February 2021
A People’s Guide to Capitalism
Despite the efforts of mainstream commentators to convince us otherwise, many are asking questions about why the capitalist system has produced such vast inequality and wanton disregard for its own environmental destruction. This book offers answers to exactly these questions on their own terms: in the form of a radical economic theory. The 14-week class which begins in early January will feature a close reading and discussion of the entire book with explication and references to additional materials related to this study.
Find out more »A New Digital Taylorism? with Matt Cole, Hugo Radice, Charles Umney
In his analysis of the workplace, Marx concludes that “Large-scale industry possesses in the machine system an entirely objective organization of production, which confronts the worker as a pre-existing material condition of production:”, and defines this condition as the real subsumption of labor. A hundred years later, his analysis informed modern socialist studies of labor and the struggle for workplace.
Find out more »Socialist Register 2021: Beyond Digital Capitalism (the entire series)
Beyond Digital Capitalism: New Ways of Living Continues on February 23, with 9 more sessions on Sundays or Tuesdays until May 2 There are tickets for each session for those who are unable to be present for this series. The series tickets provide entrance to the remaining 13 presentations with discussions. “In addressing how far digital technology has become integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades the 21st century, we were deliberately seeking to counter so much…
Find out more »March 2021
Capital, Volume 1, Part 2
Session 2 will complete the analysis of Part I: Commodities and Money, starting with Chapter 2: The Process of Exchange followed by the historical development of the money form in the circulation of commodities. This in turn leads to the Transformation of Money into Capital, positioning the reader to analyze the specific social relations of capitalist production (wage labor and owners of capital) in relation to the forces of production, the means of production.
Find out more »Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 1, Special 4 week
Starting this Saturday there will be a new four-week session on Saturday evenings from 6 to 8 pm covering Chapter One of Volume One of Karl Marx's Capital. All are welcome to attend. Register here on The MEP site.
Find out more »Towards a Revolution in Labor History: White Supremacism and Bourgeois Social Control
Why is the US working class unorganized and suffering to a far greater extent than in other advanced capitalist societies?
Find out more »150th Anniversary of the Paris Commune
Please join us on March 18 –the date the uprising began – as Mitch Abidor, editor and translator of two books on the fighters in the 1871 uprising, Communards and Voices of the Paris Commune, recounts what happened over the 71 days that followed, in all its complexity, both its heroism and its failings, as well as its role as inspiration with lessons for the movements that followed in its footsteps.
Find out more »Marx and Emancipatory Political Theory
This panel will conside George Comninel’s “Alienation and Emancipation in the Work of Karl Marx”, “Marxism versus Liberalism” by August Nimtz and “Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism” by Igor Shoikhedbrod
Find out more »Working Class Cinema in the Age of Digital Capitalism
Why does the story of cinema begin with the end of work? Is it because, as has been suggested, it is impossible to represent work from the perspective of labor but only from the point of view of capital, because the revolutionary horizon of the working class coincides with the end of work? After all, the early revolutionary art avant-garde had an ambiguous relationship with capitalism: it provided both a critique of commodification while also reproducing the commodity form.
Find out more »April 2021
Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly with Editor Peter Cole
In the early twentieth century, when many US unions disgracefully excluded black and Asian workers, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) warmly welcomed people of color, in keeping with their emphasis on class solidarity and their bold motto: “An Injury to One Is an Injury to All!” Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly tells the story of one of the greatest heroes of the American working class. A brilliant union organizer and a humorous orator, Benjamin Fletcher…
Find out more »Reinventing the Welfare State: Book + talk special
With positivity and rigor, Ursula Huws will outline a ‘digital welfare state’ for the 21st century, which would involve a repurposing of online platform technologies under public control to modernise and expand public services, and improve accessibility.
Find out more »Friedrich Engels with Terrell Carver, Kaan Kangal and Kohei Saito
All three author/editors celebrate the recent 200th birthday of Engels looking at his youthful works, his early relationship with Karl Marx, address controversy surrounding his Dialectics of Nature and give a broad reassessment of the importance of Engels pithing Marxisms, working class movements, science, philosophy and more.
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