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
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NY...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
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYWhether 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?
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThe 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
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThis 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
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYIn 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
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYWe 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.
The Emergence of a New Left
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NY“The free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” ― Herbert Marcuse
“Disaffiliation was deliberate, and conscious, even self-conscious, among the demonstrators who appreared in the fifties—unavoidably, disaffiliation is a prerequisite of protest.” —Jeffrey Nuttall, Bomb Culture
Highlights of Capital, Volume 1
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYCAPITAL is the indispensable sourcebook on Marx’s method for analyzing the economy, politics and struggles. Many of us have less time to study it because, as Marx predicted, we have to work longer hours— and often more than one job—in order to survive. Fortunately, even a basic familiarity with the key concepts of Volume I offers many tools for understanding capitalism’s dynamics.
African Literature: Colonialism, Liberation, Disillusionment
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYWith the reading of novels by Ousmane Sembene (Senegal), Tayeb Salih (Sudan), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria) and Ngugu wa Thiong’o (Kenya), we examine four different areas of Africa as the peoples there emerge from European colonization. We witness the struggles of workers on strike before their full independence, anti-colonial resistance spanning from Mount Kenya to academic circles in London. As nations become independent we discover new and recycled forms of oppression, exploitation and war. In the midst of disillusionment, we see resolve and signs of what remains possible.
Integrating Social and Natural Systems
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NY...this course will focus on key concepts in Earth system science (water, air, soil, and life) and systems thinking. Gaining a perspective of how we exist in the natural world even in built environments influences the framing of questions and then how these questions might be answered in order to understand ways we can become sustainable and resilient societies.
Marx’s Grundrisse
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYMarx viewed all his economic laws as tendencies and it is hard to deny that those tendencies are becoming more and more the realities of today’s capitalism. However, to understand our society we need to do more than reading and accepting his concepts, we must critically analyze them and look for the way of thinking that produced them. It is with this goal in my mind that we should embark on a journey through the long and complex sentences of The German Ideology and the Grundrisse.
Working The Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centers
Interference Archive 131 8th Street, No. 4, Brooklyn, NY, United StatesThe talk includes three parts: first, it makes an argument for the use of workers’ inquiry as a method to study contemporary work conditions, in this case involving an undercover activist ethnography; second, it draws on heterodox and critical Marxist theory to understand the transformation of work; third, it focuses on the challenges of resistance and organization in contemporary work through a concrete example.