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DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190404T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190404T193000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190309T135626Z
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SUMMARY:Ecology\, Capital and History
DESCRIPTION:Convened by Fred Murphy and Steve Knight \nThe MEP’s Ecosocialism Study Group will devote the spring 2019 term to a close reading of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital and selected essays applying Moore’s world-ecology framework. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature\, including human nature. \nFRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ecology-capital-and-history/2019-04-04/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeforestedTropicsSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190404T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190404T213000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20181216T071121Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190320T043627Z
UID:10006418-1554406200-1554413400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Globalization and Writing
DESCRIPTION:Exploration: Exploitation/Domination • Discovery/Liberation\n4 Works • 11 Weeks \nThe MEP Literature Group \nIn this eleven-week session we will read one memoir and three novels that study the scope of empire. Written between 1899 and 2000\, the authors\, two sailors (Polish and American)\, a Jamaican social theorist\, and a British Jamaican immigrant are denied privilege because of their citizenship (or lack of it)\, class\, or color. Unwilling\, or unable to conform and accept lesser positions in their societies\, they remain within their marginality and write their unease in novels which give readers an alternative report of the results of colonization both abroad where the EuroAmerican capitalists have colonized and what consequences that colonization has made for life in the home countries. \nHeart of Darkness\nJoseph Conrad\nThe story\, written at the height of the British Empire\, reflects the physical and psychological shock Conrad himself experienced in 1890 when he worked briefly in the Belgian Congo. The experience left him disillusioned\, questioning what it meant to be civilized in the age of colonialism \nThis novella is astonishingly powerful and equally enigmatic. Its condemnation of Western imperialism—of the greed\, violence\, and exploitation that so often accompanies ventures to bring “light” and civilization to the “dark” and needy areas of the world—and its poignant look at the destructive influence of colonization on the colonized and colonizer alike\, have been widely praised. However\, some postcolonial African writers\, most notably Chinua Achebe\, deemed the book racist for its portrayal of native African cultures. \nFamiliar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands\nStuart Hall\nFamiliar Stranger takes us only as far as the mid-1960s\, after a decade during which\, for Hall\, “normal” life was suspended in favour of non-stop political agitation. The book touches on his role in the New Left; his critical involvement with CND; his early exposition of the “formal” and “unwitting” variants of British racism; and the importance of Catherine\, with whom he relocated to Birmingham at the start of his lifelong embrace of cultural studies. These recollections of a busy life in Britain nonetheless remain haunted by the ghostly presence of his earlier years in Jamaica. With its resonant subtitle\, A Life Between Two Islands\, it encourages the reader to draw such parallels as that between Jamaica’s 1938 rebellion and the Brixton riots of 1981. It was Hall’s belief that the British had never fully come to terms with colonialism and decolonization. \nDog Soldiers\nRobert Stone\nDog Soldiers deals with the fall of the counterculture in America\, the rise of mass cynicism and the end of the optimism of the 1960s. California has moved on from the Summer of Love to post-Manson paranoia. Converse\, a once-promising writer now unable to do more than observe\, waits for artistic inspiration as a correspondent in Vietnam. Symbolic of his moral corruption is his decision to traffic in heroin\, which the 1960s counterculture never embraced as they did marijuana and LSD. \nWhite Teeth\nZadie Smith\nThis may be the first novel ever written that truly feels at home in our borderless\, globalized\, intermarried\, post-colonial age\, populated by “children with first and last names on a direct collision course.” Published when Smith was just 24\, White Teeth follows the friendship of two Londoners\, a pub-going working-class bloke named Archie and a Muslim from Bangladesh named Samad. Archie marries a Jamaican; Samad has twin sons\, one of whom becomes a religious militant\, the other a rabid Anglophile. The overlapping fates of Smith’s characters seem to trace the new structures of 21st-century life and test their sturdiness as framework for peace and happiness. Both deeply Dickensian and playfully post-modern\, White Teeth doesn’t quail before the rampantly ramifying novelistic complexities of a multicultural world. It revels in them. \nThe MEP LITERATURE GROUP has been meeting to discuss literature since the first days of The Marxist Education Project following a presentation by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on her Indigenous Peoples History of the United States and her recommendation that we take up literature with Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of The Dead. The group has recently completed readings of Victor Serge’s Unforgiving Years following by Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. Our second summer of noir\, considered works by Hammett\, Chandler\, Manchette\, and others. Other studies have included novels related to World War I\, the global depression of the 1930s\, and novels on border politics\, migrations and labor organizing.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/globalization-and-writing/2019-04-04/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/GlobalizedLitJan24_Site2.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190406T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190406T140000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190111T053528Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140647Z
UID:10006504-1554548400-1554559200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 1
DESCRIPTION:CLASS & DISCUSSION with CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP\nKarl Marx’s Capital remains the fundamental text for understanding how capitalism works. By unraveling the commoditized forms of our interactions with nature and each other\, it provides tools to understand capitalism’s astounding innovativeness and productivity\, intertwined with growing inequality and misery\, alienation\, stunting of human potential\, and ecological destruction all over the globe. In this way\, Capital offers the reader a methodology for doing our own analysis of current developments. We will conclude Volume One this term and begin our first 12-week session on Volume Two on Saturday\, April 27. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for two years. We are 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. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nNo one turned away for inability to pay
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-1-2/2019-04-06/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/CapitalAccumulationSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190408T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190408T210000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190109T164958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140844Z
UID:10006488-1554750000-1554757200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Black Reconstruction
DESCRIPTION:Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period\nwith the Revolutions Study Group \n13-week session \nSome have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions\, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim\, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935)\, W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press\, 2007) in whole\, and for more recent research\, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press\, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used\, as e-books\, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus. \n \nTHE REVOLUTIONS STUDY GROUP (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting for 10 years. Individual participants have come and gone\, however the group has held together\, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution\, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917\, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya\, the Haitian Revolution\, the European Revolutions of 1848\, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year\, the Spanish Civil War\, the Mexican Revolution\, the Socialist (2nd) International\, the German revolutionary period of 1918-1924\, and the Chinese revolutionary process of the 20th Century. \nThe listed fees are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n  \nTONIGHT\, FEBRUARY 11 ONLY: The class will meet at The Brooklyn Commons\, 388 Atlantic Avenue. A or G trains to Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop is a short walk from this venue.\n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-reconstruction/2019-04-08/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReconstructionSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190408T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190408T213000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190112T053859Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190320T044341Z
UID:10006515-1554751800-1554759000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Early American Resistance to Hamilton’s Capitalist Policies
DESCRIPTION:From the Beginning:\nEarly American Resistance to the Capitalist Policies of Alexander Hamilton\nA 5 week study and discussion with Jim Costanzo\, founder & director of the Aaron Burr Society\nMondays\, March 11—April 8\n7:30 – 9:30 Pm @ The Brooklyn Commons \nWas the U.S. Constitution a betrayal of the American Revolution? Did the founders intentionally frame the Constitution to establish a financial aristocracy based on patriarchy and white supremacy? \nFollowing independence\, there were five armed rebellions against the newly formed Republic in response to debt\, financial speculation and foreclosures. This course will examine how the working classes\, small farmers and veterans of the revolution organized to address grievances against the rise of American capitalism. Though different\, the 21st Century’s Great Recession is a continuation of the ongoing struggles against capital formation\, debt and democratic processes. The concentration of economic power was built into the Constitution and enhanced by Hamilton who imposed different forms of British capitalism upon the former colonies that had just rebelled against those policies. Appropriating the Collective Wealth of the Nation to establish an aristocracy is reflected in the phrase “too much democracy” which is often associated with the French Revolution but was popular since the end of the American Revolution. This aristocratic phrase is applicable today with radical return of gerrymandering and voter suppression.This five-week study and discussion will explore the political economy behind post-colonial American class struggles. \nThe main book for this class will be Founding Finance: How Debt\, Speculation\, Foreclosures\, Protests and Crackdowns Made Us a Nation by William Hogeland. Other references will be from various sources that will include my original research from the Pittsburgh Gazette from 1789 to 1803. Another book will be referenced but not required is Fallen Founder: the Life of Aaron Burr by Nancy Isenberg. \nThe Aaron Burr Society: Since 2008 the Aaron Burr Society has been dedicated to exposing the myths of the Free Market and Free Trade. Wall Street and their Corporate Cronies use myths in order to subvert the Sovereignty of The People in an attempt to usurp the Collective Wealth of the Nation. In addition to financial derivatives and other fraudulent monetary policies\, they divert your tax money for their profits while privatizing public programs\, like education\, designed to promote universal prosperity. Wall Street and their cronies make billions in bonuses and trillions in subsidies while we the people\, our nation and the world goes bankrupt. The real reason for the escalation of personal and national debt are the crimes committed by Wall Street and conservative politicians of both parties.The Society maintains relationships with individuals and organizations from Occupy Wall Street. However\, the crisis of capitalism has morphed and expanded by embracing 21st century forms of authoritarianism and corporate fascism. \nSuggested donations are sliding scale. No one turned away for inability to pay
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/early-american-resistance-to-hamiltons-capitalist-policies/2019-04-08/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Whiskey-RebellionSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190411T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190411T193000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190309T135626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190316T213641Z
UID:10006565-1555005600-1555011000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Ecology\, Capital and History
DESCRIPTION:Convened by Fred Murphy and Steve Knight \nThe MEP’s Ecosocialism Study Group will devote the spring 2019 term to a close reading of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital and selected essays applying Moore’s world-ecology framework. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature\, including human nature. \nFRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ecology-capital-and-history/2019-04-11/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeforestedTropicsSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190413T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190413T140000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190111T053528Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140647Z
UID:10006505-1555153200-1555164000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 1
DESCRIPTION:CLASS & DISCUSSION with CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP\nKarl Marx’s Capital remains the fundamental text for understanding how capitalism works. By unraveling the commoditized forms of our interactions with nature and each other\, it provides tools to understand capitalism’s astounding innovativeness and productivity\, intertwined with growing inequality and misery\, alienation\, stunting of human potential\, and ecological destruction all over the globe. In this way\, Capital offers the reader a methodology for doing our own analysis of current developments. We will conclude Volume One this term and begin our first 12-week session on Volume Two on Saturday\, April 27. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for two years. We are 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. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nNo one turned away for inability to pay
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-1-2/2019-04-13/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/CapitalAccumulationSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190413T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190413T180000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190228T101759Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190320T043339Z
UID:10006544-1555171200-1555178400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Victor Serge’s Notebooks: 1936-1947
DESCRIPTION:A book release presentation with translator Mitch Abidor and Jacob Pittman\nIn 1936\, Victor Serge—poet\, novelist\, and revolutionary—left the Soviet Union for Paris\, the rare opponent of Stalin to escape the Terror. In 1940\, after the Nazis marched into Paris\, Serge fled France for Mexico\, where he would spend he rest of his life. His years in Mexico were marked by isolation\, poverty\, peril\, and grief; his Notebooks\, however\, brim with resilience\, curiosity\, outrage\, a passionate love of life\, and superb writing. Serge paints haunting portraits of Osip Mandelstam\, Stefan Zweig “the Old Man” Trotsky; argues with André Breton; and\, awaiting his wife’s delayed arrival from Europe\, writes her passionate love letters. He describes the sweep of the Mexican landscape\, visits an erupting volcano\, and immerses himself in the country’s history and culture. He looks back on his life and the fate of the revolution. He broods on the course of the war and the world to come after. In the darkest of circumstances\, he responds imaginatively\, thinks critically\, feels deeply\, and finds reason to hope. \nMITCH ABIDOR has published over a dozen volumes of translation\, including a collection of Victor Serge’s anarchist writings\, Anarchists Never Surrender. His writings have appeared in the New York Times\, The New York Review of Books\, The Paris Review\, and Cineaste. Mitch has been translated into German and Turkish. He is currently writing a history of the Bisbee Depredation of 1917. \nJACOB PITTMAN is the publisher of Jewish Currents\, the magazine of the Jewish left. \n  \nThis is a free event. \n  \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/victor-serges-notebooks-1936-1947/
LOCATION:Unnameable Books\, 600 Vanderbilt Avenue\, Brooklyn\, NY
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/SergeCoverSite.jpg
GEO:40.6784323;-73.9688372
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=Unnameable Books 600 Vanderbilt Avenue Brooklyn NY;X-APPLE-RADIUS=500;X-TITLE=600 Vanderbilt Avenue:geo:-73.9688372,40.6784323
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190415T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190415T210000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190109T164958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140844Z
UID:10006489-1555354800-1555362000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Black Reconstruction
DESCRIPTION:Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period\nwith the Revolutions Study Group \n13-week session \nSome have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions\, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim\, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935)\, W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press\, 2007) in whole\, and for more recent research\, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press\, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used\, as e-books\, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus. \n \nTHE REVOLUTIONS STUDY GROUP (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting for 10 years. Individual participants have come and gone\, however the group has held together\, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution\, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917\, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya\, the Haitian Revolution\, the European Revolutions of 1848\, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year\, the Spanish Civil War\, the Mexican Revolution\, the Socialist (2nd) International\, the German revolutionary period of 1918-1924\, and the Chinese revolutionary process of the 20th Century. \nThe listed fees are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n  \nTONIGHT\, FEBRUARY 11 ONLY: The class will meet at The Brooklyn Commons\, 388 Atlantic Avenue. A or G trains to Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop is a short walk from this venue.\n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-reconstruction/2019-04-15/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReconstructionSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190417T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190417T213000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190228T102914Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T135442Z
UID:10006553-1555529400-1555536600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Planet of Exile with Rob Wallace
DESCRIPTION:Introducing the first statistical model of a capitalist metabolic rift\nAn evening with Rob Wallace\nCapitalism separates our economy from the cooperative commons and regenerative biosystems upon which we all depend. In effect\, capital aims at projecting both nature and people off Earth proper into a distinct space where alienated nature and alienated people interact on commoditization’s terms alone. Livestock and crops\, and the farmers who tend them\, have been beamed up into this new social metabolism. \nWhat are the effects of such an agroeconomics on the evolution and spread of pathogens that emerge there? Can we statistically test for such an alienated epidemiology over space and time? The implications appear definitional. How\, for instance\, can disease control be exercised in such a gated-off space\, where the commons aren’t allowed in but pathogens are let out? \nROB WALLACE\, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu (Monthly Review Press\, 2016) and other works\, is also one of the founders of ARERC (Agroecology and Rural Economics Research Corps)\, formed as an independent group of scientists\, educators\, and agricultural practitioners who do research and education addressing the  the agri-food system in the Upper Midwest in solidarity with farmers and other constituencies that have been left out\, forgotten\, or damaged by the current productivist paradigm. \n  \nTickets are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/planet-of-exile/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/GatedInExileSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190418T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190418T193000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190309T135626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190316T213641Z
UID:10006566-1555610400-1555615800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Ecology\, Capital and History
DESCRIPTION:Convened by Fred Murphy and Steve Knight \nThe MEP’s Ecosocialism Study Group will devote the spring 2019 term to a close reading of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital and selected essays applying Moore’s world-ecology framework. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature\, including human nature. \nFRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ecology-capital-and-history/2019-04-18/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeforestedTropicsSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190420T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190420T133000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190316T011827Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140409Z
UID:10006009-1555758000-1555767000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:2008 Capitalist Crisis: McNally’s Global Slump
DESCRIPTION:A 3 Session Mini-class\nIn the first paragraph of the Introduction to his book\, The Global Slump\, David McNally wrote as follows: “We find it difficult to view our current moment as profoundly historical. Yet\, the present is invariably saturated with elements of the future\, with possibilities that have not yet come to fruition\, and may not do so—as the road to the future is always contested. That is why\, if we wish to make history\, we ‘must be able to comprehend the present as a becoming.’ [Georg Lukács\, History and Class Consciousness]. One would think that it should be easier to see things this way during moments of profound crisis in our social and economic system\, like that which broke out in 2008. As the tectonic plates of the global economy shifted\, financial shocks rocked the world’s banks\, leveling many of them. Panic gripped money markets\, stocks plunged\, factories shut down. Tens of millions of people were thrown out of work; millions lost their homes. An extraordinary uncertainty shook the world’s ruling class. The mood of the moment was captured in the confession by senior writers with the Financial Times that\, “The world of the past three decades is gone. Within a year or so\, however\, candid statements like this disappeared from the mainstream press. The ruling class regrouped and regained its arrogance…. \nA decade has passed but the crisis is not over. Indeed we might even say that we are only beginning to see the effects of this greatest crisis of capitalism: the rise of anti neo-liberal populism of the right and left in Trump and Sanders\, Brexit\, extreme austerity\, all the labor and social movements such as the teachers movement in the US and the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France and the deepening crisis in the Middle East. The ruling class has regrouped and regained its arrogance\, continuing their political and economic assault imposing ever deeper social wage cuts while ideologically taking aim at hard won democratic and civil rights. It remains important for us to understand the underlying causes within this late stage of capitalist development that led to the 2008 crisis so that we of the working classes develop our capacity to effectively take on the political\, ideological and economic challenges we are facing now and in the struggles ahead for a better life for all. \nAll of this to say that to become more effective it is reasonable to turn to a social theory that see crises as an inherent aspect of the capitalist mode of production\, that is Marxist theory. McNally’s Global Slump is an impressive attempt to provide such a Marxist understanding for the crisis and a good example to see the explanatory power of Marx’s social theory as laid out in the three volumes of Capital. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two 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. We begin a close reading Volume 2 on May 11. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nListed fees are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/2008-capitalist-crisis-mcnallys-global-slump/2019-04-20/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapCrisisClass_Site.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190422T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190422T210000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190109T164958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140844Z
UID:10006490-1555959600-1555966800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Black Reconstruction
DESCRIPTION:Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period\nwith the Revolutions Study Group \n13-week session \nSome have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions\, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim\, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935)\, W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press\, 2007) in whole\, and for more recent research\, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press\, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used\, as e-books\, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus. \n \nTHE REVOLUTIONS STUDY GROUP (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting for 10 years. Individual participants have come and gone\, however the group has held together\, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution\, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917\, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya\, the Haitian Revolution\, the European Revolutions of 1848\, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year\, the Spanish Civil War\, the Mexican Revolution\, the Socialist (2nd) International\, the German revolutionary period of 1918-1924\, and the Chinese revolutionary process of the 20th Century. \nThe listed fees are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n  \nTONIGHT\, FEBRUARY 11 ONLY: The class will meet at The Brooklyn Commons\, 388 Atlantic Avenue. A or G trains to Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop is a short walk from this venue.\n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-reconstruction/2019-04-22/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReconstructionSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190425T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190425T193000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190309T135626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190316T213641Z
UID:10006567-1556215200-1556220600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Ecology\, Capital and History
DESCRIPTION:Convened by Fred Murphy and Steve Knight \nThe MEP’s Ecosocialism Study Group will devote the spring 2019 term to a close reading of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital and selected essays applying Moore’s world-ecology framework. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature\, including human nature. \nFRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ecology-capital-and-history/2019-04-25/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeforestedTropicsSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190425T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190425T213000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006029-1556220600-1556227800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-04-25/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190426T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190426T210000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190325T054034Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190325T054034Z
UID:10006040-1556301600-1556312400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Tout Va Bien: Screening with Discussion
DESCRIPTION:Final Friday Films: an anti-bourgeois film series\n“The problem is not to make political films but to make films politically.” —Jean-Luc Godard / Jean-Pierre Gorin\nTOUT VA BIEN\nFrance\, 1972\, 125 Min\nDIRECTED BY Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin\nCAST Yves Montand\, Jane Fonda\, Vittorio Caprioli\, Elizabeth Chauvin\, Castel Casti\, Éric Chartier\, Anne Wiazemsky\, et al \nGodard and Gorin’s film\, unpopular and hardly viewed when released\, emerges nearly 50 years later as a film with increasing relevance to the days as lived during this late capitalist period. One can see many of the participants in this film wearing gilets jaunes if the film were being shot today. \nFrom the Criterion re-release: \n“As cinema\, Tout Va Bien is radically simplified and blatantly diagrammatic. After the opening sequence\, the Fonda character arrives at a sausage factory to do a story on modern management techniques. Montand tags along\, and\, as the workers have just staged a wildcat strike\, the visiting celebs soon find themselves “sequestered” with the factory’s clownish boss. The approach is self-consciously Brechtian: The characters frequently address the camera. These characters are characters and the set on which they appear is an obvious set. \nThis two-story\, open construction—evoking the cutaway girls’ school in Jerry Lewis’s The Ladies Man (1961)—is\, if not Vertov’s “factory of facts\,” then at least a factory for making meaning. The comic-book frame allows the filmmakers to analyze the strike as a sort of Rube Goldberg contraption and put a didactic emphasis on working conditions. Tout Va Bien insists on class struggle throughout but is mainly about radicalizing its stars. Their role in the factory is to look and learn. Indeed\, Godard and Gorin upped the class-resentment ante by having the striking workers played not by real workers but by unemployed actors.”              —J. Hoberman\, for Criterion\, Tout Va Bien Revisited \nDuring the coming period\, films will be presented by The Revolutions Study Group of The Marxist Education Project as a continuation of the Anti-Bourgeois Film Series that was started at the Brecht Forum. These films with discussion will take place on the last Friday of each month at 6:00 pm. \nTickets are Sliding Scale \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/tout-va-bien-screening-with-discussion/
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/2019/03/Sausage_ToutVaBienSite.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Anti-Bourgeois Film Series":MAILTO:info@marxedprojet.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190427T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190427T133000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190316T011827Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140409Z
UID:10006010-1556362800-1556371800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:2008 Capitalist Crisis: McNally’s Global Slump
DESCRIPTION:A 3 Session Mini-class\nIn the first paragraph of the Introduction to his book\, The Global Slump\, David McNally wrote as follows: “We find it difficult to view our current moment as profoundly historical. Yet\, the present is invariably saturated with elements of the future\, with possibilities that have not yet come to fruition\, and may not do so—as the road to the future is always contested. That is why\, if we wish to make history\, we ‘must be able to comprehend the present as a becoming.’ [Georg Lukács\, History and Class Consciousness]. One would think that it should be easier to see things this way during moments of profound crisis in our social and economic system\, like that which broke out in 2008. As the tectonic plates of the global economy shifted\, financial shocks rocked the world’s banks\, leveling many of them. Panic gripped money markets\, stocks plunged\, factories shut down. Tens of millions of people were thrown out of work; millions lost their homes. An extraordinary uncertainty shook the world’s ruling class. The mood of the moment was captured in the confession by senior writers with the Financial Times that\, “The world of the past three decades is gone. Within a year or so\, however\, candid statements like this disappeared from the mainstream press. The ruling class regrouped and regained its arrogance…. \nA decade has passed but the crisis is not over. Indeed we might even say that we are only beginning to see the effects of this greatest crisis of capitalism: the rise of anti neo-liberal populism of the right and left in Trump and Sanders\, Brexit\, extreme austerity\, all the labor and social movements such as the teachers movement in the US and the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France and the deepening crisis in the Middle East. The ruling class has regrouped and regained its arrogance\, continuing their political and economic assault imposing ever deeper social wage cuts while ideologically taking aim at hard won democratic and civil rights. It remains important for us to understand the underlying causes within this late stage of capitalist development that led to the 2008 crisis so that we of the working classes develop our capacity to effectively take on the political\, ideological and economic challenges we are facing now and in the struggles ahead for a better life for all. \nAll of this to say that to become more effective it is reasonable to turn to a social theory that see crises as an inherent aspect of the capitalist mode of production\, that is Marxist theory. McNally’s Global Slump is an impressive attempt to provide such a Marxist understanding for the crisis and a good example to see the explanatory power of Marx’s social theory as laid out in the three volumes of Capital. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two 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. We begin a close reading Volume 2 on May 11. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nListed fees are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/2008-capitalist-crisis-mcnallys-global-slump/2019-04-27/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapCrisisClass_Site.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190429T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190429T210000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190109T164958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140844Z
UID:10006491-1556564400-1556571600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Black Reconstruction
DESCRIPTION:Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period\nwith the Revolutions Study Group \n13-week session \nSome have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions\, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim\, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935)\, W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press\, 2007) in whole\, and for more recent research\, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press\, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used\, as e-books\, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus. \n \nTHE REVOLUTIONS STUDY GROUP (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting for 10 years. Individual participants have come and gone\, however the group has held together\, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution\, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917\, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya\, the Haitian Revolution\, the European Revolutions of 1848\, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year\, the Spanish Civil War\, the Mexican Revolution\, the Socialist (2nd) International\, the German revolutionary period of 1918-1924\, and the Chinese revolutionary process of the 20th Century. \nThe listed fees are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n  \nTONIGHT\, FEBRUARY 11 ONLY: The class will meet at The Brooklyn Commons\, 388 Atlantic Avenue. A or G trains to Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop is a short walk from this venue.\n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-reconstruction/2019-04-29/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReconstructionSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190502T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190502T193000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190309T135626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190316T213641Z
UID:10006568-1556820000-1556825400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Ecology\, Capital and History
DESCRIPTION:Convened by Fred Murphy and Steve Knight \nThe MEP’s Ecosocialism Study Group will devote the spring 2019 term to a close reading of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital and selected essays applying Moore’s world-ecology framework. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature\, including human nature. \nFRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ecology-capital-and-history/2019-05-02/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeforestedTropicsSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190502T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190502T213000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006030-1556825400-1556832600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-05-02/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190504T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190504T133000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190316T011827Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140409Z
UID:10006011-1556967600-1556976600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:2008 Capitalist Crisis: McNally’s Global Slump
DESCRIPTION:A 3 Session Mini-class\nIn the first paragraph of the Introduction to his book\, The Global Slump\, David McNally wrote as follows: “We find it difficult to view our current moment as profoundly historical. Yet\, the present is invariably saturated with elements of the future\, with possibilities that have not yet come to fruition\, and may not do so—as the road to the future is always contested. That is why\, if we wish to make history\, we ‘must be able to comprehend the present as a becoming.’ [Georg Lukács\, History and Class Consciousness]. One would think that it should be easier to see things this way during moments of profound crisis in our social and economic system\, like that which broke out in 2008. As the tectonic plates of the global economy shifted\, financial shocks rocked the world’s banks\, leveling many of them. Panic gripped money markets\, stocks plunged\, factories shut down. Tens of millions of people were thrown out of work; millions lost their homes. An extraordinary uncertainty shook the world’s ruling class. The mood of the moment was captured in the confession by senior writers with the Financial Times that\, “The world of the past three decades is gone. Within a year or so\, however\, candid statements like this disappeared from the mainstream press. The ruling class regrouped and regained its arrogance…. \nA decade has passed but the crisis is not over. Indeed we might even say that we are only beginning to see the effects of this greatest crisis of capitalism: the rise of anti neo-liberal populism of the right and left in Trump and Sanders\, Brexit\, extreme austerity\, all the labor and social movements such as the teachers movement in the US and the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France and the deepening crisis in the Middle East. The ruling class has regrouped and regained its arrogance\, continuing their political and economic assault imposing ever deeper social wage cuts while ideologically taking aim at hard won democratic and civil rights. It remains important for us to understand the underlying causes within this late stage of capitalist development that led to the 2008 crisis so that we of the working classes develop our capacity to effectively take on the political\, ideological and economic challenges we are facing now and in the struggles ahead for a better life for all. \nAll of this to say that to become more effective it is reasonable to turn to a social theory that see crises as an inherent aspect of the capitalist mode of production\, that is Marxist theory. McNally’s Global Slump is an impressive attempt to provide such a Marxist understanding for the crisis and a good example to see the explanatory power of Marx’s social theory as laid out in the three volumes of Capital. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two 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. We begin a close reading Volume 2 on May 11. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nListed fees are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/2008-capitalist-crisis-mcnallys-global-slump/2019-05-04/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapCrisisClass_Site.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190506T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190506T210000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190109T164958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140844Z
UID:10006492-1557169200-1557176400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Black Reconstruction
DESCRIPTION:Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period\nwith the Revolutions Study Group \n13-week session \nSome have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions\, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim\, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935)\, W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press\, 2007) in whole\, and for more recent research\, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press\, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used\, as e-books\, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus. \n \nTHE REVOLUTIONS STUDY GROUP (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting for 10 years. Individual participants have come and gone\, however the group has held together\, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution\, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917\, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya\, the Haitian Revolution\, the European Revolutions of 1848\, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year\, the Spanish Civil War\, the Mexican Revolution\, the Socialist (2nd) International\, the German revolutionary period of 1918-1924\, and the Chinese revolutionary process of the 20th Century. \nThe listed fees are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n  \nTONIGHT\, FEBRUARY 11 ONLY: The class will meet at The Brooklyn Commons\, 388 Atlantic Avenue. A or G trains to Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop is a short walk from this venue.\n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-reconstruction/2019-05-06/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReconstructionSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190509T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190509T193000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190309T135626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190316T213641Z
UID:10006569-1557424800-1557430200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Ecology\, Capital and History
DESCRIPTION:Convened by Fred Murphy and Steve Knight \nThe MEP’s Ecosocialism Study Group will devote the spring 2019 term to a close reading of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital and selected essays applying Moore’s world-ecology framework. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature\, including human nature. \nFRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ecology-capital-and-history/2019-05-09/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeforestedTropicsSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190509T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190509T213000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006031-1557430200-1557437400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-05-09/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190510T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190510T210000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190327T025438Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190331T051807Z
UID:10006041-1557513000-1557522000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Use: A Users’ Manual
DESCRIPTION:Following cultural critic Sara Ahmed’s insight that “use is a small word with a big history\,” we approach the various ways that “use” enters into and exercises power within our lexicon and politics. From our interaction with digital platforms as “users\,” to the Marxian notion of use-value\, to the labeling of both addicts and emotional abusers as “users” of a different kind\, the language of use pops up in far-flung and unexpected spheres. How do we delineate the useful and the useless\, the usual and the unusual? How do the boundaries of the useful and useless map onto classifications of race\, gender\, sexuality\, and population? In discussing the “proper” use of things and people\, we ask what it means to misuse\, abuse\, overuse\, and underuse\, and offer a user manual to use and abuse. \nThe Working Group on Globalization and Culture http://wggc.yale.edu/ is an interdisciplinary cultural studies laboratory that has been practicing collective research at Yale University since 2003. Over the years\, we have presented work at academic conferences as well as at the Left Forum\, Occupy Boston\, and the World Social Forum. Recent projects have been published as “Going into Debt\,” online in Social Text’s Periscope\, and as “Spaces and Times of Occupation” in Transforming Anthropology; a collective interview regarding “Matters of Life and Death” appeared in Revue Française d’Études Américaines. The current members—Salonee Bhaman\, Michael Denning\, Lucia Hulsether\, Peter Raccuglia\, Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez\, Simon Torracinta\, Damian Vergara Bracamontes\, Clara Wilson-Hawken\, and Yuhe Faye Wang—work in history\, American studies\, religious studies\, literary criticism\, Latinx studies\, science and technology studies\, popular music studies\, and African-American studies. \nAll tickets are sliding scale. No one turned away for inability to pay \nOur first MEP event at Union Docs
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/use-a-users-manual/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Political Economy,Science and Method
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Use4_FB3.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190513T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190513T210000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190109T164958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140844Z
UID:10006493-1557774000-1557781200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Black Reconstruction
DESCRIPTION:Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period\nwith the Revolutions Study Group \n13-week session \nSome have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions\, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim\, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935)\, W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press\, 2007) in whole\, and for more recent research\, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press\, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used\, as e-books\, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus. \n \nTHE REVOLUTIONS STUDY GROUP (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting for 10 years. Individual participants have come and gone\, however the group has held together\, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution\, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917\, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya\, the Haitian Revolution\, the European Revolutions of 1848\, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year\, the Spanish Civil War\, the Mexican Revolution\, the Socialist (2nd) International\, the German revolutionary period of 1918-1924\, and the Chinese revolutionary process of the 20th Century. \nThe listed fees are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n  \nTONIGHT\, FEBRUARY 11 ONLY: The class will meet at The Brooklyn Commons\, 388 Atlantic Avenue. A or G trains to Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop is a short walk from this venue.\n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-reconstruction/2019-05-13/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReconstructionSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190516T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190516T193000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190309T135626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190316T213641Z
UID:10006570-1558029600-1558035000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Ecology\, Capital and History
DESCRIPTION:Convened by Fred Murphy and Steve Knight \nThe MEP’s Ecosocialism Study Group will devote the spring 2019 term to a close reading of Jason W. Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital and selected essays applying Moore’s world-ecology framework. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature\, including human nature. \nFRED MURPHY and STEVE KNIGHT have co-led the Ecosocialism Study Group since 2016. Both are active in DSA’s climate justice work. Fred studied and taught historical sociology at The New School for Social Research. Steve reviews books for Marx & Philosophy and is active in faith-centered environmental groups.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/ecology-capital-and-history/2019-05-16/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DeforestedTropicsSite.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190516T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190516T213000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190320T140344Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190419T050329Z
UID:10006032-1558035000-1558042200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A Spring Fever of World Literature
DESCRIPTION:A Spring Fever of World Literature\n“The progression from a critical reading of literature to an expansive conception of politics proved not only increasingly persuasive intellectually\, but also compelling.” – Stuart Hall\, Familiar Stranger\nLooking at the last century through the lens of literature (and what it tell us about the present moment and those moments that are soon to come). \nG. by John Berger (UK)\nThe Last Days of New Paris by China Miéville (UK)\nThe God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (India)\nGraceLand by Chris Abani (Nigeria) \n“Only in fiction can we share another person’s specific experiences. Outside fiction we have to generalize.” — John Berger\, The Success and Failure of Picasso \n“…when I write my novels\, I’m not writing them to make political points. I’m writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism\, and what I want to do is communicate that. But\, because I come at this with a political perspective\, the world that I’m creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. […] I’m trying to say I’ve invented this world that I think is really cool and I have these really big stories to tell in it and one of the ways that I find to make that interesting is to think about it politically. If you want to do that too\, that’s fantastic. But if not\, isn’t this a cool monster?” — China Miéville \n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.”— Arundhati Roy\, The God of Small Things \nG.\nBerger sets the story of G. against the turbulent backdrop of Garibaldi and the failed revolution of Milanese workers in 1898\, the Boer War\, and the first flight across the Alps\, making G. a brilliant novel about the search for intimacy in history’s private moments. \nGiovanni – G – the product of an Italian merchant’s adulterous fling is sent to cousins on a farm in England\, where a piano-playing governess awakens the lust that proves the keynote in a series of fragmented episodes set during the years before the first world war – a prospect G relishes on account of all the women it will widow. \nThe Last Days of New Paris\nChina Miéville\n1941. In the chaos of wartime Marseille\, American engineer—and occult disciple—Jack Parsons stumbles onto a clandestine anti-Nazi group\, including Surrealist theorist André Breton. In the strange games of the dissident diplomats\, exiled revolutionaries\, and avant-garde artists\, Parsons finds and channels hope. But what he unwittingly unleashes is the power of dreams and nightmares\, changing the war and the world forever. \n“So there I am\, wondering what to do\, and I see you\, and I see what you’re carrying. And that is why I came running after you. Because I do not believe in coincidence.”  \n1950. A lone Surrealist fighter\, Thibaut\, walks a new\, hallucinogenic Paris\, where Nazis and the Resistance are trapped in unending conflict\, and the streets are stalked by living images and texts—and by the forces of Hell. To escape the city\, he must join forces with Sam\, an American photographer intent on recording the ruins\, and make common cause with a powerful\, enigmatic figure of chance and rebellion: the exquisite corpse. \nThe God of Small Things\nArundathi Roy\n“It didn’t matter that the story had begun\, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” \nIn addition to commentary on Indian history and politics\, Roy evaluates the Indian post-colonial complex\, or the cultural attitudes of many Indians toward their former British rulers. After Ammu calls her father a “[shit]-wiper” in Hindi for his blind devotion to the British\, Chacko explains to the twins Rahel and Estha\, that they come from a family of Anglophiles\, or lovers of British culture\, “trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps.” He goes on to say that they despise themselves because of this. Nearly all of the relationships in the novel are somehow colored by cultural and class tension. \nGraceLand\nChris Abani\nGraceLand is a 2004 novel by Chris Abani\, which tells the story of a teenager named Elvis\, who is trying to get out of the ghettos of Lagos\, Nigeria. Chris Abani depicts the poverty and violence in Lagos and how it affects the everyday lives of Elvis and his family. Having emigrated from Nigeria himself as a result of the Biafran War\, Abani’s novel touches on many issues relevant to corruption\, poverty\, and violence within the country. Elvis’s story also touches on issues related to globalization\, and how Nigeria’s impoverished communities are affected by this phenomenon. The main focus of this story is on Elvis and how he survives in the often harsh environment that is Nigeria’s largest city; Elvis himself is a complex and sympathetic character who clearly cares for his family despite a turbulent upbringing. However\, this is complicated by the numerous illegal and morally questionable jobs he takes part in with his friend Redemption. \n “The rain had cleared the oppressive heat that had already dropped like a blanket over Lagos; but the smell of garbage from refuse dumps\, unflushed toilets and stale bodies was still overwhelming. Elvis turned from the window\, dropping the threadbare curtain. Today was his sixteenth birthday\, and as with all the others\, it would pass uncelebrated. It had been that way since his mother died eight years before. He used to think that celebrating his birthday was too painful for his father\, a constant reminder of his loss. But Elvis had since come to the conclusion that his father was simply self-centered. The least I should do is get some more sleep\, he thought\, sitting on the bed. But the sun stabbed through the thin fabric\, bathing the room in sterile light. The radio played Bob Marley….”
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-spring-fever-of-world-literature/2019-05-16/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Spring19Books_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190518T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190518T133000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190318T020507Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190517T062325Z
UID:10006017-1558177200-1558186200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 2
DESCRIPTION:The Process of Circulation of Capital\nEdited by Frederick Engels\n \nVolume I of Capital is just the beginning of unraveling the underlying laws of capitalist development. After solving the form that the production of wealth takes within a society where generalized commodity production prevails under the domination of capital —including the commodification of the capacities of the human subject and materials and powers of nature\, the two sources of wealth\, Marx takes on the next big question. How the hell can reproduction of society as a whole take place when there is no conscious social planning that insures that all needs are met and in the necessary proportions such that a continuous reproduction of the conditions of life can take place and reproduce the capitalist relations of production? By looking at capitalist social reproduction from this viewpoint\, in Volume II we discover the solution to this problem while new internal contradictions and instabilities at a societal level inherent to this mode of production are explained. The ground is then laid in combining the laws of motion peculiar to capitalism uncovered in the first two Volumes—The Process of Capitalist Production and The Process of the Circulation of Capital—to the analysis of the third Volume\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Here\, the circle is completed and we are able to de-fetishize the machinations that appear on the surface of society and their real relationship to the production of wealth and the circulation of that wealth throughout all the competing capitalist interests and the various branches of capital\, and the different strata of the proletariat —prices\, wages\, interests\, rents\, dividends\, rates of profit\, fictitious capital—while revealing the necessity of tendential contradictions that result in episodic crisis of the system leading to periodic booms and busts! \nJoin us as we journey through this movement from the imaginary concrete to the abstract concrete to the real concrete. Come and challenge your way of thinking and understanding the world as it appears to you and begin to identify some of what needs to be overcome and done to bring about a better world. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than two 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. \nAdmissions are sliding scale. No one is ever excluded for inability to pay.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-2/2019-05-18/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CapitalVol2_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20190520T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20190520T210000
DTSTAMP:20260408T130709
CREATED:20190109T164958Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20190415T140844Z
UID:10006494-1558378800-1558386000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Black Reconstruction
DESCRIPTION:Black Reconstruction: An American Revolutionary Period\nwith the Revolutions Study Group \n13-week session \nSome have called the U.S. Civil War the “second American revolution” or the completion of the first American revolution. Others claim that the war of independence and Civil War were not revolutions\, but had tremendous revolutionary potential. By whichever historical claim\, the great social revolution of that momentous period following the Civil War was surely the “reconstruction” of social relations in the former slave states. In his groundbreaking study (1935)\, W.E.B. DuBois reveals that this social revolution was both initiated by slaves in the midst of the war and carried through by the emancipated Black population during and after the period when federal troops occupied the former Confederate states. DuBois is concerned to refute the multiple slanders imputed to “Reconstruction” during the counter-revolutionary “Jim Crow” period that followed and to record the real advancements of democracy and social reform made under Reconstruction and partly lost when it was defeated. We will read DuBois’ Black Reconstruction (Oxford University Press\, 2007) in whole\, and for more recent research\, the middle part of Steven Hahn’s A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South (Harvard University Press\, 2003). Both books are readily available new and used\, as e-books\, and in libraries. Email to info@marxedproject.org for a reading syllabus. \n \nTHE REVOLUTIONS STUDY GROUP (originally at the Brecht Forum) has been meeting for 10 years. Individual participants have come and gone\, however the group has held together\, studying in depth a wide range of history including the French Revolution\, the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917\, the Mau-Mau Revolt in Kenya\, the Haitian Revolution\, the European Revolutions of 1848\, the May movement in France of 1968 and the Hot Autumn of Italy the following year\, the Spanish Civil War\, the Mexican Revolution\, the Socialist (2nd) International\, the German revolutionary period of 1918-1924\, and the Chinese revolutionary process of the 20th Century. \nThe listed fees are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n  \nTONIGHT\, FEBRUARY 11 ONLY: The class will meet at The Brooklyn Commons\, 388 Atlantic Avenue. A or G trains to Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop is a short walk from this venue.\n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/black-reconstruction/2019-05-20/
LOCATION:The People’s Forum\, 320 West 37th Street\, New York\, NY\, United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ReconstructionSite.jpg
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