Invention of the White Race – Fall 2022
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA reading and discussion group convened with Sean Ahern, on Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race. In 1972, after over 30 years of activism in the labor and communist movements, Allen shared the following strategic insight with a new generation of revolutionaries: “The most vulnerable point at which a decisive blow can be struck against bourgeois rule in the United States is white supremacy. White supremacy is both the keystone (in the arch) and the Achilles heel of U.S. bourgeois democracy, the historic form of bourgeois rule in the US. It is a vulnerable point because it is a historically developed and unresolvable internal contradiction of US bourgeois democracy. It is the decisive vulnerable point because – as history has repeatedly proved – the basic class contradictions in bourgeois democracy can never fully mature until and unless the anti-proletarian nature of white supremacy has been completely established in the minds of the proletarian masses.” Allen spent the next 20 years researching the primary sources and writing his magnum opus.
Climate, Class, and Degrowth
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYJoin the MEP's Ecosocialist Study Group as we reconvene to consider two books that are provoking wide discussion and debate: Matt Huber's Climate Change as Class War, and The Future Is Degrowth, by Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan, and Andrea Vetter.
Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThis study group is reading and discussing Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism.
The Novels of Nanni Balestrini with the MEP Literature Group
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThe MEP Literature Group resumes this fall/winter to read several works by the Italian author Nanni Balestrini, including We Want Everything and The Unseen.
Hegel for Radicals: Part II – Phenomenology of Spirit
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYWith Alex Steinberg. This class series is a continuation of the series from the Spring of 2022 where we introduced Hegel’s Philosophy of History. We will dive directly into that mysterious book, The Phenomenology of Spirit. No prior experience with studying Hegel is expected or required. We will make Hegel's book less mysterious as we go along and try to tease out the revolutionary implications in the thought of Hegel and explain their significance for our time.
From Austerity to Fascism: The Capital Order
Video available on YouTubeIn The Capital Order, Clara E. Mattei explores the intellectual origins of austerity to uncover its originating motives: the protection of capital-and indeed capitalism - in times of social upheaval from below. Drawing on newly uncovered archival material from Britain and Italy, she offers a damning account of the rise of austerity - and of modern economics - at the levers of contemporary political power. Mattei reveals how the threat of working-class power in the years after World War I animated top-down economic policies that elevated owners, smothered workers, and imposed a rigid economic hierarchy across societies.
The Political Writings of Marx and Engels: Social Classes, Revolution, and Human Freedom
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThis group will read and discuss original texts by Marx and Engels about their theory of class struggles as the motive force of human social evolution and the modern working class as the political antagonist of the capitalist system - the class that has the power, by abolishing itself, to usher in a society beyond class exploitation.
Woman, Life, Freedom: Iran through the Lens of Antonio Gramsci
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYJuxtaposing documentary video footage with selected readings from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, we will deepen our understanding of the current uprising among women and young people in Iran. Applying Gramsci's dual perspective on Individuality/Universality, Hegemony/Authority, Force/Consent, Terror/Legitimacy, Strategy/Tactic, Agitation/Propaganda, and State/Civil Society, we will examine spontaneous movements, subaltern groups, and the balance of domestic and international forces. Convened and facilitated by Piruz Alemi.
Staring Down the Apocalypse: Three Visions of Earth’s Future
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThe Science and Visionary Fiction Reading Group will read three powerful explorations of human agency, individual and collective--three debut novels from three different time periods. Seventy years ago, in the ... Read more
Invention of the White Race – Fall 2022
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA reading and discussion group convened with Sean Ahern, on Theodore W. Allen's The Invention of the White Race. In 1972, after over 30 years of activism in the labor and communist movements, Allen shared the following strategic insight with a new generation of revolutionaries: “The most vulnerable point at which a decisive blow can be struck against bourgeois rule in the United States is white supremacy. White supremacy is both the keystone (in the arch) and the Achilles heel of U.S. bourgeois democracy, the historic form of bourgeois rule in the US. It is a vulnerable point because it is a historically developed and unresolvable internal contradiction of US bourgeois democracy. It is the decisive vulnerable point because – as history has repeatedly proved – the basic class contradictions in bourgeois democracy can never fully mature until and unless the anti-proletarian nature of white supremacy has been completely established in the minds of the proletarian masses.” Allen spent the next 20 years researching the primary sources and writing his magnum opus.
Climate, Class, and Degrowth
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYJoin the MEP's Ecosocialist Study Group as we reconvene to consider two books that are provoking wide discussion and debate: Matt Huber's Climate Change as Class War, and The Future Is Degrowth, by Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan, and Andrea Vetter.
Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThis study group is reading and discussing Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism.
The Novels of Nanni Balestrini with the MEP Literature Group
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThe MEP Literature Group resumes this fall/winter to read several works by the Italian author Nanni Balestrini, including We Want Everything and The Unseen.
Hegel for Radicals: Part II – Phenomenology of Spirit
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYWith Alex Steinberg. This class series is a continuation of the series from the Spring of 2022 where we introduced Hegel’s Philosophy of History. We will dive directly into that mysterious book, The Phenomenology of Spirit. No prior experience with studying Hegel is expected or required. We will make Hegel's book less mysterious as we go along and try to tease out the revolutionary implications in the thought of Hegel and explain their significance for our time.
The Political Writings of Marx and Engels: Social Classes, Revolution, and Human Freedom
On-Line via Zoom You will receive Zoom link by email before the event., NYThis group will read and discuss original texts by Marx and Engels about their theory of class struggles as the motive force of human social evolution and the modern working class as the political antagonist of the capitalist system - the class that has the power, by abolishing itself, to usher in a society beyond class exploitation.