Calendar of Events
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1 event,
Studies in the Works of Antonio Gramsci with Piruz Alemi
Studies in the Works of Antonio Gramsci with Piruz Alemi
This 10-week session has four sessions remaining which feature a close reading of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. We will look to connect cultures and their human rights struggles. We will also explore those who influenced Gramsci, particularly Marx, but also Machiavelli and Croce. This seminar is accessible to people at all levels of familiarity with Gramsci’s work, including those just beginning their studies of Gramsci. Join at any time.
0 events,
0 events,
0 events,
1 event,
The Essential Political Writings of Hubert Harrison
The Essential Political Writings of Hubert Harrison
Jeffrey B Perry describes Harrison “as the most class conscious of the race radicals and the most race conscious of the class radicals in those years” adding that he is “a key link in the two great trends of the Civil Rights/Black Liberation struggle—the labor and civil rights trend associated associated with A. Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the race and nationalist trend associated with Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X.”
0 events,
1 event,
Value, Fictitious Capital and Finance. The Timelessness of Karl Marx’s Capital with John Milios
Value, Fictitious Capital and Finance. The Timelessness of Karl Marx’s Capital with John Milios
Starting from his value-form analysis in Part One of Volume 1 of Capital, Marx develops the concept of “fictitious capital” in Volume 3, which depicts the role of interest-bearing capital and the financial sphere. Marx’s analysis allows for an understanding of contemporary capitalism, financialization and crisis: financialization cannot be isolated from “real” economy; it should be conceived as a “technology” of exercising capitalist power and hegemony over the working classes and the society as a whole. Marx’s analysis provides the terms to rethink the contemporary neoliberal form of capitalism and its crisis as expressions of the contradictions inherent in the organization of capitalist power.
1 event,
Studies in the Works of Antonio Gramsci with Piruz Alemi
Studies in the Works of Antonio Gramsci with Piruz Alemi
This 10-week session has four sessions remaining which feature a close reading of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. We will look to connect cultures and their human rights struggles. We will also explore those who influenced Gramsci, particularly Marx, but also Machiavelli and Croce. This seminar is accessible to people at all levels of familiarity with Gramsci’s work, including those just beginning their studies of Gramsci. Join at any time.
1 event,
George Caffentzis on Locke and Hume: Book special prices are still available
George Caffentzis on Locke and Hume: Book special prices are still available
Both books by George Caffentzis, CLIPPED COINS and CIVILIZING MONEY are still available! Buy one or both.
0 events,
0 events,
1 event,
The Essential Political Writings of Hubert Harrison
The Essential Political Writings of Hubert Harrison
Jeffrey B Perry describes Harrison “as the most class conscious of the race radicals and the most race conscious of the class radicals in those years” adding that he is “a key link in the two great trends of the Civil Rights/Black Liberation struggle—the labor and civil rights trend associated associated with A. Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the race and nationalist trend associated with Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X.”
0 events,
0 events,
1 event,
Studies in the Works of Antonio Gramsci with Piruz Alemi
Studies in the Works of Antonio Gramsci with Piruz Alemi
This 10-week session has four sessions remaining which feature a close reading of Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks. We will look to connect cultures and their human rights struggles. We will also explore those who influenced Gramsci, particularly Marx, but also Machiavelli and Croce. This seminar is accessible to people at all levels of familiarity with Gramsci’s work, including those just beginning their studies of Gramsci. Join at any time.
1 event,
Ecosocialism in the Shadow of Covid
Ecosocialism in the Shadow of Covid
We will read and discuss three books: The Corona Crash (Verso), by Grace Blakeley, details how the pandemic is ushering in a new era in which the corporate economy collapses into the arms of the state, and behemoths like Amazon and Netflix balloon in profit and power. White Skin, Black Fuel (Verso), by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, takes a comprehensive look at how extreme-right currents are responding to ecological crises with with authoritarian and xenophobic proposals while remaining ardent supporters of fossil capital – black fuels to support white supremacy. And A People’s Green New Deal (Pluto), by Max Ajl, engages critically with various Green New Deal proposals and sketches out a radical alternative committed to degrowth, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology.
3 events,
New York City and the Experience of Modernity, Fall session
New York City and the Experience of Modernity, Fall session
In the year 1877, the signals were given for the rest of the century; the black would be put back; the strikes of white workers would not be tolerated; the industrial and political elites of North and South would take hold of the country and organize the greatest march of economic growth in human history. They would do it with the aid of, and at the expense of, black labor, white labor, Chinese labor, European immigrant labor, female labor, rewarding them differently by race, sex, national origin, and social class, in such a way as to create separate levels of oppression – a skillful terracing to stabilize the pyramid of wealth.” —Howard Zinn
This is a seminar about New York City and its people. It is not a study of architectural styles and objects, - although the physical stuff of cities does play a role—but it is a course about the experience of the way in which modernity builds and destroys cities.
The Warehouse: Workers and Robots at Amazon with Alessandro Delfanti
The Warehouse: Workers and Robots at Amazon with Alessandro Delfanti
“Delfanti has done here what more critics of Amazon should — listen carefully to the people whose work makes the corporation function. Those of us fighting for a better future than Amazon's dystopia have much to learn from this book”. — Dania Rajendra, Inaugural Director, Athena Coalition
The Invention of the White Race
The Invention of the White Race
Theodore W. Allen spent 30 years researching the primary sources and writing The Invention of the White Race (2 volumes), which provides a historical materialist analysis of racial oppression and the white identity which emerged as a principal form of social control over rebellious laboring class of European and Africans in the pattern setting colonies of Virginia and Maryland in the late 17th early 18th century.
0 events,
1 event,
The Essential Political Writings of Hubert Harrison
The Essential Political Writings of Hubert Harrison
Jeffrey B Perry describes Harrison “as the most class conscious of the race radicals and the most race conscious of the class radicals in those years” adding that he is “a key link in the two great trends of the Civil Rights/Black Liberation struggle—the labor and civil rights trend associated associated with A. Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the race and nationalist trend associated with Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X.”
0 events,
2 events,
Grundrisse: The Chapter on Money (The first two notebooks)
Grundrisse: The Chapter on Money (The first two notebooks)
“Forces of production and social relations - two different sides of the development of the social individual - appear to capital as mere means, and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high...” —Karl Marx, The Grundrisse
Everyone a Legislator with author Michael Denning
Everyone a Legislator with author Michael Denning
“Perhaps Gramsci’s political science is … a “necessary expression of his time, the short twentieth century, an era now ended, the ae of three words divided between Fordist capitalism, bureaucratic communism and the post-colonial settlements of decolonization. If this is true, is there a future for Gramsci’s legacy?” —Michael Denning
1 event,
Revenge Capitalism with Max Haiven
Revenge Capitalism with Max Haiven
In Revenge Capitalism, Max Haiven argues that this economic vengeance helps us explain the culture and politics of revenge we see in society more broadly. Moving from the history of colonialism and its continuing effects today, he examines the opioid crisis in the US, the growth of 'surplus populations' worldwide and unpacks the central paradigm of unpayable debts - both as reparations owed, and as a methodology of oppression. Revenge Capitalism offers no easy answers, but Max has made a powerful call to the radical imagination: “When you live in someone else’s utopia, all you have is revenge. We live in capitalism’s utopia, a world almost completely reconfigured to suit the needs of accumulation. And the world’s alight, and ours is an age of vengeance. It is vengeance, sadly, that is usually directed at those who least deserve it and which leaves those whose actions led to the current state of affairs, or who benefit from it, free or even more empowered.” —Max Haiven, from his introduction to Revenge Capitalism
1 event,
Ecosocialism in the Shadow of Covid
Ecosocialism in the Shadow of Covid
We will read and discuss three books: The Corona Crash (Verso), by Grace Blakeley, details how the pandemic is ushering in a new era in which the corporate economy collapses into the arms of the state, and behemoths like Amazon and Netflix balloon in profit and power. White Skin, Black Fuel (Verso), by Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective, takes a comprehensive look at how extreme-right currents are responding to ecological crises with with authoritarian and xenophobic proposals while remaining ardent supporters of fossil capital – black fuels to support white supremacy. And A People’s Green New Deal (Pluto), by Max Ajl, engages critically with various Green New Deal proposals and sketches out a radical alternative committed to degrowth, anti-imperialism and agro-ecology.
1 event,
The Invention of the White Race
The Invention of the White Race
Theodore W. Allen spent 30 years researching the primary sources and writing The Invention of the White Race (2 volumes), which provides a historical materialist analysis of racial oppression and the white identity which emerged as a principal form of social control over rebellious laboring class of European and Africans in the pattern setting colonies of Virginia and Maryland in the late 17th early 18th century.
0 events,
1 event,
The Essential Political Writings of Hubert Harrison
The Essential Political Writings of Hubert Harrison
Jeffrey B Perry describes Harrison “as the most class conscious of the race radicals and the most race conscious of the class radicals in those years” adding that he is “a key link in the two great trends of the Civil Rights/Black Liberation struggle—the labor and civil rights trend associated associated with A. Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the race and nationalist trend associated with Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X.”
2 events,
Brecht’s Communist Manifesto Today!
Brecht’s Communist Manifesto Today!
Brecht closes his Manifesto replying to Marx and Engels closing line in their Manifesto, “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win,” by answering, “How may the workers break their own class chains? Only by breaking everybody’s chains.” Marx once said that there are historical moments when the working class must gain class-consciousness and become historical subjects. We are at just such a historical moment. Are we up to the task?
The Art of Diane Esmond
The Art of Diane Esmond
Diane Esmond (1910-1981) left an under-appreciated legacy of paintings. Although her artistic eye ranged over many subjects, her culminating evocations of the tropical forest have taken on added importance in the decades since her death. Based for most of her life in France, she displayed her work in Paris in the 1930s and internationally from the ‘50s through the ‘70s. Forced into exile in 1940, she spent the intervening years in New York; the paintings she left behind were seized (and many destroyed) by the Nazi occupation regime
0 events,
0 events,
0 events,
1 event,
The Invention of the White Race
The Invention of the White Race
Theodore W. Allen spent 30 years researching the primary sources and writing The Invention of the White Race (2 volumes), which provides a historical materialist analysis of racial oppression and the white identity which emerged as a principal form of social control over rebellious laboring class of European and Africans in the pattern setting colonies of Virginia and Maryland in the late 17th early 18th century.
0 events,
2 events,
The Essential Political Writings of Hubert Harrison
The Essential Political Writings of Hubert Harrison
Jeffrey B Perry describes Harrison “as the most class conscious of the race radicals and the most race conscious of the class radicals in those years” adding that he is “a key link in the two great trends of the Civil Rights/Black Liberation struggle—the labor and civil rights trend associated associated with A. Philip Randolph and Martin Luther King, Jr. and the race and nationalist trend associated with Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X.”
Women Write on the Verge of Historical Change: Last session
Women Write on the Verge of Historical Change: Last session
During this term, the MEP Literature Studies Group will read novels by women writers which explore the intersections of life in their communities, both at home and in the metropoles of Europe, India and the Philippines. These stories will take us to places and introduce us to people facing many of the dilemmas posed during late-stage capitalism, when the looming tipping points begin to collide. Reading and discussing these important writers could very well bring us to a broader sense of time and place. We will discussion Aminatta Forna and Gloria Apostol on December 2, 9, and 16.
0 events,
1 event,
A Guide to The Communist Manifesto with Phil Gasper
A Guide to The Communist Manifesto with Phil Gasper
IF YOU CANNOT OURCHASE ON OUR SITE, TICKETS ARE AVAILABLE AT EVENTBRITE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/203494927807
Since Phil produced this edition, the English-reading left has had an authoritative introduction to history’s most important political document, with the full text of The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. This beautifully organized and presented edition of The Communist Manifestois fully annotated, with clear historical references and explication, additional related texts, and a glossary that will bring the text to life for students, as well as the general reader. Since it was first written in 1848, the Manifesto has been translated into more languages than any other modern text. It has been banned, censored, burned, and declared “dead.” But year after year, the text only grows more influential, remaining required reading in courses on philosophy, politics, economics, and history.