60 Years Since the April Revolution in Santo Domingo
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsJoin us on May 3 for a panel to commemorate the 6oth anniversary of the April Revolution in Santo Domingo and discuss its political implications, the role of working-class Afro-Dominicans, women, LGBTQ people, Haitian internationalist fighters, socialists, writers and artists as well as the worldwide international solidarity movement that ensued in the face of imperialist onslaught.
Karl Marx and Republicanism: Reading ‘Citizen Marx’
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhat better time than the present moment to revisit Karl Marx’s commitment to the democratic republic as a necessary (if not sufficient) step on the path to human freedom? Over five weekly meetings we will read and discuss Bruno Leipold’s recently published Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx's Social and Political Thought.
Exploring the Literature of Afro-Surrealism
Thursdays, 7-9 pm ET, beginning April 24 This spring, the MEP Literature Reading Group takes up novels loosely grouped as "Afro-Surrealism." Borrowing from use by Amiri Baraka in the 1970s, ... Read more
Reading ‘Human Acts’ by Han Kang
Thursday, May 15 - 7 pm ET MEP's Literature Reading Group will commemorate the 1980 South Korean pro-democracy uprising with a reading of Han Kang's Human Acts. On May ... Read more
‘Roses for Gramsci’ with Andy Merrifield
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAuthor Andy Merrifield presents 'Roses for Gramsci,' a remarkable personal journey through the life and writings of the great Sardinian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci.
Reading Marx’s Capital, Volume III
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA weekly study group covering Marx's Capital, Volume III, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. This work integrates and completes Marx's analysis, enabling us to understand and make sense of how the phenomena we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the underlying system of capitalism.
Darkest Los Angeles
Institute for the Radical Imagination NY, United StatesDennis Broe leads a group reading of his five Los Angeles novels set in the film-noir period of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The contradictions we will unearth in that postwar period, the period of crime films that visually documented this seedy reality, have never been resolved, only continually papered over, and so they resound today.
Adam Smith and ‘The Wealth of Nations’
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAdam Smith deals with such issues as the so-called labor-theory of value, the equalization of the rate of profit, and the determination of commodity prices in important ways that anticipate Marx or require the corrections Marx provides. So, in this group, we will dive headlong into Smith's opus, The Wealth of Nations.
Antonio Gramsci Studies: 2025 Series
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe continuing 2025 Gramsci Study Sessions will read and explore from: Selections from the Prison Notebooks Selections from Cultural Writings Selections from Political Writings Gramsci’s writings on international politics, as ... Read more
Historical Roots of American Fascism: Gilded Age to WWI and the First Red Scare
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsTake part in the Political Strategy Study Group’s sweeping look at the history and political significance of the major waves of struggle and counter-revolution in the United States. In June, ... Read more
Hegel for Radicals: The Phenomenology of Spirit
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsOver 16 Saturdays, beginning March 8, we will read and discuss one of the most influential books of all time, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. This massive retelling of humanity defies traditional divisions between history, philosophy, comedy, and tragedy.
Literary Echoes of Vietnam’s 1975 Victory:
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhile the bombs were falling, only a stone wouldn't be terrified. If the Americans noticed movement in the forest, they would eliminate the forest. Who knows how much money was ... Read more
Through the Lens of Spectacle: Panel 1, Oversight
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants“The spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep,” Guy Debord declared in The Society of the Spectacle (1967): it is “a permanent opium war.” A half-century later, the specter of the spectacle continues to haunt Marxist cultural studies. In two linked panels, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture proposes to track “the worldwide division of spectacular tasks” from lens manufacture to retail logistics, stadiums to camptowns, polar expeditions to spring festivals, as well as revolutionary specters in novels and borders, assassinations and squares.
Reading Death of the Author by Nigeria’s Nnedi Okorafor
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants"To build a better future, we have to envision it first." Reading science fiction, discussing it together, and reading it politically, offers one tool for "envisioning" a future worth building. We continue our explorations of diverse points of view of social conflict and resolution, possible and imagined just worlds, here on Earth and perhaps afar.
Through the Lens of Spectacle: Panel 2, Witness
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants“The spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep,” Guy Debord declared in The Society of the Spectacle (1967): it is “a permanent opium war.” A half-century later, the specter of the spectacle continues to haunt Marxist cultural studies. In two linked panels, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture proposes to track “the worldwide division of spectacular tasks” from lens manufacture to retail logistics, stadiums to camptowns, polar expeditions to spring festivals, as well as revolutionary specters in novels and borders, assassinations and squares.