The Condition of the Working Class in England
Brooklyn Commons 388 Atlantic Avenue, BrooklynThis reading group is taking a close look at Engels' master work, to help understand how the formation of industrial capital and the industrial working class in the nineteenth century has led us to the current conjuncture in contemporary capitalism — characterized by growing inequality, increasing precariousness for nearly everyone except the capitalist elite, and incessant attacks on the most vulnerable — and explore its lessons for our revolutionary politics in the twenty-first century.
Creating an Ecological Society
Brooklyn Commons 388 Atlantic Avenue, BrooklynSickened by the contamination of water, air, and the Earth itself, more and more people are coming to realize that it is capitalism that is, quite literally, killing us - and indeed, degrading the Earth’s very ability to support all forms of life.
A New Left Forms, June and July sessions on the 1960s
Brooklyn Commons 388 Atlantic Avenue, BrooklynThe bee on wheels has laments on a stick
Wags weepy banners with gypsy ribbons ...
The tiny wheeled bee has the sky on a stick
Idly waves as she buzzes through the afternoon
Kicking the tears around like bean tins.
—fragment of poem by Jeff Nuttall
Marxism / Leninism • Reform / Revolution • Role of a Vanguard Party
How do we develop a political organization capable of avoiding the same traps of the past? Are communist parties inevitably social democratic and bureaucratic? Can existing parties in the US be saved? In this panel, Marxist organizations come together to learn from the experience in India and elsewhere. This public event is both a workshop and a frank and sober discussion about the road ahead.
Trotsky in New York Walking Tour
We will meet at the entrance to the Great Hall of Cooper Union and proceed to 77 St. Marks Place, where the offices of the Russian language newspaper Novy Mir, were housed in 1917. Here Trotsky and other future Bolshevik leaders worked daily. From there the tour will take a walk to the building of the Jewish Daily Forward.
Kluge’s News from Ideological Antiquity
Verso Books 20 Jay Street #1010, Brooklyn...a Marxian version of Freudian free association—the chain of hidden links that leads us from the surface of everyday life and experience to the very sources of production itself. —Fredric Jameson
Gowanus Canal Walking Tour: Where Environmental Justice and Housing Justice Meet
Gowanus is an intensely contaminated community that is simultaneously undergoing multiple processes of environmental remediation and gentrification. The tour will explore these dynamics and the challenges and opportunities posed by the Gowanus Canal Superfund Clean Up.
Kluge’s News From Ideological Antiquity. Part 2: All Things Are Bewitched People
Verso Books 20 Jay Street #1010, Brooklyn“Commodified things are not thingly, they are crystallized human characteristics, metamorphosed human beings.” —Alexander Kluge
Reading Capital Politically
Brooklyn Commons 388 Atlantic Avenue, BrooklynMarx’s maxim that class struggle is the “motor force” of history is to be taken literally and not viewed as simply some literary metaphor. But what does this mean in the real world? How does this work? And, how should we read Capital politically?
An Intro to Marxism—in Newark, New Jersey
Orchard Street, Newark, NJ classroom Orchard Street, Newark, NJ, United StatesWith short readings, focused presentations, and discussions, we will look at the rise of industrial capitalism and nationalism, the general characteristics of capitalist political economy and class, and the state, imperialism and war, workers organizations and collective power, and, finally, political action and questions of reform or revolution.
No Blood for Oil!
New Perspectives Theatre 456-458 West 37th Street, New York, NY, United StatesIn his book George Caffentzis shows how Marxism accounts for the peculiar role that the oil industry plays in contemporary capitalism as generator of ecological devastation, war and exploitation.
Hard Boiled Thursdays: Summer Fiction Series
Brooklyn Commons 388 Atlantic Avenue, BrooklynVerbal sparring, physical clashes, between corrupt cops and the world-weary detectives, the calm façade smiling at the world concealing a maniacal murder machine, when distilled in a fast-paced pulp fiction or poetically narrated in a noir satisfy some of our needs to explain the violent social disorder thrown at us large and small by the contours of life lived by dictates of capital.
Women’s Liberation Movement: 1968-1975
Brooklyn Commons 388 Atlantic Avenue, BrooklynAs the Black Freedom movement turned to Black Power, feminists took theory from Black Power and applied it to their newborn movement. We'll read original sources from both the Black-led and majority-white branches of women's liberation.
Reading Capital Politically Continues
Brooklyn Commons 388 Atlantic Avenue, BrooklynMarx himself intended Capital to serve as a “weapon” in the hands of the working class. This makes Capital first and foremost a political work. But what does it mean to read Capital politically?
Thursday Noirs: Summer fiction
Brooklyn Commons 388 Atlantic Avenue, BrooklynVerbal sparring, physical clashes, between corrupt cops and the world-weary detectives, the calm façade smiling at the world concealing a maniacal murder machine, when distilled in a fast-paced pulp fiction or poetically narrated in a noir satisfy some of our needs to explain the violent social disorder thrown at us large and small by the contours of life lived by dictates of capital.