Reading Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWe continue to study selected passages from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. We delve into key themes and concepts related to civil society and state: politics and the arts, racism, class and gender, religion, linguistics, and other methods of analysis, critical theory, mass media, and cinema, hegemony, and subaltern studies, as well as the role of intellectuals and activists in discovering new methods and languages to be transformative.
Summertime … and the Living Ain’t Easy: Black Noir
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe Marxist Education Project's Literature Group continues its summertime tradition of reading noir fiction: the popular American crime genre that explores the corruption of society - and, in our selected books by Chester Himes, Walter Mosley, Attica Locke, and Bill Fletcher Jr. - corruption in the workplace, in unions, and among workers.
Summer with Hegel: The Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA seven-week summer course with Alex Steinberg that concludes our ongoing studies of Hegel's mysterious work, The Phenomenology of Spirit. We will do a close reading of the Preface to the Phenomenology , a work that can be read on its own and is considered the most succinct and comprehensive statement of Hegel's philosophy.
Annual Pass
This pass entitles the purchaser to attend any or all Marxist Education Project classes and events during an entire year from the month of purchase. (For example, a pass purchased on January 7, 2023, will be valid until January 31, 2024.)
Reading Marx’s Capital, Volume I (third series)
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThird series in our close reading and discussion of Marx's magnum opus, with Lisa Maya Knauer and other facilitators from the MEP's Capital Studies Group. This series covers parts 5 through 8 of Capital I, on wages, the accumulation of capital, and the so-called primitive accumulation.
Oppression and Resistance in New Chinese and Chinese-American Science Fiction
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsBefore Theodore W. Allen turned to his magnum opus, The Invention of the White Race, he drafted an essay "The Kernel and Meaning: A Contribution to a Proletarian Critique of U.S. Historiography." In it, he assessed how the industrial bourgeoisie successfully overturned plantation capital's rule while assuring its own ascendancy over the proletariat. Allen reviewed six commonly held explanations as to why, despite favorable objective conditions, the U.S. left and workers movements failed to establish socialism or even a permanent working-class party. Participants in this group will read and discuss the original, 160-page typescript of Allen's unpublished essay.
Commons, Commoning, Communism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsBefore the advent of capitalism, much of humanity produced their immediate livelihoods on lands and with tools to which they either had rights of use or held as individual property. All that came to a violent end with what Marx preferred to call the "original expropriation" (often misleadingly termed "primitive accumulation"). This reading group will explore the historical roots and persistence of such crimes and the resistance they evoke by reading together Ian Angus's recently published The War Against the Commons, Peter Linebaugh's Stop Thief! and related texts.
Chile’s 9/11: Fifty Years of Literary Resistance
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsSeptember 2023 marks fifty years since the overthrow of Salvador Allende's socialist government on September 11, 1973. To honor the struggles and sufferings of the Chilean people, the MEP's Literature Group dedicates two eight-week series to Chilean writers active before, during, and since the Pinochet dictatorship.
What Do We Need Bosses For? with Pete Dolack
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsPete Dolack's latest book, What Do We Need Bosses For?: Toward Economic Democracy, analyzes past and present efforts to establish systems of economic democracy on a national or society-wide basis. In this context the book dissects the mounting inequalities of capitalism and discusses theoretical ideas as to how we might organize a better world.
Imperialism: The Long View and the Big Picture
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsIn eight weekly sessions guided by Dan La Botz, we will look at imperialism in the long view, from the ancient world to today. We will examine the experience of imperialism and the theoretical justifications for it, as well as anti-imperialist movements and their arguments. We will look at imperialism as economic phenomenon, as political strategy, as cultural experience, and as psychological affect. We will discuss imperialism and gender and imperialism and the environment.
Theodore Allen’s ‘The Kernel and Meaning’: A Strategic Critique of U.S. Labor History
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsBefore Theodore W. Allen turned to his magnum opus, The Invention of the White Race, he drafted an essay "The Kernel and Meaning: A Contribution to a Proletarian Critique of U.S. Historiography." In it, he assessed how the industrial bourgeoisie successfully overturned plantation capital's rule while assuring its own ascendancy over the proletariat. Allen reviewed six commonly held explanations as to why, despite favorable objective conditions, the U.S. left and workers movements failed to establish socialism or even a permanent working-class party. Participants in this group will read and discuss the original, 160-page typescript of Allen's unpublished essay.
Hegel for Radicals: The Science of Logic
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's recurring series Hegel for Radicals continues this fall with a reading of Hegel's magnum opus, The Science of Logic. Familiarity with this work greatly aids any reading of Marx's Capital. Alex Steinberg will guide participants past the legendary obstacles to understanding this unsurpassed presentation of dialectics. Its depth and systematic structure is without parallel in any other of Hegel's works.
The Spectre Still Haunting: Introducing the Revolutionary Politics of Marx and Engels
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAn introductory reading group for those just getting acquainted with Marxist ideas, based on Marx and Engels' elegant and rousing classic The Manifesto of the Communist Party. We will be guided by China Miéville's thoughtful, provocative meditations on the Manifesto, A Spectre Haunting.
Marxism and the Capitalist State
Recording available on YouTubeA video of this December 16, 2024, event is available on the MEP's YouTube channel. A lively discussion with the editors and several contributors to the just-released Marxism and the ... Read more
Reading Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWe continue to study selected passages from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. We delve into key themes and concepts related to civil society and state: politics and the arts, racism, class and gender, religion, linguistics, and other methods of analysis, critical theory, mass media, and cinema, hegemony, and subaltern studies, as well as the role of intellectuals and activists in discovering new methods and languages to be transformative.