Marx Dead and Alive: two more sessions
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThis photo is from one of the many days Marx signed in to the reading room at the British Library. Andy Merrifield visited for a moving presentation on Friday, November 27. Now, we of The MEP Capital Studies Group are presenting a six week reading and discussion series with a thorough reading of the book. This is the first of three series we are presenting with Authors, Reading Groups and books. The prices are now reduced—the group will complete on February 1. Feel free to join to the wide-ranging discussion.
Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsSam Farber has assembled and synthesized a wealth of historical material so as to assess the extent to which the disappearance of Soviet democracy was due to objective circumstances such as the Civil War and how much of the magnitude of this was the result of Bolshevik politics and ideology.
Marina Sitrin on Pandemic Solidarity with Colectiva Sembrar
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsPandemic Solidarity collects first-hand experiences of people creating their own narratives of solidarity and mutual aid in the time of the global crisis of COVID-19. In times of crisis institutions of power are laid bare and people turn to one another. Underneath the media’s narrative of selfish individualism and runs on supermarkets, we find an opposing story of community and self-sacrifice.
Socialist Register 2021: Ursula Huws on Reaping the Whirlwind
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsGreg Albo and Steve Maher will introduce Socialist Register 2021—Beyond Digital Capitalism followed by Ursula Huws presenting on her essay, “Reaping the Whirlwind: Digitization, Restructuring, and Moblization in the Covid Crisis”
Anitra Nelson and Vincent Liegey: Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAs a sense of urgency pervades global environmentalism and the Left, the degrowth movement has burst into the mainstream. As growth driven climate catastrophe looms, degrowth is a political response based on changing how we live, countering persistent growth with a demand to slow down with a reorientation around provision of basic needs for all.
The Time of Our Lives with Bryan Palmer
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAt the current historical conjuncture, time has become the challenge for socialists to address, not only because it defines what does and does not constitute the working day, but because it is increasingly obvious that time and its organization defines life itself. Will time continue to be compressed into capital’s needs, or will it be reimagined as liberation, struggled through and over in ways that enhance the project of human emancipation?
Heterodox Socialism: Michael Brie, Jean-Numa Ducange, Kieran Durkin
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAuthor Jean-Numa Ducange, and editors Michael Brie and Kieran Durkin present on editions they have put together on Jules Guesde, Rosa Luxemburg and Raya Dunayevskaya.
Interpretation Machines: Contradictions of “Artificial Intelligence” in 21st Century Capitalism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhat are capitalist concerns getting into in the embrace of so-called artificial intelligence? What is capital getting the world into? In approaching these questions, it may be useful to set aside the term "artificial intelligence" in favour of "interpretation machines."
The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe story of the Benin Bronzes — carried off by the British in 1897 — sits at the heart of a heated debate about cultural restitution, repatriation and the decolonization of museums. In “The Brutish Museums”, Dan Hicks makes a powerful case for the urgent return of such objects, as part of a wider project of addressing the outstanding debt of colonialism.
The Sinking Middle Class with David Roediger
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsRoediger demonstrates that an obsession with a “middle class” is relatively new in US politics, starting with Bill Clinton's attempt to win back the so-called Reagan Democrats. The efforts by the corporatist wing of the Democratic Party remain marked by covert appeals to white racism and the avoidance of wealth redistribution.
Socialists on Social Media Platforms and Imagine Platform Socialism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhile digital platforms are enabling socialists to communicate in ways that were not possible in the pre-digital world of mass media, they are supplements to – not substitutes for – building democratic and sustainable socialist organizations and militant working-class movements.
A People’s Guide to Capitalism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDespite 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.
A New Digital Taylorism? with Matt Cole, Hugo Radice, Charles Umney
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsIn 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.
Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 1, Special 4 week
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsStarting 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.
Empire’s Endgame with Gargi Bhattacharyya and co-authors including Adam Elliott-Cooper, Sita Balani and others
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsEngaging with Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall movements, “Empire's Endgame: Racism and The British State” offers an original perspective on race, media, the state and criminalization, and a political vision that includes — rather than expels — in the face of crisis.