technology specifically and of working-class resistance to capitalist automation in general.
Book Talk: On the History of Capitalist ‘Reforms’
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsGiampaolo Conte presents 'A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms', just published by Routledge. Conte's historical research demonstrates that the chief purpose of such reforms has been to integrate semi-peripheral states into the capitalist world-economy.