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 ... 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: ... Read more
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.
Book Talk: Liberating Abortion
Recording available on YouTubeRegina Mahone presents Liberating Abortion, a galvanizing history recentering people of color to put forth a timely argument that we must liberate abortion for all. Mahone and co-author Renee Bracey Sherman illustrate the long racist history that brought us to this moment, uncover the hidden figures who laid the foundations that activists and storytellers are building on today, and explain how abortion has been and remains essential to the health of our communities.
Conversations on the US Elections – What happens next?
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsJoin us for a first-impressions conversation on whatever results are known of the 2024 US elections. We will not know everything; many things will play out over the months that follow. We will know some things that have already taken shape. We can ask what will governing look like, what new shapes may fascism take, what directions will capitalism take, and how resistance will evolve. What does the election mean for climate struggle, Palestine solidarity, reproductive freedom, challenging the carceral state?
A Prime Competitor: Understanding Amazon’s Market Power
Recording available on YouTubeStephen Maher and Scott Aquanno present an innovative analysis of Amazon's market power, drawing on major themes from Marx's Capital, volume 2. In a recent contribution published by Canada's Socialist Project, they challenge understandings of "monopoly" common in mainstream economics as well as among sections of the left.
AI versus Labor: Luddism and Beyond
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants8 weekly sessions starting Oct 1. Is Artificial Intelligence (AI, sic) really the dire threat to the future of humanity as even some of its proponents claim, or is it a more mundane and familiar threat to working people who face loss of their livelihoods and/or further speed-up and alienation? The entire history of industrial capitalism is punctuated by recurring waves of automation to reduce labor costs and turnover time, each time provoking strong resistance by the affected workforce. This reading group will probe the history both of AI and computer technology specifically and of working-class resistance to capitalist automation in general.
Hegel’s ‘Science of Logic’ – An Epilogue and a Prologue
Hegel for Radicals concludes the current series with a nine-week course co-hosted by Alex Steinberg and Matthew Strauss. We are reading the Introduction and Preliminary Concepts from Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, sometimes called “The Shorter Logic.” This material can stand alone as an Introduction to Hegel’s magnum opus, The Science of Logic. But for those who have already studied the Science of Logic with us this can serve as completion of the Circle of the dialectic.
Translating ‘Capital’ for the 21st Century
Recording available on YouTubeThe appearance of a new English-language edition of Marx's Capital, Volume I, translated and edited by Paul Reitter and Paul North, has been a momentous occasion. Join a conversation with Reitter, North, and noted Marx scholar Michael Heinrich on the challenges of translating Marx for 21st century readers, the weaknesses and strengths of earlier translations, and the ways the new edition can help us understand Marx's analyses of capital and value.
Marx Miniseries: The ‘Resultate’
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's Capital Studies Group presents a miniseries on the chapter Marx omitted from published editions of Capital. Titled "Results of the Immediate Process of Production" and often referred to by the German 'Resultate', this long chapter can be read as a bridge between volumes 1 and 2 of Capital.
Reading Capital in an Age of Climate Change
Recording available on YouTubeMatt Huber highlights the relevance to the climate crisis of key concepts from Marx's 'Capital' such as value, the hidden abode of production, surplus-value, the accumulation of capital, primitive accumulation, and the expropriation of the expropriators.
Reading Gramsci for Today’s Movements
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAn ongoing study group on the Prison Notebooks and other works of Antonio Gramsci. We explore Gramsci's themes and concepts, including state-civil society relations, historical bloc, hegemony, spontaneity, strategy and tactic, and language. We follow Gramsci’s philological method, addressing such areas as linguistics, cinema, critical theory, literature, journalism, comics, animation, plastic arts, mass media and Machiavellian political studies.
Celebrating 75 Years of Palestinian Literature – Final Series
Three weekly sessions on Thursdays at 7 pm US ET, Starting January 9 The MEP’s months-long reading of Palestinian literature concludes in January with a reading of the recently issued ... Read more
Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsAn open-ended reading group on Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life - a major manifesto of humanist Marxism and a clarion call for revolutionary praxis through sustained critique of daily living. “Lefebvre pushed philosophy out into the streets,” the critic McKenzie Wark has written; his work has influenced fields as diverse as sociology, cultural studies, architecture and urban planning, as well as movements including the Situationist International and the activists of May 1968.