The Novels of Nanni Balestrini with the MEP Literature Group
The MEP Literature Group resumes this fall/winter to read several works by the Italian author Nanni Balestrini, including We Want Everything and The Unseen.
Hegel for Radicals: Part II – Phenomenology of Spirit
With Alex Steinberg. This class series is a continuation of the series from the Spring of 2022 where we introduced Hegel’s Philosophy of History. We will dive directly into that mysterious book, The Phenomenology of Spirit. No prior experience with studying Hegel is expected or required. We will make Hegel's book less mysterious as we go along and try to tease out the revolutionary implications in the thought of Hegel and explain their significance for our time.
Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-Pandemic
Video available: https://youtu.be/FlJYh3VDWNU
William I. Robinson's new book Global Civil War provides a big-picture account of how the coronavirus pandemic and new digital technologies have drastically transformed capitalism and the entire global economy and society. Analyzing the concentration of power and control in the hands of corporate conglomerates, tech giants, megabanks, and the military-industrial complex, the book documents the extent of unprecedented global inequalities as the mass of humanity faces violent dispossession and uncertain survival. The book issues a dire warning against the emergence of a dystopic digitalized dictatorship but also finds great hope and inspiration in the burgeoning social movements of the poor and the dispossessed as humanity descends into global civil war.
The Political Writings of Marx and Engels: Social Classes, Revolution, and Human Freedom
This group will read and discuss original texts by Marx and Engels about their theory of class struggles as the motive force of human social evolution and the modern working class as the political antagonist of the capitalist system - the class that has the power, by abolishing itself, to usher in a society beyond class exploitation.
Woman, Life, Freedom: Iran through the Lens of Antonio Gramsci
Juxtaposing documentary video footage with selected readings from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, we will deepen our understanding of the current uprising among women and young people in Iran. Applying Gramsci's dual perspective on Individuality/Universality, Hegemony/Authority, Force/Consent, Terror/Legitimacy, Strategy/Tactic, Agitation/Propaganda, and State/Civil Society, we will examine spontaneous movements, subaltern groups, and the balance of domestic and international forces. Convened and facilitated by Piruz Alemi.
Envisioning Social Change: New Voices in Science Fiction
In order to build a better world, we have to envision it first. Join us to read more science fiction through the lens of social change. Readings this fall will include Selections from Octavia's Brood, edited by adrienne marie brown and Walida Imarisha, who conceptualized Visionary Fiction and this book to honor Octavia Butler. Emily ... Read more
Invention of the White Race – Fall 2022
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA reading and discussion group convened with Sean Ahern, on Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race. In 1972, after over 30 years of activism in the labor and communist movements, Allen shared the following strategic insight with a new generation of revolutionaries: “The most vulnerable point at which a decisive blow can be struck against bourgeois rule in the United States is white supremacy. White supremacy is both the keystone (in the arch) and the Achilles heel of U.S. bourgeois democracy, the historic form of bourgeois rule in the US. It is a vulnerable point because it is a historically developed and unresolvable internal contradiction of US bourgeois democracy. It is the decisive vulnerable point because – as history has repeatedly proved – the basic class contradictions in bourgeois democracy can never fully mature until and unless the anti-proletarian nature of white supremacy has been completely established in the minds of the proletarian masses.” Allen spent the next 20 years researching the primary sources and writing his magnum opus.
Climate, Class, and Degrowth
Join the MEP's Ecosocialist Study Group as we reconvene to consider two books that are provoking wide discussion and debate: Matt Huber's Climate Change as Class War, and The Future Is Degrowth, by Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan, and Andrea Vetter.
Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism
This study group is reading and discussing Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism.
The Novels of Nanni Balestrini with the MEP Literature Group
The MEP Literature Group resumes this fall/winter to read several works by the Italian author Nanni Balestrini, including We Want Everything and The Unseen.
Hegel for Radicals: Part II – Phenomenology of Spirit
With Alex Steinberg. This class series is a continuation of the series from the Spring of 2022 where we introduced Hegel’s Philosophy of History. We will dive directly into that mysterious book, The Phenomenology of Spirit. No prior experience with studying Hegel is expected or required. We will make Hegel's book less mysterious as we go along and try to tease out the revolutionary implications in the thought of Hegel and explain their significance for our time.
The Political Writings of Marx and Engels: Social Classes, Revolution, and Human Freedom
This group will read and discuss original texts by Marx and Engels about their theory of class struggles as the motive force of human social evolution and the modern working class as the political antagonist of the capitalist system - the class that has the power, by abolishing itself, to usher in a society beyond class exploitation.
Woman, Life, Freedom: Iran through the Lens of Antonio Gramsci
Juxtaposing documentary video footage with selected readings from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, we will deepen our understanding of the current uprising among women and young people in Iran. Applying Gramsci's dual perspective on Individuality/Universality, Hegemony/Authority, Force/Consent, Terror/Legitimacy, Strategy/Tactic, Agitation/Propaganda, and State/Civil Society, we will examine spontaneous movements, subaltern groups, and the balance of domestic and international forces. Convened and facilitated by Piruz Alemi.
Envisioning Social Change: New Voices in Science Fiction
In order to build a better world, we have to envision it first. Join us to read more science fiction through the lens of social change. Readings this fall will include Selections from Octavia's Brood, edited by adrienne marie brown and Walida Imarisha, who conceptualized Visionary Fiction and this book to honor Octavia Butler. Emily ... Read more
Invention of the White Race – Fall 2022
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA reading and discussion group convened with Sean Ahern, on Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race. In 1972, after over 30 years of activism in the labor and communist movements, Allen shared the following strategic insight with a new generation of revolutionaries: “The most vulnerable point at which a decisive blow can be struck against bourgeois rule in the United States is white supremacy. White supremacy is both the keystone (in the arch) and the Achilles heel of U.S. bourgeois democracy, the historic form of bourgeois rule in the US. It is a vulnerable point because it is a historically developed and unresolvable internal contradiction of US bourgeois democracy. It is the decisive vulnerable point because – as history has repeatedly proved – the basic class contradictions in bourgeois democracy can never fully mature until and unless the anti-proletarian nature of white supremacy has been completely established in the minds of the proletarian masses.” Allen spent the next 20 years researching the primary sources and writing his magnum opus.