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.
Empire’s Endgame: Pluto FireWorks series book + talk special
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsBringing to the fore broad political and economic contexts, the authors trace ways in which empire’s legacies have been reshaped by global capitalism, the digital environment and instability in the nation-state. Engaging with Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall movements, Empire's Endgame offers an original perspective on race, media, the state and criminalisation, and a political vision that includes — rather than expels — in the face of crisis.
Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality. A discussion of Volume 2 with Jeff B. Perry
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsIn this second volume of his acclaimed biography, Jeffrey B. Perry traces the final decade of Harrison’s life, from 1918 to 1927. Perry details Harrison’s literary and political activities, foregrounding his efforts against white supremacy and for racial consciousness and unity in struggles for equality and radical social change. The book explores Harrison’s role in the militant New Negro Movement and the International Colored Unity League.
M.A.D. Lit 101: American Fiction and the Cold War
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA reading and discussion of three substantive novels that explain the context of anti-communism as it raged in the years immediately following World War II, has continued throughout the decades since then, and remains strong throughout American culture and popular consciousness today.
The Big Tech Monopolies and the State with Grace Blakeley
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAs the effects of the coronavirus pandemic swept through the global economy, the average observer could have been forgiven for missing a critical piece of news: by May 2020, the combined market capitalization of the four largest US tech companies reached one fifth of the entire S&P 500. Four companies – Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook – now account for 20 per cent of the combined value of the 500 largest US corporations – an unparalleled level of market concentration. Forty years these corporate entitites were either just beyond being plucky start-ups, or did not even exist.