May 2022
Socialist Register 2022 — Polarization and Socialism: The Direction Forward
It is a truism that electoral politics and political identity in the USA and Europe today are polarized to a degree unknown since the 1930s. It is a commonplace among the pundits of the ruling class that somehow “both sides” must return to “moderate” common sense to avoid a violent rupture of our society. They seldom question the underlying causes of this polarization, let alone whether it is rooted in the very nature of late capitalism.
This is not the case with the contributors to the 58th volume of Socialist Register. From different perspectives, they ask us to think about the deep social contradictions exposed by increasing polarization of the most economically developed societies along lines of wealth, race, gender, nation-state, and region. Members of this class meet once each month for four months to discuss selected articles from SR 58 with editor Greg Albo, joined by various authors organized around the following themes on one Sunday a month from March 20 through May 115, 2022. The recording of the February 20 session is available by writing to info@marxedproject.org
Find out more »The Marx Revival, moderated by Marcello Musto
The aim of “THE MARX REVIVIAL” is to reopen for discussion, in a critical and innovative manner, the classical themes of Marx’s thought, and to develop a deeper analysis of certain questions to which relatively little attention has been paid until now. It is hoped that the volume will therefore help to bring Marx closer both to those who think everything has already been written about his work and to a new generation of readers who have not yet been seriously confronted with his writings. — Marcello Musto, Preface to The Marx Revival
Find out more »Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships
We are in the middle of a desirevolution — a fundamental and political transformation of the way we desire as human beings. Perhaps as always, new technologies - with their associated and inherited political biases - are organizing and mapping the future. What we don't seem to notice is that the primary way in which our lives are being transformed is through the manipulation and control of desire itself. Our very impulses, drives and urges are 'gamified' to suit particular economic and political agendas, changing the way we relate to everything from lovers and friends to food and politicians. Digital technologies are transforming the subject at the deepest level of desire – re-mapping its libidinal economy — in ways never before imagined possible.
Find out more »State Forms and Forming States: A 2-day presentation
In a two-part presentation, the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture will share our collective research on states: states of governmentality, states of matter, states of being. States move through us, states congeal borders, states govern, states violate, states intervene, states organize abandonment, states let die. States also signal a condition of being–states of emergency, states of grace, states of matter, statelessness. What a sorry state you’re in!
Find out more »4 Month Pass Offering Through September 30, 2022
The four month pass is now $50 less than when initiating these passes. All events, classes and more for stated sliding scale fees until end of day, September 30, 2022.
Find out more »Corporate Capitalism and the Integral State
Steve Maher’s new book uses the relationship between the American state and General Electric from 1880 to 1980 to develop an original conception of what Gramsci called the “integral state.” It shows how state power has been critical for the development and evolution of corporate organization.
Find out more »The Necessity of Social Control by István Mészáros
“We are living in a time of unprecedented historical crisis, which affects all forms of the capital system, not just capitalism. It is easy to understand, then, that the only thing that could produce a viable solution to the contradictions that we have to face would be a radical socialist alternative to capital’s mode of social metabolic control.” István Mészáros
Find out more »June 2022
NEW! Year-long (12 months) Pass : Now through May 15 of 2023
12 Month Pass — good through May 15, 2023. Single person at sliding scale. Each additional person with same-time purchase for $85 for the same year—adding as many people as you would like is allowed and encouraged.
Find out more »Joyce, Marx, Lefebvre: Considerations for the 21st Century
Two days after Bloomsday, join Andy Merrifield to consider how Karl Marx and Henri Lefebvre help shed new light on James Joyce - and vice versa. Capital circulated through Marx the same way the Liffey circulated through Joyce's Finnegan's Wake: "a commodius vicus of recirculation." Each book is a "hypertext," a big, intricately entangled, introverted yet expansive text, historical yet somehow universal, exuberant and imaginative and at times colossally difficult to understand. Joyce said his principal character H. C. Earwicker was a "fargazer," whose…
Find out more »A close reading of Karl Marx’s Writings on Alienation
In this anthology Marcello Musto focuses in on Marx’s later economic works, in which his thoughts on alienation were elaborated rather differently than in his philosophical manuscripts. Additionally, the writings collated in this volume are unique in their presentation of not only Marx’s critique of capitalism, but also his suggestions about communist society. This wide-ranging collection of Marx’s ideas on alienation provides an important critical tool both for understanding the past and for building a critique of contemporary society.
Find out more »From Science Fiction to Visionary Fiction: Learning from Octavia Butler
Writing in the years of momentous change from 1971 to 2006, Octavia Butler embodied the emergence of "visionary fiction" as a new way to write, read and draw inspiration from science fiction. This spring, the Marxist Education Project's first literature reading group devoted to science fiction will read Kindred (1979) and Parable of the Sower (1993), both now graphic novels and soon film and streaming series. Fifteen years on since her passing, Butler's influence continues to grow. We will also read NK Jemisin’s Fifth Season (2015) and Martha Wells’ All Systems Red (2017) to explore some of Butler's lasting legacy. We will also make room to explore related short stories, graphic novels, essays, films, and more.
Find out more »Grundrisse: Notebooks 4 and 5
“Forces of production and social relations - two different sides of the development of the social individual - appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high...” —Karl Marx, The Grundrisse
In Grundrisse Marx arguably bridges his early writings on philosophy and Hegel, and the writing and revisions of Capital that dominated much of the rest of his life. We are continuing careful, page by page reading of the text with a view to understanding the concepts that evolve within it. These next sessions will focus on Notebooks Four and Five. We will complete our reading of the entire Grundrisse during the fall of 2022.
Find out more »Hegel for Radicals: Part 1—History
It has often been said that that Marx turned Hegel on his head. In this series we will explore the meaning of that phrase and its implications for those of us who are confronting problems of a world on fire. The problems we face today in this epoch of the decay of capitalism, imperialism, war, a global pandemic, economic crisis, the return of fascism, climate change are unprecedented.
We will begin by introducing the very idea of History, a unique contribution of Hegel to our understanding of the world. We will read some key writings of Hegel from the Philosophy of History and the Phenomenology of Spirit and explain their significance for our time.
Find out more »Robert Brenner’s The Economics of Global Turbulence
We will conduct a close reading of the text of The Economics of Global Turbulence: The Advanced Capitalist Economies from Long Boom to Long Downturn, 1945-2005 by Robert Brenner with extensive discussion. We read 10 to 15 pages in each session and expect to finish the book in 6 months. We will follow up with a reading of The Boom and the Bubble and other works.
Find out more »Six Month Pass through November 30, 2022
We are now offering a six month pass for the prices of the previous 4 month passes. If you are paying for yourself and any additional person, you are now able to have two people attend all events, classes or film showings (post-pandemic) that The MEP offers.
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