We Make Our Own History: On Marxism and Social Movements
We live in the twilight of neoliberalism: the ruling classes can no longer rule as before, and ordinary people are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way.
Black Marxism
As always, capitalism has crises. Again, a new generation turns toward Marxism. How do we apply this wide ranging and controversial revolutionary tradition to our current times? Writer and professor, Cedric Robinson’s magnum opus, Black Marxism will be our lodestar for this class.
Heavy Radicals
As a result of research conducted by author and historian Aaron Leonard and Conor Gallagher, including systematic filings of Freedom of Information Act requests, we now know that this “investigation” included: office break-ins, poison-pen letters, ‘bad-jacketing’ (claiming dedicated members were police agents), deportations, firings, setting organizations and individuals against one another through rumor and provocation, and informant penetration into the very top of the group’s leadership.
Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature, History, & the Crisis of Capitalism
Jason W. Moore and Christian Parenti introduce a new essay collection, Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. The book challenges the theory and history offered by proponents of the “Anthropocene” and stresses how climate change and related crises are rooted in the rise and domination of capital.
Augusto Boal’s Marxism
This talk by Geo Britto, a long-time collaborator with Augusto Boal and practitioner of Theater of the Oppressed, will look at how Boal formulated and created that methodology called Theater of the Oppressed. Britto will look at Boal's early exposure, as a student in New York, to the ideas of people like Irwin Piscator, Langston Hughes, Lee Strasberg and the Actors Studio, Harold Clurman and others....
Current Prospects for a Socialist Movement in the USA
Victor Wallis, who has been Socialism and Democracy’s managing editor for almost 20 years, reflects on the recent major surge in popular receptivity to socialism in the United States.
Left for the Holidays: 2nd Annual Book and Print Fair
Support our publishers, magazines, writers and artists that keep us informed with great writing, research and beautiful and striking prints and posters to carry us, our friends and families into the coming year. Free admission.
Organizing in the Era of The Gig Economy
...as Silicon Valley is turning back the clock on workers rights and fracturing moments of class unity, workers all over the world are organizing and fighting back. Come to consider how we can become more organized as a class here in the New York City area.
Frederick Douglass in Brooklyn
Whether discussing the politics of the Civil War or recounting his relationships with Abraham Lincoln and John Brown, Douglass’s towering voice sounds anything but dated. An introductory essay examines the intricate ties between Douglass and Brooklyn abolitionists, while brief chapter introductions and annotations fill in the historical context.
Finally Got The News (at Interference Archive)
FINALLY GOT THE NEWS uncovers the hidden legacy of the radical left of the 1970s, a decade when vibrant social movements challenged racism, imperialism, patriarchy and capitalism itself. It uses original printed materials—from pamphlets to posters, flyers to record albums—to tell this politically rich and little-known story.
Germany 1918-1924: False Hope or Missed Chance?
The communists of Germany now struggled to reconnect with the German working class and rebuild a revolutionary movement in the Weimar Republic, a society that was, on the one hand, striving to return to normalcy and, on the other hand, slipped easily and often into economic and political chaos. They fought, but they lost. In the process, the working class was divided and demoralized, the capitalist class went looking for a savior, and the foundations of Nazism were laid.
Biology as Means of Production and Ideology
This talk will report on the current biotechnological landscape and describe challenges to its enabling genetic determinist ideology from dialectical and multi-causal explanatory modes within the emerging field of evolutionary developmental biology.
WINTER 2017 CLASSES BEGIN NOW
Our class and events are happening. There is a code break on this web site that will be fixed soon. You can register at the first class or events as they take place.
Introduction to Marxism
In this course we will be concerned with some of the main ideas of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, focusing on the materialist understanding of history, and the theory of surplus value.
Life, the Universe and Everything
We will conclude by tying the idea of the cosmos as a living system of dynamic evolving complexity to the Notion in Hegel’s Logic and from there to an interpretation of Marx’s Capital that places it firmly within the same Hegelian dialectic that is being developed in contemporary cosmology.