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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200525T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200525T201500
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200404T042015Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200514T150801Z
UID:10006738-1590431400-1590437700@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Descent Into the Inferno:  The Politics of Marx’s Capital
DESCRIPTION:with CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP \nAn 8-Week Reading Group: \nMarx’s Inferno\, by William Clare Roberts\, reconstructs the major arguments of volume I of Karl Marx’s Capital and inaugurates a completely new reading. His argument is that Capital was primarily a careful engagement with the motives and aims of the workers’ movement of the mid-19th century. Understood in this light\, Capital emerges as a profound work of political theory. For Roberts\, Capital was ingeniously modeled on Dante’s Inferno\, with Marx in the role of the proletariat’s Virgil guiding us down to the secret depths of capitalism’s “social Hell.” \nCombining research on Marx’s interlocutors\, textual scholarship\, and forays into recent debates\, Roberts traces the continuities linking Marx’s theory of capitalism to the tradition of republican political thought. He immerses the reader in socialist debates about the nature of commerce\, the experience of labor\, the power of bosses and managers\, and the possibilities of political organization. Roberts rescues those debates from the past\, and shows how they speak to ever-renewed concerns about political life in today’s world. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP is a diverse group of students\, activists and teachers who are have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. \nFees for the MEP zoom sessions are sliding scale; no one is turned away for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/descent-into-the-inferno-the-politics-of-marxs-capital/2020-05-25/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Marxist Method,Multi-session Classes,Political Economy,Revolutions Study Group,Science and Method,Science and Technology
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/MarxsInferno1.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200527T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200527T201500
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200331T032831Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200507T155623Z
UID:10006733-1590604200-1590610500@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Covid-19 Capitalism: Big Farms Make Big Flu
DESCRIPTION:8 Week Reading Group: \nThe year 2020 has brought together a devastating viral pandemic and what is shaping up as the deepest cyclical crisis of capitalism in history. Covid-19 is not the first such episode rooted in the risky practices of capitalist agribusiness\, as detailed in Rob Wallace’s Big Farms Big Flu. We need to set ourselves to the task of how to respond that will have an impact on the causes of the circumstances we are facing as a species. To do this requires organizing and knowledge of the science that is behind the origins and spreading of Covid-19 so that our anti-capitalist activities and campaigns can be effective both in the short and long term. \nRob Wallace’s book is an indispensable handbook to the inevitable pandemics stemming from agribusiness. Monthly Review is making it available at a big discount until April 17. We at the MEP are hosting an online reading and discussion group to share the comprehensive research and writing that is contained in Wallace’s book. We will cover all seven sections\, plus the two-part update being published in Monthly Review’s next two issues. \nFrom the Introduction to Big Farms Make Big Flu:  \n“…humans have built physical and social environments on land and sea that have radically altered the pathways along which pathogens evolve and dispense. \n“Pathogens\, however\, are no mere protagonists\, buffered to and fro by the tides of human history. They also act of their own volition\, if you will excuse the anthropomorphism. They display agency. And they have by their evolutionary changes forced agribusiness to the bargaining table\, a place where that ilk\, given their prior successes\, think they excel.” \nThe book is offered by Monthly Review in paper at $10 or as an ebook at $5 until April 17: https://monthlyreview.org/product/big_farms_make_big_flu/ \nFees for the MEP zoom sessions are sliding scale; no one is turned away for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/covid-19-capitalism-big-farms-make-big-flu/2020-05-27/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Agribusiness,Capital Studies,Classes/Events,Climate Change,Evolutionary biology,Marxist Method,Multi-session Classes,Science and Method,Science and Technology
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Covid19Capitalism.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200528T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200528T213000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200407T025518Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200521T164024Z
UID:10006748-1590694200-1590701400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:6 Plays of Bertolt Brecht
DESCRIPTION:Beginning April 23 we will read aloud six of the many plays Bertolt Brecht wrote between the 1920s and his death in 1956. We will spend three weeks with The Threepenny Opera\, one week with The Exception and The Rule\, and two weeks each for the other four plays. There will be time to read aloud—taking on various characters among ourselves. There will also be substantive discussion of these works which span all the decades of his writing. The Epic theater\, musical theater along with the learning plays are represented in this selection of plays. Each session will be conducted via Zoom until we have an all-clear to return to the classroom. With your registration\, the zoom password will be sent to you. \n \nThe Threepenny Opera 1928 \nThe Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a “play with music” by Bertolt Brecht\, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay’s 18th-century ballad opera\, The Beggar’s Opera\, and four ballads by François Villon\, with music by Kurt Weill. The work offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world. Writing in 1929\, Weill made the political and artistic intents of the work clear: “With the Dreigroschenoper we reach a public which either did not know us at all or thought us incapable of captivating listeners\, Opera was founded as an aristocratic form of art. If the framework of opera is unable to withstand the impact of the age\, then this framework must be destroyed…. In the Dreigroschenoper\, reconstruction was possible insofar as here we had a chance of starting from scratch. Weill claimed at the time that “music cannot further the action of the play or create its background”\, but achieves its proper value when it interrupts the action at the right moments.” \nThe Mother 1931 \nBased on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel of the same name\, is Brecht’s most elaborate use of his radically experimental Lehrstücke\, or learning plays\, which he describes as “a piece of anti-metaphysical\, materialistic\, non-Aristotelian drama.” The play suggests that to become a good mother involves more than just complaining about the price of soup; rather\, one must struggle against it\, not only for her and her family’s sake\, but for the sake of all working families. The title character\, the mother Pelagea Vlassova\, journeys through the play’s 14 scenes\, the death of her son\, and her own impending illness\, fighting illiteracy while constantly filled with good humor and wily activism. The moment in October 1917 when she becomes free to carry and raise her own Red Flag on the eve of the czar’s overthrow proves momentous. \n \nThe Exception and the Rule 1933 \nThe play itself is short\, and lasts no longer than 60 minutes if performed in its entirety. It tells the story of a rich merchant\, who must cross the fictional Yahi Desert to close an oil deal. During the trip the class differences between him and his working-class porter (or “coolie” as he is called in most English language editions) are shown. As he becomes increasingly afraid of the desert\, the merchant’s brutality increases\, and he feels terribly alone without police nearby to protect him. \nMother Courage & Her Children 1941 \nFollowing Brecht’s own principles for political drama\, the play is not set in modern timesbut during the 30 Years’ War of 1618–1648. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling\, nicknamed Mother Courage\, who is determined to make her living from the war. Over the course of the play\, she loses all three of her children\, Schweizerkas\, Eilif\, and Kattrin\, to the very war from which she tried to profit. Mother Courage is an example of Brecht’s concepts of epic theatre and Verfremdungseffekt\, or “V” effect; preferably “alienation” or “estrangement effect” Verfremdungseffekt is achieved through the use of placards which reveal the events of each scene\, juxtaposition\, actors changing characters and costume on stage\, the use of narration\, simple props and scenery. \nThe Good Person of Szechwan 1943 \nBrecht’s interest in historical materialism is evident in the play’s definition of contemporary morality and altruism in social and economic terms. Shen Teh’s altruism conflicts with Shui Ta’s capitalist ethos of exploitation. The play implies that economic systems determine a society’s morality. \nThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui 1958 \nIt chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui\, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster\, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II. The play has frequent references to Shakespeare. To highlight Ui’s evil and villainous rise to power\, he is explicitly compared to Shakespeare’s Richard III. Like Macbeth\, Ui experiences a visitation from the ghost of one of his victims. Finally\, Hitler’s practiced prowess at public speaking is referenced when Ui receives lessons from an actor in walking\, sitting and orating\, which includes his reciting Mark Antony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/6-plays-of-bertolt-brecht/2020-05-28/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Literary Studies
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BrechtPortrait.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200530T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200530T140000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200327T035801Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200714T144743Z
UID:10006719-1590836400-1590847200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 3\, 2nd Sessions
DESCRIPTION:Second 12 session series \nLet’s make the Anthropocene stage of the earth’s evolution\, the turning point of world history. After all\, paraphrasing Marx\, since we are the species that can know ourselves as a product of natural history\, we are responsible to all of nature. We have the power within us to make the Anthropocene not the capitalist endgame but the naturalization of our species and the humanization of nature. Capital\, a Critique of Political Economy\, can help effectively situate ourselves to face the challenges before all of humanity and nature\, and begin the process of reclaiming and putting into effect our human capacities for the betterment and advancement of each and all. \nThe study of Volume III is essential to understanding the complex dynamics at work in the present realities we are facing and how these realities are the necessary results of the inner logic of capital. In this moribund stage of late capitalist/imperialist development we see the rise of rentier and finance capital—the introduction of financial instruments being used to make money make more money\, jumping over and above the actual real wealth produced by trading on future wealth (derivatives and other forms of fictitious capital); overriding supply and demand as a price mechanism in such necessities as foodstuffs so that their prices continuously rise resulting in more poverty and starvation on a world scale and here in the US; turning new technologies into means of collecting rents—the internet\, mobile devices; expropriation of taxes paid by the working class to developers who are often tax exempt while our city and state governments give them tracts of our physical space; commodification of debt; privatization of public spaces\, properties and institutions; foreclosures; and the list goes on. \nCapital\, Volume III\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole\, completes Marx’s task of moving from the imaginary concrete—the researcher and scientist analyzing the appearances we see in everyday life such as in the Grundrisse\, to the abstract concrete. The results of the analytic study of the phenomenon that has revealed the social/natural content of that phenomenon (Volumes I and II)\, to the real concrete—how this content is expressed in everyday life through the mechanisms by which the actors determine their actions and appropriate wealth (Volume III). \nWith the conceptual integration of production and circulation (Volumes I and II) from the standpoint of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, Marx returns to the starting point of the research categories\, the imaginary concrete\, concepts seen as empirical givens as facts in themselves— profits\, interests\, rents\, rate of profit\, prices. These sensuously perceived givens (the way the world directly appears to us) are the starting point of the research analysis\, not the science. But now\, after the analysis\, these interrelated aspects of what appear on the surface of society are no longer imaginary but real\, understood as interrelated dynamics and mechanisms in everyday life by which the actors reproduce the social relations and physical conditions of capitalist society. Volume III integrates and completes the analysis of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, enabling us to understand and make sense of how each of the appearances and processes we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the whole. When we do so all the laws of motion previously revealed in the first two volumes take on new dimensions. Internal dynamics and contradictions burst out and situate humanity withina historical process that calls us to figure out how to go beyond capital and develop the conditions that insure that the development of each is the precondition for the development of all. \nWe will be starting or close to starting Part 3 of the volume on The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit. Until the Coronavirus and safe distancing and with staying at home being the healthy and responsible choice\, these sessions will be conducted via Zoom. If you register to participate\, you will be contacted with all information needed and a zoom link will be provided each week until we can meet in person\, if such conditions exist between now and mid-July. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than nearly three years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAll classes and events of The MEP are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Zoom classes rates are slightly less than in person meetings. However\, there are costs involved in keeping our site running\, having zoom sessions and paying for our office.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-3-2nd-sessions/2020-05-30/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Political Economy
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SchwittersFragment.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200601T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200601T201500
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200404T042015Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200514T150801Z
UID:10006739-1591036200-1591042500@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Descent Into the Inferno:  The Politics of Marx’s Capital
DESCRIPTION:with CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP \nAn 8-Week Reading Group: \nMarx’s Inferno\, by William Clare Roberts\, reconstructs the major arguments of volume I of Karl Marx’s Capital and inaugurates a completely new reading. His argument is that Capital was primarily a careful engagement with the motives and aims of the workers’ movement of the mid-19th century. Understood in this light\, Capital emerges as a profound work of political theory. For Roberts\, Capital was ingeniously modeled on Dante’s Inferno\, with Marx in the role of the proletariat’s Virgil guiding us down to the secret depths of capitalism’s “social Hell.” \nCombining research on Marx’s interlocutors\, textual scholarship\, and forays into recent debates\, Roberts traces the continuities linking Marx’s theory of capitalism to the tradition of republican political thought. He immerses the reader in socialist debates about the nature of commerce\, the experience of labor\, the power of bosses and managers\, and the possibilities of political organization. Roberts rescues those debates from the past\, and shows how they speak to ever-renewed concerns about political life in today’s world. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP is a diverse group of students\, activists and teachers who are have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. \nFees for the MEP zoom sessions are sliding scale; no one is turned away for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/descent-into-the-inferno-the-politics-of-marxs-capital/2020-06-01/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Marxist Method,Multi-session Classes,Political Economy,Revolutions Study Group,Science and Method,Science and Technology
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/MarxsInferno1.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200604T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200604T213000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200407T025518Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200521T164024Z
UID:10006749-1591299000-1591306200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:6 Plays of Bertolt Brecht
DESCRIPTION:Beginning April 23 we will read aloud six of the many plays Bertolt Brecht wrote between the 1920s and his death in 1956. We will spend three weeks with The Threepenny Opera\, one week with The Exception and The Rule\, and two weeks each for the other four plays. There will be time to read aloud—taking on various characters among ourselves. There will also be substantive discussion of these works which span all the decades of his writing. The Epic theater\, musical theater along with the learning plays are represented in this selection of plays. Each session will be conducted via Zoom until we have an all-clear to return to the classroom. With your registration\, the zoom password will be sent to you. \n \nThe Threepenny Opera 1928 \nThe Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a “play with music” by Bertolt Brecht\, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay’s 18th-century ballad opera\, The Beggar’s Opera\, and four ballads by François Villon\, with music by Kurt Weill. The work offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world. Writing in 1929\, Weill made the political and artistic intents of the work clear: “With the Dreigroschenoper we reach a public which either did not know us at all or thought us incapable of captivating listeners\, Opera was founded as an aristocratic form of art. If the framework of opera is unable to withstand the impact of the age\, then this framework must be destroyed…. In the Dreigroschenoper\, reconstruction was possible insofar as here we had a chance of starting from scratch. Weill claimed at the time that “music cannot further the action of the play or create its background”\, but achieves its proper value when it interrupts the action at the right moments.” \nThe Mother 1931 \nBased on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel of the same name\, is Brecht’s most elaborate use of his radically experimental Lehrstücke\, or learning plays\, which he describes as “a piece of anti-metaphysical\, materialistic\, non-Aristotelian drama.” The play suggests that to become a good mother involves more than just complaining about the price of soup; rather\, one must struggle against it\, not only for her and her family’s sake\, but for the sake of all working families. The title character\, the mother Pelagea Vlassova\, journeys through the play’s 14 scenes\, the death of her son\, and her own impending illness\, fighting illiteracy while constantly filled with good humor and wily activism. The moment in October 1917 when she becomes free to carry and raise her own Red Flag on the eve of the czar’s overthrow proves momentous. \n \nThe Exception and the Rule 1933 \nThe play itself is short\, and lasts no longer than 60 minutes if performed in its entirety. It tells the story of a rich merchant\, who must cross the fictional Yahi Desert to close an oil deal. During the trip the class differences between him and his working-class porter (or “coolie” as he is called in most English language editions) are shown. As he becomes increasingly afraid of the desert\, the merchant’s brutality increases\, and he feels terribly alone without police nearby to protect him. \nMother Courage & Her Children 1941 \nFollowing Brecht’s own principles for political drama\, the play is not set in modern timesbut during the 30 Years’ War of 1618–1648. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling\, nicknamed Mother Courage\, who is determined to make her living from the war. Over the course of the play\, she loses all three of her children\, Schweizerkas\, Eilif\, and Kattrin\, to the very war from which she tried to profit. Mother Courage is an example of Brecht’s concepts of epic theatre and Verfremdungseffekt\, or “V” effect; preferably “alienation” or “estrangement effect” Verfremdungseffekt is achieved through the use of placards which reveal the events of each scene\, juxtaposition\, actors changing characters and costume on stage\, the use of narration\, simple props and scenery. \nThe Good Person of Szechwan 1943 \nBrecht’s interest in historical materialism is evident in the play’s definition of contemporary morality and altruism in social and economic terms. Shen Teh’s altruism conflicts with Shui Ta’s capitalist ethos of exploitation. The play implies that economic systems determine a society’s morality. \nThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui 1958 \nIt chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui\, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster\, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II. The play has frequent references to Shakespeare. To highlight Ui’s evil and villainous rise to power\, he is explicitly compared to Shakespeare’s Richard III. Like Macbeth\, Ui experiences a visitation from the ghost of one of his victims. Finally\, Hitler’s practiced prowess at public speaking is referenced when Ui receives lessons from an actor in walking\, sitting and orating\, which includes his reciting Mark Antony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/6-plays-of-bertolt-brecht/2020-06-04/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Literary Studies
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BrechtPortrait.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200606T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200606T140000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200327T035801Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200714T144743Z
UID:10006720-1591441200-1591452000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 3\, 2nd Sessions
DESCRIPTION:Second 12 session series \nLet’s make the Anthropocene stage of the earth’s evolution\, the turning point of world history. After all\, paraphrasing Marx\, since we are the species that can know ourselves as a product of natural history\, we are responsible to all of nature. We have the power within us to make the Anthropocene not the capitalist endgame but the naturalization of our species and the humanization of nature. Capital\, a Critique of Political Economy\, can help effectively situate ourselves to face the challenges before all of humanity and nature\, and begin the process of reclaiming and putting into effect our human capacities for the betterment and advancement of each and all. \nThe study of Volume III is essential to understanding the complex dynamics at work in the present realities we are facing and how these realities are the necessary results of the inner logic of capital. In this moribund stage of late capitalist/imperialist development we see the rise of rentier and finance capital—the introduction of financial instruments being used to make money make more money\, jumping over and above the actual real wealth produced by trading on future wealth (derivatives and other forms of fictitious capital); overriding supply and demand as a price mechanism in such necessities as foodstuffs so that their prices continuously rise resulting in more poverty and starvation on a world scale and here in the US; turning new technologies into means of collecting rents—the internet\, mobile devices; expropriation of taxes paid by the working class to developers who are often tax exempt while our city and state governments give them tracts of our physical space; commodification of debt; privatization of public spaces\, properties and institutions; foreclosures; and the list goes on. \nCapital\, Volume III\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole\, completes Marx’s task of moving from the imaginary concrete—the researcher and scientist analyzing the appearances we see in everyday life such as in the Grundrisse\, to the abstract concrete. The results of the analytic study of the phenomenon that has revealed the social/natural content of that phenomenon (Volumes I and II)\, to the real concrete—how this content is expressed in everyday life through the mechanisms by which the actors determine their actions and appropriate wealth (Volume III). \nWith the conceptual integration of production and circulation (Volumes I and II) from the standpoint of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, Marx returns to the starting point of the research categories\, the imaginary concrete\, concepts seen as empirical givens as facts in themselves— profits\, interests\, rents\, rate of profit\, prices. These sensuously perceived givens (the way the world directly appears to us) are the starting point of the research analysis\, not the science. But now\, after the analysis\, these interrelated aspects of what appear on the surface of society are no longer imaginary but real\, understood as interrelated dynamics and mechanisms in everyday life by which the actors reproduce the social relations and physical conditions of capitalist society. Volume III integrates and completes the analysis of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, enabling us to understand and make sense of how each of the appearances and processes we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the whole. When we do so all the laws of motion previously revealed in the first two volumes take on new dimensions. Internal dynamics and contradictions burst out and situate humanity withina historical process that calls us to figure out how to go beyond capital and develop the conditions that insure that the development of each is the precondition for the development of all. \nWe will be starting or close to starting Part 3 of the volume on The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit. Until the Coronavirus and safe distancing and with staying at home being the healthy and responsible choice\, these sessions will be conducted via Zoom. If you register to participate\, you will be contacted with all information needed and a zoom link will be provided each week until we can meet in person\, if such conditions exist between now and mid-July. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than nearly three years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAll classes and events of The MEP are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Zoom classes rates are slightly less than in person meetings. However\, there are costs involved in keeping our site running\, having zoom sessions and paying for our office.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-3-2nd-sessions/2020-06-06/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Political Economy
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SchwittersFragment.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200608T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200608T201500
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200404T042015Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200514T150801Z
UID:10006740-1591641000-1591647300@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Descent Into the Inferno:  The Politics of Marx’s Capital
DESCRIPTION:with CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP \nAn 8-Week Reading Group: \nMarx’s Inferno\, by William Clare Roberts\, reconstructs the major arguments of volume I of Karl Marx’s Capital and inaugurates a completely new reading. His argument is that Capital was primarily a careful engagement with the motives and aims of the workers’ movement of the mid-19th century. Understood in this light\, Capital emerges as a profound work of political theory. For Roberts\, Capital was ingeniously modeled on Dante’s Inferno\, with Marx in the role of the proletariat’s Virgil guiding us down to the secret depths of capitalism’s “social Hell.” \nCombining research on Marx’s interlocutors\, textual scholarship\, and forays into recent debates\, Roberts traces the continuities linking Marx’s theory of capitalism to the tradition of republican political thought. He immerses the reader in socialist debates about the nature of commerce\, the experience of labor\, the power of bosses and managers\, and the possibilities of political organization. Roberts rescues those debates from the past\, and shows how they speak to ever-renewed concerns about political life in today’s world. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP is a diverse group of students\, activists and teachers who are have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. \nFees for the MEP zoom sessions are sliding scale; no one is turned away for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/descent-into-the-inferno-the-politics-of-marxs-capital/2020-06-08/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Marxist Method,Multi-session Classes,Political Economy,Revolutions Study Group,Science and Method,Science and Technology
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/MarxsInferno1.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200611T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200611T213000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200407T025518Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200521T164024Z
UID:10006750-1591903800-1591911000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:6 Plays of Bertolt Brecht
DESCRIPTION:Beginning April 23 we will read aloud six of the many plays Bertolt Brecht wrote between the 1920s and his death in 1956. We will spend three weeks with The Threepenny Opera\, one week with The Exception and The Rule\, and two weeks each for the other four plays. There will be time to read aloud—taking on various characters among ourselves. There will also be substantive discussion of these works which span all the decades of his writing. The Epic theater\, musical theater along with the learning plays are represented in this selection of plays. Each session will be conducted via Zoom until we have an all-clear to return to the classroom. With your registration\, the zoom password will be sent to you. \n \nThe Threepenny Opera 1928 \nThe Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a “play with music” by Bertolt Brecht\, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay’s 18th-century ballad opera\, The Beggar’s Opera\, and four ballads by François Villon\, with music by Kurt Weill. The work offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world. Writing in 1929\, Weill made the political and artistic intents of the work clear: “With the Dreigroschenoper we reach a public which either did not know us at all or thought us incapable of captivating listeners\, Opera was founded as an aristocratic form of art. If the framework of opera is unable to withstand the impact of the age\, then this framework must be destroyed…. In the Dreigroschenoper\, reconstruction was possible insofar as here we had a chance of starting from scratch. Weill claimed at the time that “music cannot further the action of the play or create its background”\, but achieves its proper value when it interrupts the action at the right moments.” \nThe Mother 1931 \nBased on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel of the same name\, is Brecht’s most elaborate use of his radically experimental Lehrstücke\, or learning plays\, which he describes as “a piece of anti-metaphysical\, materialistic\, non-Aristotelian drama.” The play suggests that to become a good mother involves more than just complaining about the price of soup; rather\, one must struggle against it\, not only for her and her family’s sake\, but for the sake of all working families. The title character\, the mother Pelagea Vlassova\, journeys through the play’s 14 scenes\, the death of her son\, and her own impending illness\, fighting illiteracy while constantly filled with good humor and wily activism. The moment in October 1917 when she becomes free to carry and raise her own Red Flag on the eve of the czar’s overthrow proves momentous. \n \nThe Exception and the Rule 1933 \nThe play itself is short\, and lasts no longer than 60 minutes if performed in its entirety. It tells the story of a rich merchant\, who must cross the fictional Yahi Desert to close an oil deal. During the trip the class differences between him and his working-class porter (or “coolie” as he is called in most English language editions) are shown. As he becomes increasingly afraid of the desert\, the merchant’s brutality increases\, and he feels terribly alone without police nearby to protect him. \nMother Courage & Her Children 1941 \nFollowing Brecht’s own principles for political drama\, the play is not set in modern timesbut during the 30 Years’ War of 1618–1648. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling\, nicknamed Mother Courage\, who is determined to make her living from the war. Over the course of the play\, she loses all three of her children\, Schweizerkas\, Eilif\, and Kattrin\, to the very war from which she tried to profit. Mother Courage is an example of Brecht’s concepts of epic theatre and Verfremdungseffekt\, or “V” effect; preferably “alienation” or “estrangement effect” Verfremdungseffekt is achieved through the use of placards which reveal the events of each scene\, juxtaposition\, actors changing characters and costume on stage\, the use of narration\, simple props and scenery. \nThe Good Person of Szechwan 1943 \nBrecht’s interest in historical materialism is evident in the play’s definition of contemporary morality and altruism in social and economic terms. Shen Teh’s altruism conflicts with Shui Ta’s capitalist ethos of exploitation. The play implies that economic systems determine a society’s morality. \nThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui 1958 \nIt chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui\, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster\, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II. The play has frequent references to Shakespeare. To highlight Ui’s evil and villainous rise to power\, he is explicitly compared to Shakespeare’s Richard III. Like Macbeth\, Ui experiences a visitation from the ghost of one of his victims. Finally\, Hitler’s practiced prowess at public speaking is referenced when Ui receives lessons from an actor in walking\, sitting and orating\, which includes his reciting Mark Antony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/6-plays-of-bertolt-brecht/2020-06-11/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Literary Studies
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BrechtPortrait.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200613T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200613T140000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200327T035801Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200714T144743Z
UID:10006721-1592046000-1592056800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 3\, 2nd Sessions
DESCRIPTION:Second 12 session series \nLet’s make the Anthropocene stage of the earth’s evolution\, the turning point of world history. After all\, paraphrasing Marx\, since we are the species that can know ourselves as a product of natural history\, we are responsible to all of nature. We have the power within us to make the Anthropocene not the capitalist endgame but the naturalization of our species and the humanization of nature. Capital\, a Critique of Political Economy\, can help effectively situate ourselves to face the challenges before all of humanity and nature\, and begin the process of reclaiming and putting into effect our human capacities for the betterment and advancement of each and all. \nThe study of Volume III is essential to understanding the complex dynamics at work in the present realities we are facing and how these realities are the necessary results of the inner logic of capital. In this moribund stage of late capitalist/imperialist development we see the rise of rentier and finance capital—the introduction of financial instruments being used to make money make more money\, jumping over and above the actual real wealth produced by trading on future wealth (derivatives and other forms of fictitious capital); overriding supply and demand as a price mechanism in such necessities as foodstuffs so that their prices continuously rise resulting in more poverty and starvation on a world scale and here in the US; turning new technologies into means of collecting rents—the internet\, mobile devices; expropriation of taxes paid by the working class to developers who are often tax exempt while our city and state governments give them tracts of our physical space; commodification of debt; privatization of public spaces\, properties and institutions; foreclosures; and the list goes on. \nCapital\, Volume III\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole\, completes Marx’s task of moving from the imaginary concrete—the researcher and scientist analyzing the appearances we see in everyday life such as in the Grundrisse\, to the abstract concrete. The results of the analytic study of the phenomenon that has revealed the social/natural content of that phenomenon (Volumes I and II)\, to the real concrete—how this content is expressed in everyday life through the mechanisms by which the actors determine their actions and appropriate wealth (Volume III). \nWith the conceptual integration of production and circulation (Volumes I and II) from the standpoint of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, Marx returns to the starting point of the research categories\, the imaginary concrete\, concepts seen as empirical givens as facts in themselves— profits\, interests\, rents\, rate of profit\, prices. These sensuously perceived givens (the way the world directly appears to us) are the starting point of the research analysis\, not the science. But now\, after the analysis\, these interrelated aspects of what appear on the surface of society are no longer imaginary but real\, understood as interrelated dynamics and mechanisms in everyday life by which the actors reproduce the social relations and physical conditions of capitalist society. Volume III integrates and completes the analysis of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, enabling us to understand and make sense of how each of the appearances and processes we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the whole. When we do so all the laws of motion previously revealed in the first two volumes take on new dimensions. Internal dynamics and contradictions burst out and situate humanity withina historical process that calls us to figure out how to go beyond capital and develop the conditions that insure that the development of each is the precondition for the development of all. \nWe will be starting or close to starting Part 3 of the volume on The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit. Until the Coronavirus and safe distancing and with staying at home being the healthy and responsible choice\, these sessions will be conducted via Zoom. If you register to participate\, you will be contacted with all information needed and a zoom link will be provided each week until we can meet in person\, if such conditions exist between now and mid-July. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than nearly three years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAll classes and events of The MEP are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Zoom classes rates are slightly less than in person meetings. However\, there are costs involved in keeping our site running\, having zoom sessions and paying for our office.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-3-2nd-sessions/2020-06-13/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Political Economy
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SchwittersFragment.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200615T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200615T201500
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200404T042015Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200514T150801Z
UID:10006741-1592245800-1592252100@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Descent Into the Inferno:  The Politics of Marx’s Capital
DESCRIPTION:with CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP \nAn 8-Week Reading Group: \nMarx’s Inferno\, by William Clare Roberts\, reconstructs the major arguments of volume I of Karl Marx’s Capital and inaugurates a completely new reading. His argument is that Capital was primarily a careful engagement with the motives and aims of the workers’ movement of the mid-19th century. Understood in this light\, Capital emerges as a profound work of political theory. For Roberts\, Capital was ingeniously modeled on Dante’s Inferno\, with Marx in the role of the proletariat’s Virgil guiding us down to the secret depths of capitalism’s “social Hell.” \nCombining research on Marx’s interlocutors\, textual scholarship\, and forays into recent debates\, Roberts traces the continuities linking Marx’s theory of capitalism to the tradition of republican political thought. He immerses the reader in socialist debates about the nature of commerce\, the experience of labor\, the power of bosses and managers\, and the possibilities of political organization. Roberts rescues those debates from the past\, and shows how they speak to ever-renewed concerns about political life in today’s world. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP is a diverse group of students\, activists and teachers who are have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. \nFees for the MEP zoom sessions are sliding scale; no one is turned away for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/descent-into-the-inferno-the-politics-of-marxs-capital/2020-06-15/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Marxist Method,Multi-session Classes,Political Economy,Revolutions Study Group,Science and Method,Science and Technology
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/MarxsInferno1.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200617T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200617T203000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200225T145441Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200518T150511Z
UID:10006699-1592418600-1592425800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Socialism or Barbarism? (and Existential Despair)
DESCRIPTION:THIS EVENT IS POSTPONED UNTIL A LATER DATE IN MAY OR JUNE. The June 17 Date Is A Temporary Date SUBJECT TO CHANGE\nA MARXIST EDUCATION PROJECT Roundtable with\nMitch Abidor\, Arielle Angel\, Michael Pelias and Chris Wright\nEarly on in The Junius Pamphlet Rosa Luxemburg cites Engels: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads\, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” Recently\, the Socialist Project from Toronto posted Chris Wright’s essay “Capitalism\, Socialism and Existential Despair.” \nChris sites the founding document of SDS\, the Port Huron Statement\, which lamented the corruption and degradation of such values as creativity and community: “Loneliness\, estrangement\, isolation describe the vast distance between man and man today. These dominant tendencies cannot be overcome by better personnel management\, nor by improved gadgets\, but only when a love of man overcomes the idolatrous worship of things by man.” Here we are 60 years later with capital threatening survival at numerous tipping points\, some not imagined when SDS was formed. \nThe four panelists will address the existential moment we are all navigating in the face of the multiple crises facing us in the light of Chris’ essay. Following presentations from the four panelists\, the audience is invited to enlarge the discussion with their own questions and comments. \nMITCH ABIDOR is a translator and historian. His latest book is Down With the Law\, an anthology of French individualist anarchist writings and is currently preparing a history of the Bisbee Deportation of 1917. \nARIELLE ANGEL is the editor of Jewish Currents.  \nMICHAEL PELIAS teaches Philosophy and film studies at Long Island University-Brooklyn. He is a founder of the Institute for the Radical Imagination and is the co-managing editor of Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination. Michael has presented critical studies on The Age of Anxiety and Heidegger’s Being and Time.  \nCHRIS WRIGHT has a Ph.D. in US history from the University of Illinois at Chicago\, and is the author of Worker Cooperatives and Revolution. His site is wrightswriting.com.. \n  \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/socialism-or-barbarism-and-existential-despair/
LOCATION:New Perspectives Theatre\, 456-458 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/RaoulHaussmannAmalgamation.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200618T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200618T213000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200407T025518Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200521T164024Z
UID:10006751-1592508600-1592515800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:6 Plays of Bertolt Brecht
DESCRIPTION:Beginning April 23 we will read aloud six of the many plays Bertolt Brecht wrote between the 1920s and his death in 1956. We will spend three weeks with The Threepenny Opera\, one week with The Exception and The Rule\, and two weeks each for the other four plays. There will be time to read aloud—taking on various characters among ourselves. There will also be substantive discussion of these works which span all the decades of his writing. The Epic theater\, musical theater along with the learning plays are represented in this selection of plays. Each session will be conducted via Zoom until we have an all-clear to return to the classroom. With your registration\, the zoom password will be sent to you. \n \nThe Threepenny Opera 1928 \nThe Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a “play with music” by Bertolt Brecht\, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay’s 18th-century ballad opera\, The Beggar’s Opera\, and four ballads by François Villon\, with music by Kurt Weill. The work offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world. Writing in 1929\, Weill made the political and artistic intents of the work clear: “With the Dreigroschenoper we reach a public which either did not know us at all or thought us incapable of captivating listeners\, Opera was founded as an aristocratic form of art. If the framework of opera is unable to withstand the impact of the age\, then this framework must be destroyed…. In the Dreigroschenoper\, reconstruction was possible insofar as here we had a chance of starting from scratch. Weill claimed at the time that “music cannot further the action of the play or create its background”\, but achieves its proper value when it interrupts the action at the right moments.” \nThe Mother 1931 \nBased on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel of the same name\, is Brecht’s most elaborate use of his radically experimental Lehrstücke\, or learning plays\, which he describes as “a piece of anti-metaphysical\, materialistic\, non-Aristotelian drama.” The play suggests that to become a good mother involves more than just complaining about the price of soup; rather\, one must struggle against it\, not only for her and her family’s sake\, but for the sake of all working families. The title character\, the mother Pelagea Vlassova\, journeys through the play’s 14 scenes\, the death of her son\, and her own impending illness\, fighting illiteracy while constantly filled with good humor and wily activism. The moment in October 1917 when she becomes free to carry and raise her own Red Flag on the eve of the czar’s overthrow proves momentous. \n \nThe Exception and the Rule 1933 \nThe play itself is short\, and lasts no longer than 60 minutes if performed in its entirety. It tells the story of a rich merchant\, who must cross the fictional Yahi Desert to close an oil deal. During the trip the class differences between him and his working-class porter (or “coolie” as he is called in most English language editions) are shown. As he becomes increasingly afraid of the desert\, the merchant’s brutality increases\, and he feels terribly alone without police nearby to protect him. \nMother Courage & Her Children 1941 \nFollowing Brecht’s own principles for political drama\, the play is not set in modern timesbut during the 30 Years’ War of 1618–1648. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling\, nicknamed Mother Courage\, who is determined to make her living from the war. Over the course of the play\, she loses all three of her children\, Schweizerkas\, Eilif\, and Kattrin\, to the very war from which she tried to profit. Mother Courage is an example of Brecht’s concepts of epic theatre and Verfremdungseffekt\, or “V” effect; preferably “alienation” or “estrangement effect” Verfremdungseffekt is achieved through the use of placards which reveal the events of each scene\, juxtaposition\, actors changing characters and costume on stage\, the use of narration\, simple props and scenery. \nThe Good Person of Szechwan 1943 \nBrecht’s interest in historical materialism is evident in the play’s definition of contemporary morality and altruism in social and economic terms. Shen Teh’s altruism conflicts with Shui Ta’s capitalist ethos of exploitation. The play implies that economic systems determine a society’s morality. \nThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui 1958 \nIt chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui\, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster\, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II. The play has frequent references to Shakespeare. To highlight Ui’s evil and villainous rise to power\, he is explicitly compared to Shakespeare’s Richard III. Like Macbeth\, Ui experiences a visitation from the ghost of one of his victims. Finally\, Hitler’s practiced prowess at public speaking is referenced when Ui receives lessons from an actor in walking\, sitting and orating\, which includes his reciting Mark Antony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/6-plays-of-bertolt-brecht/2020-06-18/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Literary Studies
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BrechtPortrait.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200620T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200620T140000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200327T035801Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200714T144743Z
UID:10006722-1592650800-1592661600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 3\, 2nd Sessions
DESCRIPTION:Second 12 session series \nLet’s make the Anthropocene stage of the earth’s evolution\, the turning point of world history. After all\, paraphrasing Marx\, since we are the species that can know ourselves as a product of natural history\, we are responsible to all of nature. We have the power within us to make the Anthropocene not the capitalist endgame but the naturalization of our species and the humanization of nature. Capital\, a Critique of Political Economy\, can help effectively situate ourselves to face the challenges before all of humanity and nature\, and begin the process of reclaiming and putting into effect our human capacities for the betterment and advancement of each and all. \nThe study of Volume III is essential to understanding the complex dynamics at work in the present realities we are facing and how these realities are the necessary results of the inner logic of capital. In this moribund stage of late capitalist/imperialist development we see the rise of rentier and finance capital—the introduction of financial instruments being used to make money make more money\, jumping over and above the actual real wealth produced by trading on future wealth (derivatives and other forms of fictitious capital); overriding supply and demand as a price mechanism in such necessities as foodstuffs so that their prices continuously rise resulting in more poverty and starvation on a world scale and here in the US; turning new technologies into means of collecting rents—the internet\, mobile devices; expropriation of taxes paid by the working class to developers who are often tax exempt while our city and state governments give them tracts of our physical space; commodification of debt; privatization of public spaces\, properties and institutions; foreclosures; and the list goes on. \nCapital\, Volume III\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole\, completes Marx’s task of moving from the imaginary concrete—the researcher and scientist analyzing the appearances we see in everyday life such as in the Grundrisse\, to the abstract concrete. The results of the analytic study of the phenomenon that has revealed the social/natural content of that phenomenon (Volumes I and II)\, to the real concrete—how this content is expressed in everyday life through the mechanisms by which the actors determine their actions and appropriate wealth (Volume III). \nWith the conceptual integration of production and circulation (Volumes I and II) from the standpoint of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, Marx returns to the starting point of the research categories\, the imaginary concrete\, concepts seen as empirical givens as facts in themselves— profits\, interests\, rents\, rate of profit\, prices. These sensuously perceived givens (the way the world directly appears to us) are the starting point of the research analysis\, not the science. But now\, after the analysis\, these interrelated aspects of what appear on the surface of society are no longer imaginary but real\, understood as interrelated dynamics and mechanisms in everyday life by which the actors reproduce the social relations and physical conditions of capitalist society. Volume III integrates and completes the analysis of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, enabling us to understand and make sense of how each of the appearances and processes we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the whole. When we do so all the laws of motion previously revealed in the first two volumes take on new dimensions. Internal dynamics and contradictions burst out and situate humanity withina historical process that calls us to figure out how to go beyond capital and develop the conditions that insure that the development of each is the precondition for the development of all. \nWe will be starting or close to starting Part 3 of the volume on The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit. Until the Coronavirus and safe distancing and with staying at home being the healthy and responsible choice\, these sessions will be conducted via Zoom. If you register to participate\, you will be contacted with all information needed and a zoom link will be provided each week until we can meet in person\, if such conditions exist between now and mid-July. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than nearly three years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAll classes and events of The MEP are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Zoom classes rates are slightly less than in person meetings. However\, there are costs involved in keeping our site running\, having zoom sessions and paying for our office.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-3-2nd-sessions/2020-06-20/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Political Economy
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SchwittersFragment.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20200622T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20200622T201500
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200404T042015Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200514T150801Z
UID:10006742-1592850600-1592856900@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Descent Into the Inferno:  The Politics of Marx’s Capital
DESCRIPTION:with CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP \nAn 8-Week Reading Group: \nMarx’s Inferno\, by William Clare Roberts\, reconstructs the major arguments of volume I of Karl Marx’s Capital and inaugurates a completely new reading. His argument is that Capital was primarily a careful engagement with the motives and aims of the workers’ movement of the mid-19th century. Understood in this light\, Capital emerges as a profound work of political theory. For Roberts\, Capital was ingeniously modeled on Dante’s Inferno\, with Marx in the role of the proletariat’s Virgil guiding us down to the secret depths of capitalism’s “social Hell.” \nCombining research on Marx’s interlocutors\, textual scholarship\, and forays into recent debates\, Roberts traces the continuities linking Marx’s theory of capitalism to the tradition of republican political thought. He immerses the reader in socialist debates about the nature of commerce\, the experience of labor\, the power of bosses and managers\, and the possibilities of political organization. Roberts rescues those debates from the past\, and shows how they speak to ever-renewed concerns about political life in today’s world. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP is a diverse group of students\, activists and teachers who are have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. \nFees for the MEP zoom sessions are sliding scale; no one is turned away for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/descent-into-the-inferno-the-politics-of-marxs-capital/2020-06-22/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Marxist Method,Multi-session Classes,Political Economy,Revolutions Study Group,Science and Method,Science and Technology
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/MarxsInferno1.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200625T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200625T213000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200407T025518Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200521T164024Z
UID:10006752-1593113400-1593120600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:6 Plays of Bertolt Brecht
DESCRIPTION:Beginning April 23 we will read aloud six of the many plays Bertolt Brecht wrote between the 1920s and his death in 1956. We will spend three weeks with The Threepenny Opera\, one week with The Exception and The Rule\, and two weeks each for the other four plays. There will be time to read aloud—taking on various characters among ourselves. There will also be substantive discussion of these works which span all the decades of his writing. The Epic theater\, musical theater along with the learning plays are represented in this selection of plays. Each session will be conducted via Zoom until we have an all-clear to return to the classroom. With your registration\, the zoom password will be sent to you. \n \nThe Threepenny Opera 1928 \nThe Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a “play with music” by Bertolt Brecht\, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay’s 18th-century ballad opera\, The Beggar’s Opera\, and four ballads by François Villon\, with music by Kurt Weill. The work offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world. Writing in 1929\, Weill made the political and artistic intents of the work clear: “With the Dreigroschenoper we reach a public which either did not know us at all or thought us incapable of captivating listeners\, Opera was founded as an aristocratic form of art. If the framework of opera is unable to withstand the impact of the age\, then this framework must be destroyed…. In the Dreigroschenoper\, reconstruction was possible insofar as here we had a chance of starting from scratch. Weill claimed at the time that “music cannot further the action of the play or create its background”\, but achieves its proper value when it interrupts the action at the right moments.” \nThe Mother 1931 \nBased on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel of the same name\, is Brecht’s most elaborate use of his radically experimental Lehrstücke\, or learning plays\, which he describes as “a piece of anti-metaphysical\, materialistic\, non-Aristotelian drama.” The play suggests that to become a good mother involves more than just complaining about the price of soup; rather\, one must struggle against it\, not only for her and her family’s sake\, but for the sake of all working families. The title character\, the mother Pelagea Vlassova\, journeys through the play’s 14 scenes\, the death of her son\, and her own impending illness\, fighting illiteracy while constantly filled with good humor and wily activism. The moment in October 1917 when she becomes free to carry and raise her own Red Flag on the eve of the czar’s overthrow proves momentous. \n \nThe Exception and the Rule 1933 \nThe play itself is short\, and lasts no longer than 60 minutes if performed in its entirety. It tells the story of a rich merchant\, who must cross the fictional Yahi Desert to close an oil deal. During the trip the class differences between him and his working-class porter (or “coolie” as he is called in most English language editions) are shown. As he becomes increasingly afraid of the desert\, the merchant’s brutality increases\, and he feels terribly alone without police nearby to protect him. \nMother Courage & Her Children 1941 \nFollowing Brecht’s own principles for political drama\, the play is not set in modern timesbut during the 30 Years’ War of 1618–1648. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling\, nicknamed Mother Courage\, who is determined to make her living from the war. Over the course of the play\, she loses all three of her children\, Schweizerkas\, Eilif\, and Kattrin\, to the very war from which she tried to profit. Mother Courage is an example of Brecht’s concepts of epic theatre and Verfremdungseffekt\, or “V” effect; preferably “alienation” or “estrangement effect” Verfremdungseffekt is achieved through the use of placards which reveal the events of each scene\, juxtaposition\, actors changing characters and costume on stage\, the use of narration\, simple props and scenery. \nThe Good Person of Szechwan 1943 \nBrecht’s interest in historical materialism is evident in the play’s definition of contemporary morality and altruism in social and economic terms. Shen Teh’s altruism conflicts with Shui Ta’s capitalist ethos of exploitation. The play implies that economic systems determine a society’s morality. \nThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui 1958 \nIt chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui\, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster\, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II. The play has frequent references to Shakespeare. To highlight Ui’s evil and villainous rise to power\, he is explicitly compared to Shakespeare’s Richard III. Like Macbeth\, Ui experiences a visitation from the ghost of one of his victims. Finally\, Hitler’s practiced prowess at public speaking is referenced when Ui receives lessons from an actor in walking\, sitting and orating\, which includes his reciting Mark Antony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/6-plays-of-bertolt-brecht/2020-06-25/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Literary Studies
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BrechtPortrait.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200626T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200626T210000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200227T063324Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200514T150410Z
UID:10006700-1593196200-1593205200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Final Friday Films: Modern Times
DESCRIPTION:Modern Times\nUSA 87 minutes 1936\nWritten and directed by Charlie Chaplin\nStarring Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard\n \nChaplin does borrow from Rene Clair’s A Nous La Liberte in Modern Times (once also entitled The Masses). Here Chaplin again appears as The Tramp\, although this is the era of sound\, it is essentially a silent film. The borrowing from Clair on being a comedic treatment of worker alienation is clear. Chaplin plays an assembly line worker where he is subjected to being force-fed by a malfunctioning “feeding machine” (cutting the vital minutes of lunch) and an accelerating assembly line where he screws nuts at an ever-increasing rate onto pieces of machinery. Eventually he has a nervous breakdown apparently sabotaging a machine in the process and throwing the factory into chaos. He is then hospitalized. Following his recovery\, the now unemployed factory worker is mistakenly arrested as a communist outside agitator\, the moment displaying Chaplin’s call to workers of the world to unite. Chaplin would leave the US upon the arrival of anti-communist hysteria tenyears later. \nFrom The Guardian of July 14\, 1936\nNAZIS PROHIBIT CHAPLIN FILM\n“Charlie Chaplin’s new film Modern Times has been prohibited in Germany. Reuter was informed at the Propaganda Ministry this afternoon that there was at present no prospect that the picture would be shown in this country. Another Nazi spokesman said that reports from abroad had indicated that the picture had a “Communist tendency” and that this was no doubt the reason why the picture was unacceptable.”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/final-friday-films-modern-times/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Modern_Times_p_150_site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200627T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200627T140000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200327T035801Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200714T144743Z
UID:10006723-1593255600-1593266400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 3\, 2nd Sessions
DESCRIPTION:Second 12 session series \nLet’s make the Anthropocene stage of the earth’s evolution\, the turning point of world history. After all\, paraphrasing Marx\, since we are the species that can know ourselves as a product of natural history\, we are responsible to all of nature. We have the power within us to make the Anthropocene not the capitalist endgame but the naturalization of our species and the humanization of nature. Capital\, a Critique of Political Economy\, can help effectively situate ourselves to face the challenges before all of humanity and nature\, and begin the process of reclaiming and putting into effect our human capacities for the betterment and advancement of each and all. \nThe study of Volume III is essential to understanding the complex dynamics at work in the present realities we are facing and how these realities are the necessary results of the inner logic of capital. In this moribund stage of late capitalist/imperialist development we see the rise of rentier and finance capital—the introduction of financial instruments being used to make money make more money\, jumping over and above the actual real wealth produced by trading on future wealth (derivatives and other forms of fictitious capital); overriding supply and demand as a price mechanism in such necessities as foodstuffs so that their prices continuously rise resulting in more poverty and starvation on a world scale and here in the US; turning new technologies into means of collecting rents—the internet\, mobile devices; expropriation of taxes paid by the working class to developers who are often tax exempt while our city and state governments give them tracts of our physical space; commodification of debt; privatization of public spaces\, properties and institutions; foreclosures; and the list goes on. \nCapital\, Volume III\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole\, completes Marx’s task of moving from the imaginary concrete—the researcher and scientist analyzing the appearances we see in everyday life such as in the Grundrisse\, to the abstract concrete. The results of the analytic study of the phenomenon that has revealed the social/natural content of that phenomenon (Volumes I and II)\, to the real concrete—how this content is expressed in everyday life through the mechanisms by which the actors determine their actions and appropriate wealth (Volume III). \nWith the conceptual integration of production and circulation (Volumes I and II) from the standpoint of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, Marx returns to the starting point of the research categories\, the imaginary concrete\, concepts seen as empirical givens as facts in themselves— profits\, interests\, rents\, rate of profit\, prices. These sensuously perceived givens (the way the world directly appears to us) are the starting point of the research analysis\, not the science. But now\, after the analysis\, these interrelated aspects of what appear on the surface of society are no longer imaginary but real\, understood as interrelated dynamics and mechanisms in everyday life by which the actors reproduce the social relations and physical conditions of capitalist society. Volume III integrates and completes the analysis of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, enabling us to understand and make sense of how each of the appearances and processes we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the whole. When we do so all the laws of motion previously revealed in the first two volumes take on new dimensions. Internal dynamics and contradictions burst out and situate humanity withina historical process that calls us to figure out how to go beyond capital and develop the conditions that insure that the development of each is the precondition for the development of all. \nWe will be starting or close to starting Part 3 of the volume on The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit. Until the Coronavirus and safe distancing and with staying at home being the healthy and responsible choice\, these sessions will be conducted via Zoom. If you register to participate\, you will be contacted with all information needed and a zoom link will be provided each week until we can meet in person\, if such conditions exist between now and mid-July. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than nearly three years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAll classes and events of The MEP are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Zoom classes rates are slightly less than in person meetings. However\, there are costs involved in keeping our site running\, having zoom sessions and paying for our office.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-3-2nd-sessions/2020-06-27/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Political Economy
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SchwittersFragment.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200702T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200702T213000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200407T025518Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200521T164024Z
UID:10006753-1593718200-1593725400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:6 Plays of Bertolt Brecht
DESCRIPTION:Beginning April 23 we will read aloud six of the many plays Bertolt Brecht wrote between the 1920s and his death in 1956. We will spend three weeks with The Threepenny Opera\, one week with The Exception and The Rule\, and two weeks each for the other four plays. There will be time to read aloud—taking on various characters among ourselves. There will also be substantive discussion of these works which span all the decades of his writing. The Epic theater\, musical theater along with the learning plays are represented in this selection of plays. Each session will be conducted via Zoom until we have an all-clear to return to the classroom. With your registration\, the zoom password will be sent to you. \n \nThe Threepenny Opera 1928 \nThe Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a “play with music” by Bertolt Brecht\, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay’s 18th-century ballad opera\, The Beggar’s Opera\, and four ballads by François Villon\, with music by Kurt Weill. The work offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world. Writing in 1929\, Weill made the political and artistic intents of the work clear: “With the Dreigroschenoper we reach a public which either did not know us at all or thought us incapable of captivating listeners\, Opera was founded as an aristocratic form of art. If the framework of opera is unable to withstand the impact of the age\, then this framework must be destroyed…. In the Dreigroschenoper\, reconstruction was possible insofar as here we had a chance of starting from scratch. Weill claimed at the time that “music cannot further the action of the play or create its background”\, but achieves its proper value when it interrupts the action at the right moments.” \nThe Mother 1931 \nBased on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel of the same name\, is Brecht’s most elaborate use of his radically experimental Lehrstücke\, or learning plays\, which he describes as “a piece of anti-metaphysical\, materialistic\, non-Aristotelian drama.” The play suggests that to become a good mother involves more than just complaining about the price of soup; rather\, one must struggle against it\, not only for her and her family’s sake\, but for the sake of all working families. The title character\, the mother Pelagea Vlassova\, journeys through the play’s 14 scenes\, the death of her son\, and her own impending illness\, fighting illiteracy while constantly filled with good humor and wily activism. The moment in October 1917 when she becomes free to carry and raise her own Red Flag on the eve of the czar’s overthrow proves momentous. \n \nThe Exception and the Rule 1933 \nThe play itself is short\, and lasts no longer than 60 minutes if performed in its entirety. It tells the story of a rich merchant\, who must cross the fictional Yahi Desert to close an oil deal. During the trip the class differences between him and his working-class porter (or “coolie” as he is called in most English language editions) are shown. As he becomes increasingly afraid of the desert\, the merchant’s brutality increases\, and he feels terribly alone without police nearby to protect him. \nMother Courage & Her Children 1941 \nFollowing Brecht’s own principles for political drama\, the play is not set in modern timesbut during the 30 Years’ War of 1618–1648. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling\, nicknamed Mother Courage\, who is determined to make her living from the war. Over the course of the play\, she loses all three of her children\, Schweizerkas\, Eilif\, and Kattrin\, to the very war from which she tried to profit. Mother Courage is an example of Brecht’s concepts of epic theatre and Verfremdungseffekt\, or “V” effect; preferably “alienation” or “estrangement effect” Verfremdungseffekt is achieved through the use of placards which reveal the events of each scene\, juxtaposition\, actors changing characters and costume on stage\, the use of narration\, simple props and scenery. \nThe Good Person of Szechwan 1943 \nBrecht’s interest in historical materialism is evident in the play’s definition of contemporary morality and altruism in social and economic terms. Shen Teh’s altruism conflicts with Shui Ta’s capitalist ethos of exploitation. The play implies that economic systems determine a society’s morality. \nThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui 1958 \nIt chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui\, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster\, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II. The play has frequent references to Shakespeare. To highlight Ui’s evil and villainous rise to power\, he is explicitly compared to Shakespeare’s Richard III. Like Macbeth\, Ui experiences a visitation from the ghost of one of his victims. Finally\, Hitler’s practiced prowess at public speaking is referenced when Ui receives lessons from an actor in walking\, sitting and orating\, which includes his reciting Mark Antony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/6-plays-of-bertolt-brecht/2020-07-02/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Literary Studies
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BrechtPortrait.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200704T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200704T140000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200327T035801Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200714T144743Z
UID:10006724-1593860400-1593871200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 3\, 2nd Sessions
DESCRIPTION:Second 12 session series \nLet’s make the Anthropocene stage of the earth’s evolution\, the turning point of world history. After all\, paraphrasing Marx\, since we are the species that can know ourselves as a product of natural history\, we are responsible to all of nature. We have the power within us to make the Anthropocene not the capitalist endgame but the naturalization of our species and the humanization of nature. Capital\, a Critique of Political Economy\, can help effectively situate ourselves to face the challenges before all of humanity and nature\, and begin the process of reclaiming and putting into effect our human capacities for the betterment and advancement of each and all. \nThe study of Volume III is essential to understanding the complex dynamics at work in the present realities we are facing and how these realities are the necessary results of the inner logic of capital. In this moribund stage of late capitalist/imperialist development we see the rise of rentier and finance capital—the introduction of financial instruments being used to make money make more money\, jumping over and above the actual real wealth produced by trading on future wealth (derivatives and other forms of fictitious capital); overriding supply and demand as a price mechanism in such necessities as foodstuffs so that their prices continuously rise resulting in more poverty and starvation on a world scale and here in the US; turning new technologies into means of collecting rents—the internet\, mobile devices; expropriation of taxes paid by the working class to developers who are often tax exempt while our city and state governments give them tracts of our physical space; commodification of debt; privatization of public spaces\, properties and institutions; foreclosures; and the list goes on. \nCapital\, Volume III\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole\, completes Marx’s task of moving from the imaginary concrete—the researcher and scientist analyzing the appearances we see in everyday life such as in the Grundrisse\, to the abstract concrete. The results of the analytic study of the phenomenon that has revealed the social/natural content of that phenomenon (Volumes I and II)\, to the real concrete—how this content is expressed in everyday life through the mechanisms by which the actors determine their actions and appropriate wealth (Volume III). \nWith the conceptual integration of production and circulation (Volumes I and II) from the standpoint of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, Marx returns to the starting point of the research categories\, the imaginary concrete\, concepts seen as empirical givens as facts in themselves— profits\, interests\, rents\, rate of profit\, prices. These sensuously perceived givens (the way the world directly appears to us) are the starting point of the research analysis\, not the science. But now\, after the analysis\, these interrelated aspects of what appear on the surface of society are no longer imaginary but real\, understood as interrelated dynamics and mechanisms in everyday life by which the actors reproduce the social relations and physical conditions of capitalist society. Volume III integrates and completes the analysis of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, enabling us to understand and make sense of how each of the appearances and processes we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the whole. When we do so all the laws of motion previously revealed in the first two volumes take on new dimensions. Internal dynamics and contradictions burst out and situate humanity withina historical process that calls us to figure out how to go beyond capital and develop the conditions that insure that the development of each is the precondition for the development of all. \nWe will be starting or close to starting Part 3 of the volume on The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit. Until the Coronavirus and safe distancing and with staying at home being the healthy and responsible choice\, these sessions will be conducted via Zoom. If you register to participate\, you will be contacted with all information needed and a zoom link will be provided each week until we can meet in person\, if such conditions exist between now and mid-July. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than nearly three years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAll classes and events of The MEP are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Zoom classes rates are slightly less than in person meetings. However\, there are costs involved in keeping our site running\, having zoom sessions and paying for our office.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-3-2nd-sessions/2020-07-04/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Political Economy
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SchwittersFragment.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200709T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200709T213000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200407T025518Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200521T164024Z
UID:10006754-1594323000-1594330200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:6 Plays of Bertolt Brecht
DESCRIPTION:Beginning April 23 we will read aloud six of the many plays Bertolt Brecht wrote between the 1920s and his death in 1956. We will spend three weeks with The Threepenny Opera\, one week with The Exception and The Rule\, and two weeks each for the other four plays. There will be time to read aloud—taking on various characters among ourselves. There will also be substantive discussion of these works which span all the decades of his writing. The Epic theater\, musical theater along with the learning plays are represented in this selection of plays. Each session will be conducted via Zoom until we have an all-clear to return to the classroom. With your registration\, the zoom password will be sent to you. \n \nThe Threepenny Opera 1928 \nThe Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a “play with music” by Bertolt Brecht\, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay’s 18th-century ballad opera\, The Beggar’s Opera\, and four ballads by François Villon\, with music by Kurt Weill. The work offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world. Writing in 1929\, Weill made the political and artistic intents of the work clear: “With the Dreigroschenoper we reach a public which either did not know us at all or thought us incapable of captivating listeners\, Opera was founded as an aristocratic form of art. If the framework of opera is unable to withstand the impact of the age\, then this framework must be destroyed…. In the Dreigroschenoper\, reconstruction was possible insofar as here we had a chance of starting from scratch. Weill claimed at the time that “music cannot further the action of the play or create its background”\, but achieves its proper value when it interrupts the action at the right moments.” \nThe Mother 1931 \nBased on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel of the same name\, is Brecht’s most elaborate use of his radically experimental Lehrstücke\, or learning plays\, which he describes as “a piece of anti-metaphysical\, materialistic\, non-Aristotelian drama.” The play suggests that to become a good mother involves more than just complaining about the price of soup; rather\, one must struggle against it\, not only for her and her family’s sake\, but for the sake of all working families. The title character\, the mother Pelagea Vlassova\, journeys through the play’s 14 scenes\, the death of her son\, and her own impending illness\, fighting illiteracy while constantly filled with good humor and wily activism. The moment in October 1917 when she becomes free to carry and raise her own Red Flag on the eve of the czar’s overthrow proves momentous. \n \nThe Exception and the Rule 1933 \nThe play itself is short\, and lasts no longer than 60 minutes if performed in its entirety. It tells the story of a rich merchant\, who must cross the fictional Yahi Desert to close an oil deal. During the trip the class differences between him and his working-class porter (or “coolie” as he is called in most English language editions) are shown. As he becomes increasingly afraid of the desert\, the merchant’s brutality increases\, and he feels terribly alone without police nearby to protect him. \nMother Courage & Her Children 1941 \nFollowing Brecht’s own principles for political drama\, the play is not set in modern timesbut during the 30 Years’ War of 1618–1648. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling\, nicknamed Mother Courage\, who is determined to make her living from the war. Over the course of the play\, she loses all three of her children\, Schweizerkas\, Eilif\, and Kattrin\, to the very war from which she tried to profit. Mother Courage is an example of Brecht’s concepts of epic theatre and Verfremdungseffekt\, or “V” effect; preferably “alienation” or “estrangement effect” Verfremdungseffekt is achieved through the use of placards which reveal the events of each scene\, juxtaposition\, actors changing characters and costume on stage\, the use of narration\, simple props and scenery. \nThe Good Person of Szechwan 1943 \nBrecht’s interest in historical materialism is evident in the play’s definition of contemporary morality and altruism in social and economic terms. Shen Teh’s altruism conflicts with Shui Ta’s capitalist ethos of exploitation. The play implies that economic systems determine a society’s morality. \nThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui 1958 \nIt chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui\, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster\, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II. The play has frequent references to Shakespeare. To highlight Ui’s evil and villainous rise to power\, he is explicitly compared to Shakespeare’s Richard III. Like Macbeth\, Ui experiences a visitation from the ghost of one of his victims. Finally\, Hitler’s practiced prowess at public speaking is referenced when Ui receives lessons from an actor in walking\, sitting and orating\, which includes his reciting Mark Antony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/6-plays-of-bertolt-brecht/2020-07-09/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Literary Studies
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BrechtPortrait.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200711T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200711T140000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200327T035801Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200714T144743Z
UID:10006725-1594465200-1594476000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 3\, 2nd Sessions
DESCRIPTION:Second 12 session series \nLet’s make the Anthropocene stage of the earth’s evolution\, the turning point of world history. After all\, paraphrasing Marx\, since we are the species that can know ourselves as a product of natural history\, we are responsible to all of nature. We have the power within us to make the Anthropocene not the capitalist endgame but the naturalization of our species and the humanization of nature. Capital\, a Critique of Political Economy\, can help effectively situate ourselves to face the challenges before all of humanity and nature\, and begin the process of reclaiming and putting into effect our human capacities for the betterment and advancement of each and all. \nThe study of Volume III is essential to understanding the complex dynamics at work in the present realities we are facing and how these realities are the necessary results of the inner logic of capital. In this moribund stage of late capitalist/imperialist development we see the rise of rentier and finance capital—the introduction of financial instruments being used to make money make more money\, jumping over and above the actual real wealth produced by trading on future wealth (derivatives and other forms of fictitious capital); overriding supply and demand as a price mechanism in such necessities as foodstuffs so that their prices continuously rise resulting in more poverty and starvation on a world scale and here in the US; turning new technologies into means of collecting rents—the internet\, mobile devices; expropriation of taxes paid by the working class to developers who are often tax exempt while our city and state governments give them tracts of our physical space; commodification of debt; privatization of public spaces\, properties and institutions; foreclosures; and the list goes on. \nCapital\, Volume III\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole\, completes Marx’s task of moving from the imaginary concrete—the researcher and scientist analyzing the appearances we see in everyday life such as in the Grundrisse\, to the abstract concrete. The results of the analytic study of the phenomenon that has revealed the social/natural content of that phenomenon (Volumes I and II)\, to the real concrete—how this content is expressed in everyday life through the mechanisms by which the actors determine their actions and appropriate wealth (Volume III). \nWith the conceptual integration of production and circulation (Volumes I and II) from the standpoint of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, Marx returns to the starting point of the research categories\, the imaginary concrete\, concepts seen as empirical givens as facts in themselves— profits\, interests\, rents\, rate of profit\, prices. These sensuously perceived givens (the way the world directly appears to us) are the starting point of the research analysis\, not the science. But now\, after the analysis\, these interrelated aspects of what appear on the surface of society are no longer imaginary but real\, understood as interrelated dynamics and mechanisms in everyday life by which the actors reproduce the social relations and physical conditions of capitalist society. Volume III integrates and completes the analysis of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, enabling us to understand and make sense of how each of the appearances and processes we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the whole. When we do so all the laws of motion previously revealed in the first two volumes take on new dimensions. Internal dynamics and contradictions burst out and situate humanity withina historical process that calls us to figure out how to go beyond capital and develop the conditions that insure that the development of each is the precondition for the development of all. \nWe will be starting or close to starting Part 3 of the volume on The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit. Until the Coronavirus and safe distancing and with staying at home being the healthy and responsible choice\, these sessions will be conducted via Zoom. If you register to participate\, you will be contacted with all information needed and a zoom link will be provided each week until we can meet in person\, if such conditions exist between now and mid-July. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than nearly three years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAll classes and events of The MEP are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Zoom classes rates are slightly less than in person meetings. However\, there are costs involved in keeping our site running\, having zoom sessions and paying for our office.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-3-2nd-sessions/2020-07-11/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Political Economy
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SchwittersFragment.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200731T000100
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200731T235900
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20181223T054436Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201217T162636Z
UID:10006709-1596153660-1596239940@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Multi-Month Pass: Now through Dec 31\, 2020
DESCRIPTION:Support the MEP and save $ for yourself. \nFor a one-time sliding scale fee of $150\, $200\, or $250 attend any and all classes and events of The Marxist Education Project. For $50 or $75 more bring a guest as often as you would like to the classes and events between February 1 and May 31\, 2021. The curriculum has not been decided as of yet but this special price will apply for all that takes place from during the stated four-month period. Anyone can purchase this option and can attend all events until May 31\, even if purchased during December\, 2020 or January\, 2021. \nThe way the calendar works within our WordPress based site may make this confusing. It is a one-time payment good for all events and classes that take place between now and May 31\, 2021. You may also use this course as a contribution button to help The MEP get through this challenging Covid-19 period where much of our constituency have lost income and will during the next months lose unemployment compensation without a lengthy extension/. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/4-month-pass-january-21-through-may-20-2019-2020-08-29/2020-07-31/
LOCATION:All Venues
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Marx's Capital,Multi-session Classes,Revolutions Study Group
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/SocietyNature_BeckyB_Site.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200803T153000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200803T173000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200729T075657Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200729T075657Z
UID:10006768-1596468600-1596475800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Social Reproduction in the 21st Century
DESCRIPTION:Via Zoom \nwith Ursula Huws\nPlease note the meeting time\, as the Socialist Reader discussion group will be convening at 3:30 pm in order to ensure that Ursula can join us from London. \nIn the 2020 Socialist Register “a number of the essays interrogate central dimensions of how we live and how we might live in terms of educating our children\, housing and urbanism\, accommodation of refugees and the displaced\, and (to lean on that all too common phrase) the competitive time pressures for ‘work-life balance’. These are all key questions\, of course\, of ‘social reproduction\,’ a theme that has cut across many volumes of the Register. They are the counterpoint to ‘economic reproduction’ and ‘how we work’ at the heart of several essays here. Today\, this involves exploring and exposing all the hype and contradictions of the so-called ‘gig economy\,’ where automation’s potential for increased time apart from work is subordinated to surveillance\, hazardous waste\, speed-up\, and much else that makes for contingent work and precarious living. Finding new ways of living cannot but confront both these obstacles.” \nAs capital commodifies and marketizes social reproduction labor and the time squeeze on households is intensified\, the contribution to this year’s Socialist Register by Ursula Huws is of highest importance. She is very effective in laying out the divisions of our labor into six areas as we approach the third decade of the 21st Century — 1) Unpaid labor in the home and community such as reproduction of the basic needs within famiies; 2) Paid private service work in homes or farms—servant labor; 3) Paid private service work within capitalist firms e.g.\, shops\, hotels\, cleaning companies\, etc.; 4) Paid public service work providing and maintaining public services; 5) Paid labor for production of commodities for the market; and\, 6) Unpaid labor in the home and community—consumption labor. Ursula states that “Consumption labor does not produce surplus value directly\, but is implicated in the externalization of tasks formerly carried out by paid workers and could thus be regarded as contributing indirectly to the exploitation of the labor of productive workers.” \n \nUrsula Huws is Professor of Labor and Globalization at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK and the author of Reinventing the Welfare State from Pluto Books this coming September along with Labor in Contemporary Capitalism: What Next? recently published by Palgrave Macmillan. The Marxist Education Project presented a class where we read her Monthly Review Book\, Labor in the Global Digital Economy: The Cybertariat Comes of Age in the fall of 2015. \n \n  \nAll tickets are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/social-reproduction-in-the-21st-century/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Labor History,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SocialRepro.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200817T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200817T203000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200804T022124Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200804T022218Z
UID:10006781-1597689000-1597696200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:For a Sustainable Future: The Centrality of Public Goods
DESCRIPTION:with Nancy Holmstrom\nvia Zoom\nIn the 2020 Socialist Register “a number of the essays interrogate central dimensions of how we live and how we might live in terms of educating our children\, housing and urbanism\, accommodation of refugees and the displaced\, and (to lean on that all too common phrase) the competitive time pressures for ‘work-life balance’. These are all key questions\, of course\, of ‘social reproduction\,’ a theme that has cut across many volumes of the Register. They are the counterpoint to ‘economic reproduction’ and ‘how we work’ at the heart of several essays here. Today\, this involves exploring and exposing all the hype and contradictions of the so-called ‘gig economy\,’ where automation’s potential for increased time apart from work is subordinated to surveillance\, hazardous waste\, speed-up\, and much else that makes for contingent work and precarious living. Finding new ways of living cannot but confront both these obstacles.” \nThe UN’s report on climate change makes clear that ways of living in the 21st century must be premised on the existential threat to our existence posed by multiple ecological threats. The current pandemic underlines this fact. For a sustainable future we have to transform some basic ways of thinking about the world and our place in it\, starting with broadened and more inclusive notions of security\, property and rationality. Instead of private property being the default as it is in capitalism\, public goods/‘the commons’\, should be the priority. And rationality must be understood principally in social terms\, since on the dominant individualistic model fully rational behavior can lead to the destruction of the species. Thus the central focus of socialist strategy in the 21st century should be protecting and radically expanding public goods/the commons. We should use every means we can to raise people’s understanding that they are 1) the only basis of real security; 2) should be accessible to all as a right\, like universal health care\, and hence no one should be excluded by the alleged rights of private property; and 3) are foundational to the most rational way to organize society. The paper considers some examples of strategies that fit this approach\, such as the Green New Deal\, and explores the crucial role of democratic planning both on a societal and a global level. \nNancy Holmstrom is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. \nTickets are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Email: info@marxedproject.org for the zoom code if you are unable to pay
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/for-a-sustainable-future-the-centrality-of-public-goods/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Climate Change,Extractivism,Marxist Method,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks,Socialism
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/SustainableCommons.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200820T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200820T210000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200717T033928Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200814T012608Z
UID:10006761-1597950000-1597957200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Lit and Film: Noir for the Summer of Covid-19
DESCRIPTION:8 sessions\nvia teleconference on Zoom • participation code with registration\nSliding scale admission for teleconference \nContinuing in the MEP LITERATURE GROUP summer tradition\, we will once again delve into Noir genres– but with a twist! Starting August 6\, we will read four books and watch the movies that are based on them. Please join us for four books with the four movies that resulted from them. \nBOOK 1 Odd Man Out /F. L. Green \nF.L. (Laurie) Green’s novel was published in 1945. It followed upon wartime action by the IRA in Belfast\, in consequence of which Northern Ireland undertook its first and only execution of an IRA member\, 19-year old Tom Williams. In the novel\, an IRA plot goes horribly wrong when its leader\, Johnny Murtah\, kills an innocent man\, and he is gravely wounded. Odd Man Out is Green’s most significant novel. \nMOVIE 1 Odd Man Out /Carol Reed • AUGUST 20\nTakes place largely over the course of one tense night\, Reed’s psychological noir\, set in Belfast\, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con who leads a botched robbery. Injured and hunted by the police\, he seeks refuge throughout the city\, while the woman he loves searches for him among the shadows. Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker create images of stunning depth for this fierce\, spiritual depiction of a man’s ultimate confrontation with himself. \nBOOK 2 Clean Break /Lionel White • AUGUST 27\n“… none of them are professional crooks. They all have jobs\, they all live seemingly decent\, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them.” In the opening chapter\, Lionel White sets the stage for the main protagonists of the story: Marvin Unger\, court reporter; George Peatty\, a racetrack cashier and his bored wife\, Sherry; Randy Kennan\, a cop distracted by huge gambling debts; Mike O’Reilly\, a track barman\, regularly bets and loses half his earnings; and Johnny Clay\, just out of jail\, and who has come up with the plan to steal the earnings fromthe Canarsie Stakes. Creating diversions becomes necessary\, including knocking off the favourite in the race (animals lovers beware…). \nMOVIE 2 The Killing /Stanley Kubrick • SEPTEMBER 3\nStanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest\, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative\, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson\, and a phenomenal cast of character actors\, including Sterling Hayden\, Coleen Gray\, Timothy Carey\, Elisha Cook Jr.\, and Marie Windsor\, The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut. And with its precise tracking shots and gratifying sense of irony\, it’s Kubrick to the core. \nBOOK 3 Down There /David Goodis • SEPTEMBER 10\nOnce upon a time Eddie played concert piano to reverent audiences at Carnegie Hall—now he does honky-tonk in a Philly drunk-dive. But then two people walk into Eddie’s life—the first promising Eddie a future\, the other dragging him back into a treacherous past. Down There (bookretitled after film to Shoot the Piano Player) is a bittersweet and nerve-racking exploration of different kinds of loyalty. \nMOVIE 3 Shoot The Piano Player /François Truffaut • SEPTEMBER 17\nFrançois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this\, his most playful film. Part thriller\, part comedy\, part tragedy\, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour\, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags\, guns\, clowns\, and thugs\, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague. \nBOOK 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /George V. Higgins • SEPTEMBER 24\nElmore Leonard said that The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the best crime novel ever written\, though Higgins hated being classified as a crime writer. According to Leonard\, “He saw himself as the Charles Dickens of crime in Boston instead of a crime writer. He just understood the human condition and he understood it most vividly in the language and actions among low lives.” \nMOVIE 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /Peter Yates • OCTOBER 1\nIn one of the best performances of his legendary career\, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Directed with a sharp eye for its gritty locales and an open heart for its less-than-heroic characters\, this is one of the true treasures of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking—a suspenseful crime drama in stark\, unforgiving daylight. \nWe will attempt to watch together. Those who watch the film on their own are of course welcome to join in the discussions following the films as they are presented.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/lit-and-film-noir-for-the-summer-of-covid-19/2020-08-20/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Multi-session Classes
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NoirSummer2020_FB3c.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T201500
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200618T021327Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200905T153841Z
UID:10006756-1598293800-1598300100@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Socialist Register 2020: Beyond Market Dystopia
DESCRIPTION:Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living\nVolume 56 of the Socialist Register\nEach year a new volume of the Socialist Register appears\, effectively laying out for socialists and communists what are burning issues of the day—we now have 56 years of coverage\, and many of the burning issues are now in a full blaze. This year’s edition was published before the global pandemic\, the 40 million additional unemployed in the US alone\, and the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd. The whole world watched the video and responded with a movement that is more widespread than was Occupy Wall Street in 2011 or the first Black Lives Matter upsurge in 2014. \nIn the preface to Socialist Register 2020\, co-editors Greg Albo and Leo Panitch discuss much of what the working classes of the world are confronting with capital’s market dystopia. At one point they cite Colin Leys\, a former co-editor of the Register from his 2001 text\, “Market-Driven Politics\, Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest” \nA strong non-market domain\, providing various core services\, as the common sense of a civilised and democratic society may sound far-fetched in an era of market-driven politics. But it is debatable whether it is really as far-fetched – as hard to imagine or as absurd – as the world towards which market-driven politics is tending\, in which more and more of the workforce is absorbed in ever-intensified competition for ever higher output and consumption\, while the collective services for which democracy depends gradually decay. \nThe editors go on to state that “It is precisely this sensibility that informs this volume\, Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living. By challenging our contributors to address what are the actual and possible ways of living in this century\, we saw this as way of probing how to get beyond the deep contradictions of neoliberal capitalism. We did not want contributors to conceive their remit as future-oriented per se\, but rather to see their mandate as locating utopic visions and struggles for alternate ways of living in the dystopic present. To this end\, a number of he essays interrogate central dimensions of ‘how we live’ and ‘how we might live’ in terms of educating our children\, housing and urbanism\, accommodation of refugees and the displaced\, and (to lean on that all too common phrase) the competitive time pressures for ‘work-life balance’. These are all key questions\, of course\, of ‘social reproduction’\, a theme Register. They are the counterpoint to ‘economic reproduction’ and ‘how we work’ at the heart of several essays here. Today\, this involves exploring and exposing all the hype and contradictions of the so-called ‘gig economy’\, where automation’s potential for increased time apart from work is subordinated to surveillance\, hazardous waste\, speed-up\, and much else that makes for contingent work and precarious living. Finding new ways of living cannot but confront both these obstacles.Yet even amidst all that appears so new in today’s capitalism\, classical socialist themes\, dilemmas\, challenges\, and struggles are still very much with us. Indeed\, several essays in this volume undertake political archaeologies of the past to find their vestiges providing new meaning for the practices of socialism in the twenty-first century. \nWe will meet for ten weeks to consider eleven of this year’s presentations\, one essay per week except for our last session (see schedule below). This reading of the Socialist Register could become a regular feature of MEP summers: it allows for frequent participation but takes into account that all of us may miss a week or more due to summer travel and vacations. \nFour of the ten sessions remain as follows: \nAugust 24 • What Should Socialism Mean in the Twenty-First Century?\nNancy Fraser author will be present \nAugust 31 • The Affordable Housing Crisis: Its Capitalist Roots and the Socialist Alternative\nKarl Beitel author will be present \nSeptember 14 • Communism in the Suburbs?\nRoger Keil\nAnd The Retroactive Utopia of the Socialist City\nOwen Hatherley\nboth authors will be present \nDiscounted copies of the book (2 remaining) are available from The MEP. Write to: info@marxedproject.org or to revsgroup@gmail.com for information. A separate product line will be an on-line item —check website after 6/20 for ordering information.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/socialist-register-2020-beyond-market-dystopia/2020-08-24/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Immigration,Labor History,Marxist Method,Political Economy,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/SocialistRegisterCover2020.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T203000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200810T053003Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200810T053003Z
UID:10006793-1598293800-1598301000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:What Should Socialism Mean in the 21st Century?
DESCRIPTION:A talk and discussion with Nancy Fraser\nIn the 2020 Socialist Register “a number of the essays interrogate central dimensions of how we live and how we might live in terms of educating our children\, housing and urbanism\, accommodation of refugees and the displaced\, and (to lean on that all too common phrase) the competitive time pressures for ‘work-life balance’. These are all key questions\, of course\, of ‘social reproduction\,’ a theme that has cut across many volumes of the Register. They are the counterpoint to ‘economic reproduction’ and ‘how we work’ at the heart of several essays here. Today\, this involves exploring and exposing all the hype and contradictions of the so-called ‘gig economy\,’ where automation’s potential for increased time apart from work is subordinated to surveillance\, hazardous waste\, speed-up\, and much else that makes for contingent work and precarious living. Finding new ways of living cannot but confront both these obstacles.” \nDrawing on an expanded conception of capitalism\, Nancy Fraser constructs an expanded conception of socialism that overcomes the narrow economism of received understandings. Disclosing the capitalist economy’s contradictory and destructive relation to its “non-economic” background conditions\, Fraser contends that socialism must do more than transform the economy. Over and above that desideratum\, it must also transform the economy’s relation to its background conditions\, especially non-human nature\, the unwaged work of social reproduction\, and political power. In a nutshell\, a socialism for the 21st century must be ecological\, feminist\, anti-racist\, and democratic. \nNancy Fraser is the co-author with Cinzia Arruzza and Titihi Bhattacharya of Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto (Verso\, 2019) and with Rahel Jaeggi of Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory (Polity\, 2018). Previous books include Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (Verso\, 2013)\, Redistribution or Recognition: A Critical-Philosophical Exchange with Axel Honneth (Verso\, 2003)\, and Unruly Practices: Power\, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (University of Minnesota Press\, 1989)\, among other books. \nAll tickets are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. Please write info@marxedproject.org for the zoom code if you would like to attend.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/what-should-socialism-mean-in-the-21st-century/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Climate Change,Extractivism,Gender,Indigenous Peoples,Marxist Method,Political Economy,Race and Class,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/NFraser2.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T203000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200816T162709Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200822T145820Z
UID:10006795-1598293800-1598301000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Beyond Market Dystopia: 2 Events Special Price
DESCRIPTION:MONDAY • August 24 via Zoom\nWhat Should Socialism Mean in the 21st Century?\nNANCY FRASER\nDrawing on an expanded conception of capitalism\, this presentation will construct an expanded conception of socialism that overcomes the narrow economism of received understandings. NANCY FRASER is the co-author with Cinzia Arruzza and Titihi Bhattacharya of Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto (Verso\, 2019) \nMONDAY • August 31 via Zoom\nThe Affordable Housing Crisis: Its Capitalist Roots & the Socialist Alternative\nKARL BEITEL\n\n\n\nThe essay proceeds as follows: I begin with a short summary of the argument advanced by neoclassical economists that assert that the root of the affordability crisis is excessive regulatory interference on the part of governments. This is followed by a section presenting an alternative approach that draws heavily on Marx’s own work on the circuit of capital to explain the factors underlying the long-term inflation of building costs and housing prices. I briefly discuss the impacts of the long-term decline in interest rates and ‘financialization’ on housing prices in major capitalist cities. I conclude with a section that outlines how socialists can envision the transformation of the provisioning of housing during the transitional phase of creating a postcapitalist\, socialist economy. \n\n\n\n\nSliding Scale—no one turned away for inability to pay • email to info@marxedproject.org for link to events if you cannot pay
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/beyond-market-dystopia-3-events-special-price/2020-08-24/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Climate Change,Immigration,Multi-session Classes,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks,Socialism
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2Events.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200827T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200827T210000
DTSTAMP:20260405T013641
CREATED:20200717T033928Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200814T012608Z
UID:10006762-1598554800-1598562000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Lit and Film: Noir for the Summer of Covid-19
DESCRIPTION:8 sessions\nvia teleconference on Zoom • participation code with registration\nSliding scale admission for teleconference \nContinuing in the MEP LITERATURE GROUP summer tradition\, we will once again delve into Noir genres– but with a twist! Starting August 6\, we will read four books and watch the movies that are based on them. Please join us for four books with the four movies that resulted from them. \nBOOK 1 Odd Man Out /F. L. Green \nF.L. (Laurie) Green’s novel was published in 1945. It followed upon wartime action by the IRA in Belfast\, in consequence of which Northern Ireland undertook its first and only execution of an IRA member\, 19-year old Tom Williams. In the novel\, an IRA plot goes horribly wrong when its leader\, Johnny Murtah\, kills an innocent man\, and he is gravely wounded. Odd Man Out is Green’s most significant novel. \nMOVIE 1 Odd Man Out /Carol Reed • AUGUST 20\nTakes place largely over the course of one tense night\, Reed’s psychological noir\, set in Belfast\, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con who leads a botched robbery. Injured and hunted by the police\, he seeks refuge throughout the city\, while the woman he loves searches for him among the shadows. Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker create images of stunning depth for this fierce\, spiritual depiction of a man’s ultimate confrontation with himself. \nBOOK 2 Clean Break /Lionel White • AUGUST 27\n“… none of them are professional crooks. They all have jobs\, they all live seemingly decent\, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them.” In the opening chapter\, Lionel White sets the stage for the main protagonists of the story: Marvin Unger\, court reporter; George Peatty\, a racetrack cashier and his bored wife\, Sherry; Randy Kennan\, a cop distracted by huge gambling debts; Mike O’Reilly\, a track barman\, regularly bets and loses half his earnings; and Johnny Clay\, just out of jail\, and who has come up with the plan to steal the earnings fromthe Canarsie Stakes. Creating diversions becomes necessary\, including knocking off the favourite in the race (animals lovers beware…). \nMOVIE 2 The Killing /Stanley Kubrick • SEPTEMBER 3\nStanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest\, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative\, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson\, and a phenomenal cast of character actors\, including Sterling Hayden\, Coleen Gray\, Timothy Carey\, Elisha Cook Jr.\, and Marie Windsor\, The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut. And with its precise tracking shots and gratifying sense of irony\, it’s Kubrick to the core. \nBOOK 3 Down There /David Goodis • SEPTEMBER 10\nOnce upon a time Eddie played concert piano to reverent audiences at Carnegie Hall—now he does honky-tonk in a Philly drunk-dive. But then two people walk into Eddie’s life—the first promising Eddie a future\, the other dragging him back into a treacherous past. Down There (bookretitled after film to Shoot the Piano Player) is a bittersweet and nerve-racking exploration of different kinds of loyalty. \nMOVIE 3 Shoot The Piano Player /François Truffaut • SEPTEMBER 17\nFrançois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this\, his most playful film. Part thriller\, part comedy\, part tragedy\, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour\, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags\, guns\, clowns\, and thugs\, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague. \nBOOK 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /George V. Higgins • SEPTEMBER 24\nElmore Leonard said that The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the best crime novel ever written\, though Higgins hated being classified as a crime writer. According to Leonard\, “He saw himself as the Charles Dickens of crime in Boston instead of a crime writer. He just understood the human condition and he understood it most vividly in the language and actions among low lives.” \nMOVIE 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /Peter Yates • OCTOBER 1\nIn one of the best performances of his legendary career\, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Directed with a sharp eye for its gritty locales and an open heart for its less-than-heroic characters\, this is one of the true treasures of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking—a suspenseful crime drama in stark\, unforgiving daylight. \nWe will attempt to watch together. Those who watch the film on their own are of course welcome to join in the discussions following the films as they are presented.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/lit-and-film-noir-for-the-summer-of-covid-19/2020-08-27/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Multi-session Classes
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NoirSummer2020_FB3c.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
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