Reading Science Fiction Politically – Spring 2024 Season
The Science and Visionary Fiction reading group meets weekly to read and discuss science, visionary and speculative fiction that bears on politics, the environment, and the struggle for a better future for all. We focus on the concept of visionary fiction, emerging from Octavia Butler's writings and beautifully articulated ten years ago by Walidah Imarisha, ... Read more
If We Burn: Mass Protest and Political Strategy for the 21st Century
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhy has the worldwide wave of mass protest in the decade of the 2010s given way to such a strong tide of reaction? And even with that counter-trend, what accounts for what some have called the Marxist revival, a new trend of theorizing and strategizing on the left. Join us this winter to read and reflect on what went right in the last decade, what new organizing now reflects its legacy, and what remains unfulfilled.
Animals, Capitalism, Marxism: A Conversation
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDinesh Joseph Wadiwel and Alex Blanchette explore the potential and limits of Marxist theory for addressing the roles and fates of nonhuman animals, as well as ways to connect anticapitalist struggles to animal liberation and environmental justice. Wadiwel is the author of Animals and Capital and Blanchette is the author of Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm.
Trotsky in New York Walking Tour
Socialists and Immigrants in the Lower East Side Join Alex Steinberg for a historical walking tour of Lower Manhattan as we explore some of the places where Leon Trotsky visited and worked during his nine week stay in New York in early 1917. We will explore the culture of the radicalized immigrant communities of Yiddish-speaking ... Read more
David McNally: Marx and Colonialism
Recording available on YouTubeDavid McNally joins our 10th anniversary celebration of the MEP with a keynote talk on "Marx and Colonialism: The End of Capital and the Beginning of a Journey."
Marxism and Planetary Crises: New Works, New Debates
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's Ecosocialist Study Group resumes consideration of capitalism's catastrophic impact on the Earth's climate and other critical systems, and ecosocialist strategies to challenge it. In eight weekly sessions beginning April 24, we will address important new work in ecological Marxism and environmental justice.
Palestine: Celebrating 75 Years of Literature
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsRead Palestinian fiction, poetry, and related literature in weekly meetings with the MEP's Literature Group. The ongoing catastrophe in the Middle East breaks our hearts daily. As part of our mission to explore creative political resistance to oppression, we will read several novels and poems by Palestinian authors.
Marxism and Planetary Crises: New Works, New Debates
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's Ecosocialist Study Group resumes consideration of capitalism's catastrophic impact on the Earth's climate and other critical systems, and ecosocialist strategies to challenge it. In eight weekly sessions beginning April 24, we will address important new work in ecological Marxism and environmental justice.
Fascism, Antifascism, Gaza, and Political Strategy
Where does the rising wave of authoritarianism and "late fascism" fit in the global relations of force at work today? And what paths of resistance work in response? The war in Gaza has brought to a head the left’s strategic dilemmas facing new, overt forms of fascism. Questions include the historical relationship of settler ... Read more
Reading Science Fiction Politically: Diverging Futures
In Palestine +100: Stories from a Century after the Nakba, edited by Basma Ghalayini, as well as other recent books, Palestinian authors have begun to discover the power of science fiction. "Everyday life, for is a kind of dystopia." In this situation, "The real future --the actual future -- is unknowable. But for SF writers, ... Read more
Summer Noir 2024
The MEP Literature Group’s Summer Noir tradition of enjoying the bracing vitality of pulp continues with six short novels on the themes of difficult trips and political mayhem. Be warned: Do not expect happy endings in novels featuring corruption, futility and deception. Enrollees need not attend all sessions; to accommodate summer travel, we selected short ... Read more
Hegel for Radicals: The Science of Logic III
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's recurring series Hegel for Radicals concludes our reading of Hegel's magnum opus, The Science of Logic, Part III. Familiarity with this work greatly aids any reading of Marx's Capital. Alex Steinberg guides participants past the legendary obstacles to understanding this unsurpassed presentation of dialectics. Its depth and systematic structure is without parallel in any other of Hegel's works.
Conversations on the US Elections
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsJoin us online on Tuesday, September 17 at 6:30 pm US ET for an open-ended conversation about the evolving US political conjuncture now shaping the November elections. Drawing on our recent study of political strategy and fascism, we will assess the contending social and political forces in the US election campaign and consider the various approaches put forward by currents on the American left.
Book Talk: On the History of Capitalist ‘Reforms’
Recording available on YouTubeGiampaolo Conte presents 'A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms', just published by Routledge. Conte's historical research demonstrates that the chief purpose of such reforms has been to integrate semi-peripheral states into the capitalist world-economy.
Reading Marx’s Capital Volume I
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsParticipants in this class are closely reading and discussing Volume I of Karl Marx’s 'Capital, A Critique of Political Economy.' At present we are reading Part Seven, "The Process of Accumulation of Capital."