Events
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Soldiers of Revolution
In SOLDIERS OF REVOLUTION, historian Mark A. Lause analyzes changes in European warfare in the closing decades of the 19th century and the consequences for working-class movements. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 introduced new military technologies, transformed the organization of armies, and upset the continental balance of power. The mass armies that became a new standard required mass mobilizations of working people, who exercised a new power through social democratic parties and insurgent movements.
$3 – $11 -
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Marx’s Grundrisse: Last two weeks until spring term
Online Event - Zoom Meeting“Forces of production and social relations – two different sides of the development of the social individual – appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high…” —Karl Marx, The Grundrisse
$12.00 – $24.00 -
Rubbish Belongs to the Poor
Rubbish. Waste. Trash. Whatever term you choose to describe the things we throw away, the connotations are the same; of something dirty, useless and incontrovertibly 'bad'. But does such a dismissive rendering mask a more nuanced reality? In RUBBISH BELONGS TO THE POOR Patrick O'Hare journeys to the heart of Uruguay’s waste disposal system in order to reconceptualize rubbish as a 21st century commons, at risk of enclosure.
$3 – $11 -
After the Pandemic: Rebuilding the Medicare for All Movement
The Covid crisis drove home both the absurdity of linking healthcare to employment and the importance of treating healthcare as a decommodified public good. But the politics of the emerging post pandemic period are not conducive to big, transformative initiatives like Medicare for All.
$3 – $11 -
Socialist Register 2022 — Polarization and Socialism: The Direction Forward
It is a truism that electoral politics and political identity in the USA and Europe today are polarized to a degree unknown since the 1930s. It is a commonplace among the pundits of the ruling class that somehow “both sides” must return to “moderate” common sense to avoid a violent rupture of our society. They seldom question the underlying causes of this polarization, let alone whether it is rooted in the very nature of late capitalism.
This is not the case with the contributors to the 58th volume of Socialist Register. From different perspectives, they ask us to think about the deep social contradictions exposed by increasing polarization of the most economically developed societies along lines of wealth, race, gender, nation-state, and region. Members of this class meet once each month for four months to discuss selected articles from SR 58 with editor Greg Albo, joined by various authors organized around the following themes on one Sunday a month from March 20 through May 115, 2022. The recording of the February 20 session is available by writing to info@marxedproject.org
$7 – $34 -
Global Political Struggles of the Working Class
The Double Consciousness of Capital with author DAVID HARVEY
Social Sources of Political Polarization in Russia with authors ILYA MATVEEV and OLEG ZHURAVLEV
The Far Right, Corporate Power, and Social Struggles in Brazil with authors VIRGINIA FONTES, ANA GARCIA and REJANE HOEVELER$3 – $11 -
The Solutions are Already Here with author Peter Gelderloos
Across the world, grassroots networks of local communities are working to realize their visions of an alternative revolutionary response to planetary destruction, often pitted against the new megaprojects promoted by greenwashed alternative energy infrastructures and the neocolonialist, technocratic policies that are the forerunners of the Green New Deal.
Gelderloos interviews food sovereignty activists in Venezuela, Indigenous communities reforesting their lands in Brazil and anarchists fighting biofuel plantations in Indonesia, looking at the battles that have cancelled airports, stopped pipelines, and helped the most marginalized to fight borders and environmental racism, to transform their cities, to win a dignified survival.
$3 – $11 -
Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim Our Digital Future from Big Tech
James Muldoon shows how grassroots communities and transnational social movements can take back control from Big Tech. He reframes the technology debate and proposes a host of new ideas from the local to the international for how we can reclaim the emancipatory possibilities of digital platforms. Drawing on sources from forgotten histories to contemporary prototypes, he proposes an alternative system and charts a roadmap for how we can get there.
$3 – $11 -
The End of Capitalism: The Thought of Henryk Grossman
Henryk Grossman is a name most socialists or students of political and social theory, let alone the mass of working people around the world, have probably never heard of. Yet Grossman, a Polish Jew born in 1881, deserves recognition as the most sophisticated proponent since Karl Marx of a devastating claim about the nature of our social world. For, if Grossman’s neglected but brilliant insight into economics is correct, then capitalism – the social system that has dominated life all over the globe for the past few centuries – may well be entering what he called its ‘final breakdown’.
The claim that capitalism is unsustainable has been ridiculed since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Capitalists declared ‘the end of history’ – their system had proven to be the stronger and would go on uncontested until the heat death of the universe. The same view dominated after the 1883 death of Marx, whose three-volume masterpiece Capital exposed capitalism as a crisis-ridden and historically transient economic system (mode of production).
$3 – $11 -
El Golpe: US Labor, the CIA, and the Coup at Ford in Mexico
It’s 1990, and US labor is being outsourced to Mexico. Rumors of a violent confrontation at the Mexican Ford Assembly plant on January 8 reach the United Auto Workers (UAW) union in the US: nine employees had been shot by a group of drunken thugs and gangsters, in an act of political repression which changed the course of Mexican and US workers’ rights forever. Rob McKenzie was working at the Ford Twin Cities Assembly plant in Minnesota when he heard of the attack. He didn’t believe the official story, and began a years-long investigation to uncover the truth. His findings took him further than he expected – all the way to the doors of the CIA.
$3 – $11 -
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Building Alternatives in Rojava: Women’s Liberation & Cooperative Economy
Our speakers will trace the development of the Kurdish women’s movement and discuss the growth of Rojava’s cooperative economy, highlighting women’s autonomous economic organizing.
Emre Sahin is a participant and researcher of social movements, particularly the Kurdish movement, and a sociologist at Binghamton University.
Meghan Bodette is a researcher focused on Turkey, Syria and Kurdish issues.$3 – $11 -
The Necessity of Social Control by István Mészáros
“We are living in a time of unprecedented historical crisis, which affects all forms of the capital system, not just capitalism. It is easy to understand, then, that the only thing that could produce a viable solution to the contradictions that we have to face would be a radical socialist alternative to capital’s mode of social metabolic control.” István Mészáros
$15.00 – $30.00 -
The Marx Revival: John Bellamy Foster and Marcello Musto
The Marx Revival: Key Concepts and New Interpretations
A focus on Ecology with John Bellamy Foster and a presentation on Communism with Marcello Musto.
“Scornful neglect and intemperate hostility, haughty dismissal and marginal course adoption, selective co-optation and selective bowdlerization: these are some of the strategies of establishment intellectuals over the years in response to the challenger of the thinker born 204 years ago in Trier. Yet, here we are near the beginning of the third decade of the 21st century, and it sometimes seems that Karl Marx’s ideas have never been as topical, or as commanding of respect and interest, as they are today.” —Marcello Musto, from the Preface, The Marx Revival$3 – $11 -
Arise: Power, Strategy and Union Resurgence
Drawing on history and case studies of unions developing the effective use of power, Jane Holgate’s book lays out strategies for moving beyond the pessimism that prevails in much of today’s union movement. By placing power analysis back at the heart of workers’ struggle, the chapters of Arise demonstrate that transformational change is not only possible, but within reach.
$3.00 – $11.00 -
From Science Fiction to Visionary Fiction: Learning from Octavia Butler
Writing in the years of momentous change from 1971 to 2006, Octavia Butler embodied the emergence of "visionary fiction" as a new way to write, read and draw inspiration from science fiction. This spring, the Marxist Education Project's first literature reading group devoted to science fiction will read Kindred (1979) and Parable of the Sower (1993), both now graphic novels and soon film and streaming series. Fifteen years on since her passing, Butler's influence continues to grow. We will also read NK Jemisin’s Fifth Season (2015) and Martha Wells’ All Systems Red (2017) to explore some of Butler's lasting legacy. We will also make room to explore related short stories, graphic novels, essays, films, and more.
$35.00 – $65.00