quality of life
Towards a Revolution in Labor History: White Supremacism and Bourgeois Social Control
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhy is the US working class unorganized and suffering to a far greater extent than in other advanced capitalist societies?
Re:sources / Re:lations with Working Group on Globalization and Culture
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture will share our collective research on two ubiquitous words of our contemporary vocabulary: resources and relations this coming Sunday, June 6/
THEMATIC CLUSTERS: On Sunday June 6, we will present the two clusters: Source Memory: Relating Archival Contradictions and The Relations of Human Resources.
Capitalism and the Sea
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhile sea beds are drilled for their fossil fuels and minerals, and coastlines developed for real estate and leisure, the oceans continue to absorb the toxic discharges of carbon civilization – warming, expanding, and acidifying the blue water part of the planet in ways that will bring unpredictable but irreversible consequences for the rest of the biosphere.
New York City and the Experience of Modernity
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThis is a seminar about New York City and its people. It is not a study of architectural styles and objects, - although the physical stuff of cities does play a role -, but it is a course about the experience of the way in which modernity builds and destroys cities.
Modernity is a historical force. It is messy. In architecture history modernity is usually narrated as an interplay between the combined forces of the Industrial Revolution and capital, with social upheaval, explosive population growth and immigration as its result...
Amakomiti: Grassroots Democracy in South African Shack Settlements
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsCan people who live in shantytowns, shacks and favelas teach us anything about democracy? About how to govern society in a way that is inclusive, participatory and addresses popular needs? This book argues that they can. In a study conducted in dozens of South Africa's shack settlements, where more than 9 million people live, Trevor Ngwane finds thriving shack dwellers' committees that govern local life, are responsive to popular needs and provide a voice for the community.
Workers’ Inquiry and Global Class Struggle: Strategies, Tactics, Objectives
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsBy engaging in what Karl Marx called a workers' inquiry, workers and militant co-researchers are studying their working conditions, the technical composition of capital, and how to recompose their own power in order to devise new tactics, strategies, organizational forms and objectives. These workers’ inquiries, from call center workers to platform, trucking, cleaning, logistics, mining, auto factories, teachers, and adjunct professors, are re-energizing unions, bypassing unions altogether or innovating new forms of workers' organizations.
AUGMENTED EXPLOITATION: Artificial Intelligence, Automation and Work
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsGoing beyond platform work and the gig economy, the authors explore emerging forms of algorithmic governance and AI-augmented apps that have been developed to utilise innovative ways to collect data about workers and consumers, as well as to keep wages and worker representation under control. They also show that workers are not taking this lying down, providing case studies of new and exciting form of resistance that are springing up across the globe.
Pluto Wildcat Series: Final 2 sessions—Augmented Exploitation and Wobblies of the World
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThese books uncover the radical militancy which characterises international workers struggles, both contemporary and historical. Looking at diverse topics including proletarianisation and class formation, mass production, gender, affective and reproductive labour, syndicalism and independent unions, and labour and Leftist social and political movements, it is the most comprehensive exploration into workers’ organisation being developed today. All books from the series are available at the MEP on-line book store.
Pluto Wildcat Series: Final 2 sessions—Augmented Exploitation and Wobblies of the World
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThese books uncover the radical militancy which characterises international workers struggles, both contemporary and historical. Looking at diverse topics including proletarianisation and class formation, mass production, gender, affective and reproductive labour, syndicalism and independent unions, and labour and Leftist social and political movements, it is the most comprehensive exploration into workers’ organisation being developed today. All books from the series are available at the MEP on-line book store.
WOBBLIES OF THE WORLD: A Global History of the Industrial Workers of the World
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDrawing on many important figures of the movements such as Tom Barker, Har Dayal, Joe Hill, James Larkin and William D. "Big Bill" Haywood, and exploring particular industries including shipping, mining, and agriculture, this book describes how the IWW and its ideals travelled around the world.
Darko Suvin: Communism, Poetry, Comradeship—a celebratory reading and discussion
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDarko Suvin will appear on the eve of his 91st birthday via an international video conference presented by The Marxist Education Project, in celebration of a life of communism, poetry, comradeship and all that goes into a life well-known for commitment to all of this and more. Readings and discussion: A selection of poems from Darko’s more than 40 years of writing poetry along with sharing memoirs of many more years of vigorous engagement while active in the multiple forms of struggle for communism from continents the world over that Darko has called home, will all be part of this mid-summer celebration a life of comradeship.
Capital, V1, Part 2: The Transformation of Money Into Capital
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWe will do a close reading of the chapters in Part Two of Volume I of Capital on “The Transformation of Money Into Capital”. In these chapters Marx introduces the fundamental concepts of capital,labor power, surplus value and the valorization process.
Augmented Exploitation: Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Work and Changes in the Labor Process
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsIn the Introduction to Augmented Exploitation, co-editors Phoebe Moore and Jamie Woodcock point up two main problems with how automation and artificial intelligence are being discussed as the end of the first quarter of the 21st century draws near. Number one is the claim that Al is changing the labor process in new and unprecedented ways. But capitalists have always introduced machines in order to increase the amount of what each worker can produce in a given period of time. This is where the second problem comes in—either a certain process will be automated, or it will not—a binary that focuses on machines and not on the workers who operate them. Rather than the prospects of automation and interpretive learning replacing workers, we need rather to see that these are augmentations of the labor process. Also discussed will be two of the many vital essays from this year's Socialist Register—Beyond Digital Capitalism: New Ways of Living.
Fifth Summer of Noir: Last session this week (Derek Raymond and Denise Mina)
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsFor the last four summers, the MEP Literature Studies Group has delved into a wealth of noir fiction. This year our six selections will take us deep into the underbelly of capitalism – good for reading at the beach, on the subway, a train, boat or plane, or in your favorite reading chair safely at home. Join in for the last two books.
Urban Displacements and Contemporary Capitalism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsSusanne Soederberg argues that historical and geographical configurations of monetized governance, including landlords, employers and inter-scalar state practices, have served to reproduce urban displacements and obfuscate their gendered, class and racialized underpinnings. The outcome is the everyday facilitation and normalization of urban poverty and social marginalization on one side, and capital accumulation on the other.