The Spectre Still Haunting: Introducing the Revolutionary Politics of Marx and Engels
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAn introductory reading group for those just getting acquainted with Marxist ideas, based on Marx and Engels' elegant and rousing classic The Manifesto of the Communist Party. We will be guided by China Miéville's thoughtful, provocative meditations on the Manifesto, A Spectre Haunting.
Marxism and the Capitalist State
Recording available on YouTubeA video of this December 16, 2024, event is available on the MEP's YouTube channel. A lively discussion with the editors and several contributors to the just-released Marxism and the ... Read more
Reading Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWe continue to study selected passages from Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. We delve into key themes and concepts related to civil society and state: politics and the arts, racism, class and gender, religion, linguistics, and other methods of analysis, critical theory, mass media, and cinema, hegemony, and subaltern studies, as well as the role of intellectuals and activists in discovering new methods and languages to be transformative.
Blood and Fire: The Violent Origins of Capitalism
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsJoin the MEP's Capital Study Group in a four-week study of the concluding section of volume I of Marx's Capital, which discloses the widespread violence and dispossession - in both Europe and colonized areas - that accompanied the emergence of capitalism.
Multispecies Marxism: Reading and Reflecting on Animals and Capital
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAn eight-session discussion and reading group on the central role of nonhuman animals in the capitalist economy, historically and today. We will be looking through a multispecies lens at key concepts of Marxism, such as 'value', 'primitive accumulation', 'species being', 'circulation', and 'resistance.'
The Fall and Rise of American Finance
The People's Forum 320 West 37th Street, New York, NY, United StatesIn-person event at The People's Forum in NYC featuring Stephen Maher and Scott Aquanno, authors of 'The Fall and Rise of American Finance: From J.P. Morgan to Blackrock.' They insist that financialization has not implied the hollowing out of the "real" economy, the decline of capitalism, or the retreat of the state. Rather, it has served to intensify competitive discipline to maximize profits and the exploitation of labor occurred with the support of an increasingly authoritarian state.
Marx for Cats with Leigh Claire La Berge
Recording available on YouTube“All history is the history of cat struggle.” In "Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary," our guest speaker Leigh Clare La Berge follows feline footprints through Western economic history to reveal an animality at the heart of Marxism. By asking what humans and animals owe each other in a moment of ecological crisis, La Berge joins current debates about the need for and possibility of eco-socialism.
Late Fascism: a Conversation With Alberto Toscano
Recording available on YouTubeIn 'Late Fascism' Alberto Toscano asks, how should we name, map and respond to the present state of affairs where the forces of authoritarianism and reaction seem to have the upper hand? Drawing especially on Black radical and anticolonial theories of fascism, Toscano makes clear the limits of associating fascism primarily with the kinds of political violence experienced in past European regimes. He argues that we should see fascism as a changing process, a threat anchored in racial and colonial capitalism, which continues to evolve in the present day.
Fletcher and Davidson: Campaigns, Movements and Organizing Strategies
Recording available on YouTubeA video of this March 16, 2024, event is available on the MEP's YouTube channel. Bill Fletcher Jr. and Carl Davidson join us for a talk and discussion jumping off ... Read more
Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society
Recording available on YouTubeA video of this March 26, 2024, event is available on the MEP's YouTube channel. Michael Heinrich presents his biography-in-progress of Karl Marx, which has already gained glowing reviews from ... Read more
Reading Science Fiction Politically
The Science and Visionary Fiction reading group reconvenes April 15 for a new Spring season. Watch this space for coming reading selections and use the website contact page for questions ... Read more
Reading Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks – Spring 2024
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsIn this ongoing weekly reading group, we continue to read and learn from Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. We explore key themes and concepts related to politics and civil society, including race, class and gender, religion, linguistic and other methods of analysis, critical theory, mass media, the arts and cinema, hegemony, and subaltern studies.
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 ... 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.