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DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200709T193000
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SUMMARY:6 Plays of Bertolt Brecht
DESCRIPTION:Beginning April 23 we will read aloud six of the many plays Bertolt Brecht wrote between the 1920s and his death in 1956. We will spend three weeks with The Threepenny Opera\, one week with The Exception and The Rule\, and two weeks each for the other four plays. There will be time to read aloud—taking on various characters among ourselves. There will also be substantive discussion of these works which span all the decades of his writing. The Epic theater\, musical theater along with the learning plays are represented in this selection of plays. Each session will be conducted via Zoom until we have an all-clear to return to the classroom. With your registration\, the zoom password will be sent to you. \n \nThe Threepenny Opera 1928 \nThe Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a “play with music” by Bertolt Brecht\, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay’s 18th-century ballad opera\, The Beggar’s Opera\, and four ballads by François Villon\, with music by Kurt Weill. The work offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world. Writing in 1929\, Weill made the political and artistic intents of the work clear: “With the Dreigroschenoper we reach a public which either did not know us at all or thought us incapable of captivating listeners\, Opera was founded as an aristocratic form of art. If the framework of opera is unable to withstand the impact of the age\, then this framework must be destroyed…. In the Dreigroschenoper\, reconstruction was possible insofar as here we had a chance of starting from scratch. Weill claimed at the time that “music cannot further the action of the play or create its background”\, but achieves its proper value when it interrupts the action at the right moments.” \nThe Mother 1931 \nBased on Maxim Gorky’s 1906 novel of the same name\, is Brecht’s most elaborate use of his radically experimental Lehrstücke\, or learning plays\, which he describes as “a piece of anti-metaphysical\, materialistic\, non-Aristotelian drama.” The play suggests that to become a good mother involves more than just complaining about the price of soup; rather\, one must struggle against it\, not only for her and her family’s sake\, but for the sake of all working families. The title character\, the mother Pelagea Vlassova\, journeys through the play’s 14 scenes\, the death of her son\, and her own impending illness\, fighting illiteracy while constantly filled with good humor and wily activism. The moment in October 1917 when she becomes free to carry and raise her own Red Flag on the eve of the czar’s overthrow proves momentous. \n \nThe Exception and the Rule 1933 \nThe play itself is short\, and lasts no longer than 60 minutes if performed in its entirety. It tells the story of a rich merchant\, who must cross the fictional Yahi Desert to close an oil deal. During the trip the class differences between him and his working-class porter (or “coolie” as he is called in most English language editions) are shown. As he becomes increasingly afraid of the desert\, the merchant’s brutality increases\, and he feels terribly alone without police nearby to protect him. \nMother Courage & Her Children 1941 \nFollowing Brecht’s own principles for political drama\, the play is not set in modern timesbut during the 30 Years’ War of 1618–1648. It follows the fortunes of Anna Fierling\, nicknamed Mother Courage\, who is determined to make her living from the war. Over the course of the play\, she loses all three of her children\, Schweizerkas\, Eilif\, and Kattrin\, to the very war from which she tried to profit. Mother Courage is an example of Brecht’s concepts of epic theatre and Verfremdungseffekt\, or “V” effect; preferably “alienation” or “estrangement effect” Verfremdungseffekt is achieved through the use of placards which reveal the events of each scene\, juxtaposition\, actors changing characters and costume on stage\, the use of narration\, simple props and scenery. \nThe Good Person of Szechwan 1943 \nBrecht’s interest in historical materialism is evident in the play’s definition of contemporary morality and altruism in social and economic terms. Shen Teh’s altruism conflicts with Shui Ta’s capitalist ethos of exploitation. The play implies that economic systems determine a society’s morality. \nThe Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui 1958 \nIt chronicles the rise of Arturo Ui\, a fictional 1930s Chicago mobster\, and his attempts to control the cauliflower racket by ruthlessly disposing of the opposition. The play is a satirical allegory of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany prior to World War II. The play has frequent references to Shakespeare. To highlight Ui’s evil and villainous rise to power\, he is explicitly compared to Shakespeare’s Richard III. Like Macbeth\, Ui experiences a visitation from the ghost of one of his victims. Finally\, Hitler’s practiced prowess at public speaking is referenced when Ui receives lessons from an actor in walking\, sitting and orating\, which includes his reciting Mark Antony’s famous speech from Julius Caesar.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/6-plays-of-bertolt-brecht/2020-07-09/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Literary Studies
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/BrechtPortrait.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200711T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200711T140000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200327T035801Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200714T144743Z
UID:10006725-1594465200-1594476000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 3\, 2nd Sessions
DESCRIPTION:Second 12 session series \nLet’s make the Anthropocene stage of the earth’s evolution\, the turning point of world history. After all\, paraphrasing Marx\, since we are the species that can know ourselves as a product of natural history\, we are responsible to all of nature. We have the power within us to make the Anthropocene not the capitalist endgame but the naturalization of our species and the humanization of nature. Capital\, a Critique of Political Economy\, can help effectively situate ourselves to face the challenges before all of humanity and nature\, and begin the process of reclaiming and putting into effect our human capacities for the betterment and advancement of each and all. \nThe study of Volume III is essential to understanding the complex dynamics at work in the present realities we are facing and how these realities are the necessary results of the inner logic of capital. In this moribund stage of late capitalist/imperialist development we see the rise of rentier and finance capital—the introduction of financial instruments being used to make money make more money\, jumping over and above the actual real wealth produced by trading on future wealth (derivatives and other forms of fictitious capital); overriding supply and demand as a price mechanism in such necessities as foodstuffs so that their prices continuously rise resulting in more poverty and starvation on a world scale and here in the US; turning new technologies into means of collecting rents—the internet\, mobile devices; expropriation of taxes paid by the working class to developers who are often tax exempt while our city and state governments give them tracts of our physical space; commodification of debt; privatization of public spaces\, properties and institutions; foreclosures; and the list goes on. \nCapital\, Volume III\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole\, completes Marx’s task of moving from the imaginary concrete—the researcher and scientist analyzing the appearances we see in everyday life such as in the Grundrisse\, to the abstract concrete. The results of the analytic study of the phenomenon that has revealed the social/natural content of that phenomenon (Volumes I and II)\, to the real concrete—how this content is expressed in everyday life through the mechanisms by which the actors determine their actions and appropriate wealth (Volume III). \nWith the conceptual integration of production and circulation (Volumes I and II) from the standpoint of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, Marx returns to the starting point of the research categories\, the imaginary concrete\, concepts seen as empirical givens as facts in themselves— profits\, interests\, rents\, rate of profit\, prices. These sensuously perceived givens (the way the world directly appears to us) are the starting point of the research analysis\, not the science. But now\, after the analysis\, these interrelated aspects of what appear on the surface of society are no longer imaginary but real\, understood as interrelated dynamics and mechanisms in everyday life by which the actors reproduce the social relations and physical conditions of capitalist society. Volume III integrates and completes the analysis of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, enabling us to understand and make sense of how each of the appearances and processes we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the whole. When we do so all the laws of motion previously revealed in the first two volumes take on new dimensions. Internal dynamics and contradictions burst out and situate humanity withina historical process that calls us to figure out how to go beyond capital and develop the conditions that insure that the development of each is the precondition for the development of all. \nWe will be starting or close to starting Part 3 of the volume on The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit. Until the Coronavirus and safe distancing and with staying at home being the healthy and responsible choice\, these sessions will be conducted via Zoom. If you register to participate\, you will be contacted with all information needed and a zoom link will be provided each week until we can meet in person\, if such conditions exist between now and mid-July. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than nearly three years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits. \nAll classes and events of The MEP are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Zoom classes rates are slightly less than in person meetings. However\, there are costs involved in keeping our site running\, having zoom sessions and paying for our office.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-3-2nd-sessions/2020-07-11/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Political Economy
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/SchwittersFragment.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200731T000100
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200731T235900
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20181223T054436Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201217T162636Z
UID:10006709-1596153660-1596239940@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Multi-Month Pass: Now through Dec 31\, 2020
DESCRIPTION:Support the MEP and save $ for yourself. \nFor a one-time sliding scale fee of $150\, $200\, or $250 attend any and all classes and events of The Marxist Education Project. For $50 or $75 more bring a guest as often as you would like to the classes and events between February 1 and May 31\, 2021. The curriculum has not been decided as of yet but this special price will apply for all that takes place from during the stated four-month period. Anyone can purchase this option and can attend all events until May 31\, even if purchased during December\, 2020 or January\, 2021. \nThe way the calendar works within our WordPress based site may make this confusing. It is a one-time payment good for all events and classes that take place between now and May 31\, 2021. You may also use this course as a contribution button to help The MEP get through this challenging Covid-19 period where much of our constituency have lost income and will during the next months lose unemployment compensation without a lengthy extension/. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/4-month-pass-january-21-through-may-20-2019-2020-08-29/2020-07-31/
LOCATION:All Venues
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Marx's Capital,Multi-session Classes,Revolutions Study Group
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/SocietyNature_BeckyB_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200803T153000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200803T173000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200729T075657Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200729T075657Z
UID:10006768-1596468600-1596475800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Social Reproduction in the 21st Century
DESCRIPTION:Via Zoom \nwith Ursula Huws\nPlease note the meeting time\, as the Socialist Reader discussion group will be convening at 3:30 pm in order to ensure that Ursula can join us from London. \nIn the 2020 Socialist Register “a number of the essays interrogate central dimensions of how we live and how we might live in terms of educating our children\, housing and urbanism\, accommodation of refugees and the displaced\, and (to lean on that all too common phrase) the competitive time pressures for ‘work-life balance’. These are all key questions\, of course\, of ‘social reproduction\,’ a theme that has cut across many volumes of the Register. They are the counterpoint to ‘economic reproduction’ and ‘how we work’ at the heart of several essays here. Today\, this involves exploring and exposing all the hype and contradictions of the so-called ‘gig economy\,’ where automation’s potential for increased time apart from work is subordinated to surveillance\, hazardous waste\, speed-up\, and much else that makes for contingent work and precarious living. Finding new ways of living cannot but confront both these obstacles.” \nAs capital commodifies and marketizes social reproduction labor and the time squeeze on households is intensified\, the contribution to this year’s Socialist Register by Ursula Huws is of highest importance. She is very effective in laying out the divisions of our labor into six areas as we approach the third decade of the 21st Century — 1) Unpaid labor in the home and community such as reproduction of the basic needs within famiies; 2) Paid private service work in homes or farms—servant labor; 3) Paid private service work within capitalist firms e.g.\, shops\, hotels\, cleaning companies\, etc.; 4) Paid public service work providing and maintaining public services; 5) Paid labor for production of commodities for the market; and\, 6) Unpaid labor in the home and community—consumption labor. Ursula states that “Consumption labor does not produce surplus value directly\, but is implicated in the externalization of tasks formerly carried out by paid workers and could thus be regarded as contributing indirectly to the exploitation of the labor of productive workers.” \n \nUrsula Huws is Professor of Labor and Globalization at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK and the author of Reinventing the Welfare State from Pluto Books this coming September along with Labor in Contemporary Capitalism: What Next? recently published by Palgrave Macmillan. The Marxist Education Project presented a class where we read her Monthly Review Book\, Labor in the Global Digital Economy: The Cybertariat Comes of Age in the fall of 2015. \n \n  \nAll tickets are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/social-reproduction-in-the-21st-century/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Labor History,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/SocialRepro.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200817T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200817T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200804T022124Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200804T022218Z
UID:10006781-1597689000-1597696200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:For a Sustainable Future: The Centrality of Public Goods
DESCRIPTION:with Nancy Holmstrom\nvia Zoom\nIn the 2020 Socialist Register “a number of the essays interrogate central dimensions of how we live and how we might live in terms of educating our children\, housing and urbanism\, accommodation of refugees and the displaced\, and (to lean on that all too common phrase) the competitive time pressures for ‘work-life balance’. These are all key questions\, of course\, of ‘social reproduction\,’ a theme that has cut across many volumes of the Register. They are the counterpoint to ‘economic reproduction’ and ‘how we work’ at the heart of several essays here. Today\, this involves exploring and exposing all the hype and contradictions of the so-called ‘gig economy\,’ where automation’s potential for increased time apart from work is subordinated to surveillance\, hazardous waste\, speed-up\, and much else that makes for contingent work and precarious living. Finding new ways of living cannot but confront both these obstacles.” \nThe UN’s report on climate change makes clear that ways of living in the 21st century must be premised on the existential threat to our existence posed by multiple ecological threats. The current pandemic underlines this fact. For a sustainable future we have to transform some basic ways of thinking about the world and our place in it\, starting with broadened and more inclusive notions of security\, property and rationality. Instead of private property being the default as it is in capitalism\, public goods/‘the commons’\, should be the priority. And rationality must be understood principally in social terms\, since on the dominant individualistic model fully rational behavior can lead to the destruction of the species. Thus the central focus of socialist strategy in the 21st century should be protecting and radically expanding public goods/the commons. We should use every means we can to raise people’s understanding that they are 1) the only basis of real security; 2) should be accessible to all as a right\, like universal health care\, and hence no one should be excluded by the alleged rights of private property; and 3) are foundational to the most rational way to organize society. The paper considers some examples of strategies that fit this approach\, such as the Green New Deal\, and explores the crucial role of democratic planning both on a societal and a global level. \nNancy Holmstrom is an Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. \nTickets are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Email: info@marxedproject.org for the zoom code if you are unable to pay
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/for-a-sustainable-future-the-centrality-of-public-goods/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Climate Change,Extractivism,Marxist Method,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks,Socialism
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/SustainableCommons.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200820T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200820T210000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200717T033928Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200814T012608Z
UID:10006761-1597950000-1597957200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Lit and Film: Noir for the Summer of Covid-19
DESCRIPTION:8 sessions\nvia teleconference on Zoom • participation code with registration\nSliding scale admission for teleconference \nContinuing in the MEP LITERATURE GROUP summer tradition\, we will once again delve into Noir genres– but with a twist! Starting August 6\, we will read four books and watch the movies that are based on them. Please join us for four books with the four movies that resulted from them. \nBOOK 1 Odd Man Out /F. L. Green \nF.L. (Laurie) Green’s novel was published in 1945. It followed upon wartime action by the IRA in Belfast\, in consequence of which Northern Ireland undertook its first and only execution of an IRA member\, 19-year old Tom Williams. In the novel\, an IRA plot goes horribly wrong when its leader\, Johnny Murtah\, kills an innocent man\, and he is gravely wounded. Odd Man Out is Green’s most significant novel. \nMOVIE 1 Odd Man Out /Carol Reed • AUGUST 20\nTakes place largely over the course of one tense night\, Reed’s psychological noir\, set in Belfast\, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con who leads a botched robbery. Injured and hunted by the police\, he seeks refuge throughout the city\, while the woman he loves searches for him among the shadows. Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker create images of stunning depth for this fierce\, spiritual depiction of a man’s ultimate confrontation with himself. \nBOOK 2 Clean Break /Lionel White • AUGUST 27\n“… none of them are professional crooks. They all have jobs\, they all live seemingly decent\, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them.” In the opening chapter\, Lionel White sets the stage for the main protagonists of the story: Marvin Unger\, court reporter; George Peatty\, a racetrack cashier and his bored wife\, Sherry; Randy Kennan\, a cop distracted by huge gambling debts; Mike O’Reilly\, a track barman\, regularly bets and loses half his earnings; and Johnny Clay\, just out of jail\, and who has come up with the plan to steal the earnings fromthe Canarsie Stakes. Creating diversions becomes necessary\, including knocking off the favourite in the race (animals lovers beware…). \nMOVIE 2 The Killing /Stanley Kubrick • SEPTEMBER 3\nStanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest\, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative\, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson\, and a phenomenal cast of character actors\, including Sterling Hayden\, Coleen Gray\, Timothy Carey\, Elisha Cook Jr.\, and Marie Windsor\, The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut. And with its precise tracking shots and gratifying sense of irony\, it’s Kubrick to the core. \nBOOK 3 Down There /David Goodis • SEPTEMBER 10\nOnce upon a time Eddie played concert piano to reverent audiences at Carnegie Hall—now he does honky-tonk in a Philly drunk-dive. But then two people walk into Eddie’s life—the first promising Eddie a future\, the other dragging him back into a treacherous past. Down There (bookretitled after film to Shoot the Piano Player) is a bittersweet and nerve-racking exploration of different kinds of loyalty. \nMOVIE 3 Shoot The Piano Player /François Truffaut • SEPTEMBER 17\nFrançois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this\, his most playful film. Part thriller\, part comedy\, part tragedy\, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour\, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags\, guns\, clowns\, and thugs\, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague. \nBOOK 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /George V. Higgins • SEPTEMBER 24\nElmore Leonard said that The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the best crime novel ever written\, though Higgins hated being classified as a crime writer. According to Leonard\, “He saw himself as the Charles Dickens of crime in Boston instead of a crime writer. He just understood the human condition and he understood it most vividly in the language and actions among low lives.” \nMOVIE 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /Peter Yates • OCTOBER 1\nIn one of the best performances of his legendary career\, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Directed with a sharp eye for its gritty locales and an open heart for its less-than-heroic characters\, this is one of the true treasures of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking—a suspenseful crime drama in stark\, unforgiving daylight. \nWe will attempt to watch together. Those who watch the film on their own are of course welcome to join in the discussions following the films as they are presented.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/lit-and-film-noir-for-the-summer-of-covid-19/2020-08-20/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Multi-session Classes
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NoirSummer2020_FB3c.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T201500
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200618T021327Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200905T153841Z
UID:10006756-1598293800-1598300100@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Socialist Register 2020: Beyond Market Dystopia
DESCRIPTION:Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living\nVolume 56 of the Socialist Register\nEach year a new volume of the Socialist Register appears\, effectively laying out for socialists and communists what are burning issues of the day—we now have 56 years of coverage\, and many of the burning issues are now in a full blaze. This year’s edition was published before the global pandemic\, the 40 million additional unemployed in the US alone\, and the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd. The whole world watched the video and responded with a movement that is more widespread than was Occupy Wall Street in 2011 or the first Black Lives Matter upsurge in 2014. \nIn the preface to Socialist Register 2020\, co-editors Greg Albo and Leo Panitch discuss much of what the working classes of the world are confronting with capital’s market dystopia. At one point they cite Colin Leys\, a former co-editor of the Register from his 2001 text\, “Market-Driven Politics\, Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest” \nA strong non-market domain\, providing various core services\, as the common sense of a civilised and democratic society may sound far-fetched in an era of market-driven politics. But it is debatable whether it is really as far-fetched – as hard to imagine or as absurd – as the world towards which market-driven politics is tending\, in which more and more of the workforce is absorbed in ever-intensified competition for ever higher output and consumption\, while the collective services for which democracy depends gradually decay. \nThe editors go on to state that “It is precisely this sensibility that informs this volume\, Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living. By challenging our contributors to address what are the actual and possible ways of living in this century\, we saw this as way of probing how to get beyond the deep contradictions of neoliberal capitalism. We did not want contributors to conceive their remit as future-oriented per se\, but rather to see their mandate as locating utopic visions and struggles for alternate ways of living in the dystopic present. To this end\, a number of he essays interrogate central dimensions of ‘how we live’ and ‘how we might live’ in terms of educating our children\, housing and urbanism\, accommodation of refugees and the displaced\, and (to lean on that all too common phrase) the competitive time pressures for ‘work-life balance’. These are all key questions\, of course\, of ‘social reproduction’\, a theme Register. They are the counterpoint to ‘economic reproduction’ and ‘how we work’ at the heart of several essays here. Today\, this involves exploring and exposing all the hype and contradictions of the so-called ‘gig economy’\, where automation’s potential for increased time apart from work is subordinated to surveillance\, hazardous waste\, speed-up\, and much else that makes for contingent work and precarious living. Finding new ways of living cannot but confront both these obstacles.Yet even amidst all that appears so new in today’s capitalism\, classical socialist themes\, dilemmas\, challenges\, and struggles are still very much with us. Indeed\, several essays in this volume undertake political archaeologies of the past to find their vestiges providing new meaning for the practices of socialism in the twenty-first century. \nWe will meet for ten weeks to consider eleven of this year’s presentations\, one essay per week except for our last session (see schedule below). This reading of the Socialist Register could become a regular feature of MEP summers: it allows for frequent participation but takes into account that all of us may miss a week or more due to summer travel and vacations. \nFour of the ten sessions remain as follows: \nAugust 24 • What Should Socialism Mean in the Twenty-First Century?\nNancy Fraser author will be present \nAugust 31 • The Affordable Housing Crisis: Its Capitalist Roots and the Socialist Alternative\nKarl Beitel author will be present \nSeptember 14 • Communism in the Suburbs?\nRoger Keil\nAnd The Retroactive Utopia of the Socialist City\nOwen Hatherley\nboth authors will be present \nDiscounted copies of the book (2 remaining) are available from The MEP. Write to: info@marxedproject.org or to revsgroup@gmail.com for information. A separate product line will be an on-line item —check website after 6/20 for ordering information.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/socialist-register-2020-beyond-market-dystopia/2020-08-24/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Immigration,Labor History,Marxist Method,Political Economy,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/SocialistRegisterCover2020.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200810T053003Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200810T053003Z
UID:10006793-1598293800-1598301000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:What Should Socialism Mean in the 21st Century?
DESCRIPTION:A talk and discussion with Nancy Fraser\nIn the 2020 Socialist Register “a number of the essays interrogate central dimensions of how we live and how we might live in terms of educating our children\, housing and urbanism\, accommodation of refugees and the displaced\, and (to lean on that all too common phrase) the competitive time pressures for ‘work-life balance’. These are all key questions\, of course\, of ‘social reproduction\,’ a theme that has cut across many volumes of the Register. They are the counterpoint to ‘economic reproduction’ and ‘how we work’ at the heart of several essays here. Today\, this involves exploring and exposing all the hype and contradictions of the so-called ‘gig economy\,’ where automation’s potential for increased time apart from work is subordinated to surveillance\, hazardous waste\, speed-up\, and much else that makes for contingent work and precarious living. Finding new ways of living cannot but confront both these obstacles.” \nDrawing on an expanded conception of capitalism\, Nancy Fraser constructs an expanded conception of socialism that overcomes the narrow economism of received understandings. Disclosing the capitalist economy’s contradictory and destructive relation to its “non-economic” background conditions\, Fraser contends that socialism must do more than transform the economy. Over and above that desideratum\, it must also transform the economy’s relation to its background conditions\, especially non-human nature\, the unwaged work of social reproduction\, and political power. In a nutshell\, a socialism for the 21st century must be ecological\, feminist\, anti-racist\, and democratic. \nNancy Fraser is the co-author with Cinzia Arruzza and Titihi Bhattacharya of Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto (Verso\, 2019) and with Rahel Jaeggi of Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory (Polity\, 2018). Previous books include Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (Verso\, 2013)\, Redistribution or Recognition: A Critical-Philosophical Exchange with Axel Honneth (Verso\, 2003)\, and Unruly Practices: Power\, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (University of Minnesota Press\, 1989)\, among other books. \nAll tickets are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. Please write info@marxedproject.org for the zoom code if you would like to attend.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/what-should-socialism-mean-in-the-21st-century/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Climate Change,Extractivism,Gender,Indigenous Peoples,Marxist Method,Political Economy,Race and Class,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/NFraser2.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200824T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200816T162709Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200822T145820Z
UID:10006795-1598293800-1598301000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Beyond Market Dystopia: 2 Events Special Price
DESCRIPTION:MONDAY • August 24 via Zoom\nWhat Should Socialism Mean in the 21st Century?\nNANCY FRASER\nDrawing on an expanded conception of capitalism\, this presentation will construct an expanded conception of socialism that overcomes the narrow economism of received understandings. NANCY FRASER is the co-author with Cinzia Arruzza and Titihi Bhattacharya of Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto (Verso\, 2019) \nMONDAY • August 31 via Zoom\nThe Affordable Housing Crisis: Its Capitalist Roots & the Socialist Alternative\nKARL BEITEL\n\n\n\nThe essay proceeds as follows: I begin with a short summary of the argument advanced by neoclassical economists that assert that the root of the affordability crisis is excessive regulatory interference on the part of governments. This is followed by a section presenting an alternative approach that draws heavily on Marx’s own work on the circuit of capital to explain the factors underlying the long-term inflation of building costs and housing prices. I briefly discuss the impacts of the long-term decline in interest rates and ‘financialization’ on housing prices in major capitalist cities. I conclude with a section that outlines how socialists can envision the transformation of the provisioning of housing during the transitional phase of creating a postcapitalist\, socialist economy. \n\n\n\n\nSliding Scale—no one turned away for inability to pay • email to info@marxedproject.org for link to events if you cannot pay
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/beyond-market-dystopia-3-events-special-price/2020-08-24/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Climate Change,Immigration,Multi-session Classes,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks,Socialism
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2Events.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200827T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200827T210000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200717T033928Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200814T012608Z
UID:10006762-1598554800-1598562000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Lit and Film: Noir for the Summer of Covid-19
DESCRIPTION:8 sessions\nvia teleconference on Zoom • participation code with registration\nSliding scale admission for teleconference \nContinuing in the MEP LITERATURE GROUP summer tradition\, we will once again delve into Noir genres– but with a twist! Starting August 6\, we will read four books and watch the movies that are based on them. Please join us for four books with the four movies that resulted from them. \nBOOK 1 Odd Man Out /F. L. Green \nF.L. (Laurie) Green’s novel was published in 1945. It followed upon wartime action by the IRA in Belfast\, in consequence of which Northern Ireland undertook its first and only execution of an IRA member\, 19-year old Tom Williams. In the novel\, an IRA plot goes horribly wrong when its leader\, Johnny Murtah\, kills an innocent man\, and he is gravely wounded. Odd Man Out is Green’s most significant novel. \nMOVIE 1 Odd Man Out /Carol Reed • AUGUST 20\nTakes place largely over the course of one tense night\, Reed’s psychological noir\, set in Belfast\, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con who leads a botched robbery. Injured and hunted by the police\, he seeks refuge throughout the city\, while the woman he loves searches for him among the shadows. Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker create images of stunning depth for this fierce\, spiritual depiction of a man’s ultimate confrontation with himself. \nBOOK 2 Clean Break /Lionel White • AUGUST 27\n“… none of them are professional crooks. They all have jobs\, they all live seemingly decent\, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them.” In the opening chapter\, Lionel White sets the stage for the main protagonists of the story: Marvin Unger\, court reporter; George Peatty\, a racetrack cashier and his bored wife\, Sherry; Randy Kennan\, a cop distracted by huge gambling debts; Mike O’Reilly\, a track barman\, regularly bets and loses half his earnings; and Johnny Clay\, just out of jail\, and who has come up with the plan to steal the earnings fromthe Canarsie Stakes. Creating diversions becomes necessary\, including knocking off the favourite in the race (animals lovers beware…). \nMOVIE 2 The Killing /Stanley Kubrick • SEPTEMBER 3\nStanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest\, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative\, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson\, and a phenomenal cast of character actors\, including Sterling Hayden\, Coleen Gray\, Timothy Carey\, Elisha Cook Jr.\, and Marie Windsor\, The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut. And with its precise tracking shots and gratifying sense of irony\, it’s Kubrick to the core. \nBOOK 3 Down There /David Goodis • SEPTEMBER 10\nOnce upon a time Eddie played concert piano to reverent audiences at Carnegie Hall—now he does honky-tonk in a Philly drunk-dive. But then two people walk into Eddie’s life—the first promising Eddie a future\, the other dragging him back into a treacherous past. Down There (bookretitled after film to Shoot the Piano Player) is a bittersweet and nerve-racking exploration of different kinds of loyalty. \nMOVIE 3 Shoot The Piano Player /François Truffaut • SEPTEMBER 17\nFrançois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this\, his most playful film. Part thriller\, part comedy\, part tragedy\, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour\, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags\, guns\, clowns\, and thugs\, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague. \nBOOK 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /George V. Higgins • SEPTEMBER 24\nElmore Leonard said that The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the best crime novel ever written\, though Higgins hated being classified as a crime writer. According to Leonard\, “He saw himself as the Charles Dickens of crime in Boston instead of a crime writer. He just understood the human condition and he understood it most vividly in the language and actions among low lives.” \nMOVIE 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /Peter Yates • OCTOBER 1\nIn one of the best performances of his legendary career\, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Directed with a sharp eye for its gritty locales and an open heart for its less-than-heroic characters\, this is one of the true treasures of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking—a suspenseful crime drama in stark\, unforgiving daylight. \nWe will attempt to watch together. Those who watch the film on their own are of course welcome to join in the discussions following the films as they are presented.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/lit-and-film-noir-for-the-summer-of-covid-19/2020-08-27/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Multi-session Classes
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NoirSummer2020_FB3c.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200831T000100
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200831T235900
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20181223T054436Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201217T162636Z
UID:10006710-1598832060-1598918340@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Multi-Month Pass: Now through Dec 31\, 2020
DESCRIPTION:Support the MEP and save $ for yourself. \nFor a one-time sliding scale fee of $150\, $200\, or $250 attend any and all classes and events of The Marxist Education Project. For $50 or $75 more bring a guest as often as you would like to the classes and events between February 1 and May 31\, 2021. The curriculum has not been decided as of yet but this special price will apply for all that takes place from during the stated four-month period. Anyone can purchase this option and can attend all events until May 31\, even if purchased during December\, 2020 or January\, 2021. \nThe way the calendar works within our WordPress based site may make this confusing. It is a one-time payment good for all events and classes that take place between now and May 31\, 2021. You may also use this course as a contribution button to help The MEP get through this challenging Covid-19 period where much of our constituency have lost income and will during the next months lose unemployment compensation without a lengthy extension/. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/4-month-pass-january-21-through-may-20-2019-2020-08-29/2020-08-31/
LOCATION:All Venues
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Marx's Capital,Multi-session Classes,Revolutions Study Group
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/SocietyNature_BeckyB_Site.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200831T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200831T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200811T055850Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200822T151903Z
UID:10006794-1598898600-1598905800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:The Affordable Housing Crisis
DESCRIPTION:Its Capitalist Roots and the Socialist Alternative\nA talk and discussion with Karl Beitel\nIn the 2020 Socialist Register “a number of the essays interrogate central dimensions of how we live and how we might live in terms of educating our children\, housing and urbanism\, accommodation of refugees and the displaced\, and (to lean on that all too common phrase) the competitive time pressures for ‘work-life balance’. These are all key questions\, of course\, of ‘social reproduction\,’ a theme that has cut across many volumes of the Register. They are the counterpoint to ‘economic reproduction’ and ‘how we work’ at the heart of several essays here. Today\, this involves exploring and exposing all the hype and contradictions of the so-called ‘gig economy\,’ where automation’s potential for increased time apart from work is subordinated to surveillance\, hazardous waste\, speed-up\, and much else that makes for contingent work and precarious living. Finding new ways of living cannot but confront both these obstacles.” \nOne of the most striking features of the post-1980 urban environment has been the rapid rise in property values and rents at rates far in excess of the growth of average income levels. The effect for many working-class populations – cultural workers\, those employed in the moderate- to lower-paid segments of the social and human services and retail sectors – has been a rise in the percentage of incomes these households must devote to housing payments. \nIn this essay\, Karl discusses the economics of new construction in already densely developed urban environments. Paradigmatic cases of the type of development dynamics that this essay will discuss are found in cities such as New York\, San Francisco\, London\, and Paris. Despite the fact that most housing is procured on the secondary market\, new construction is central to the debate over how cities must act to accommodate increased demand due to population growth and the shifting spatial patterns of employment. In addition\, new development has the ability to rapidly transform existing patterns of land use and the physical and sociocultural composition of the built environment. For these reasons\, new production is critical to current struggles over whose interests shall be served by this development\, and who has the rights to enjoy access to the existing – and newly created – urban environments. It also forces us to confront the question of how socialist urbanism will foster diverse urban spaces that can accommodate different requirements and preferences\, and that ensure equitable allocation of resources to meet the needs of all urban residents. \nKarl Beitel was formerly employed as policy analyst for Food First\, and has years of experience conducting policy-related and legal research for public sector unions in the Bay Area (SEIU 1021\, American Federation of Teachers\, and International Federation of Technical and Professional Employees Local 21). He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals on topics spanning land use policy and affordable housing (Urban Affairs Review)\, the impacts of financial market dynamics on urban development (Environment and Planning A)\, and the U.S. and global economy (Historical Materialism\, Socialist Register). His work has also appeared in publications such as Counterpunch and Monthly Review. His recently completed book Local Protest\, Global Movements: Capital\, Community\, and State in San Francisco (Temple University Press) is an in-depth analysis of the history of community opposition to gentrification in San Francisco. \nAdmission is sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Email info@marxedproject.org for information
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/the-affordable-housing-crisis/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/AffordableHousingBeitelGS3.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200831T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200831T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200816T162709Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200822T145820Z
UID:10006796-1598898600-1598905800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Beyond Market Dystopia: 2 Events Special Price
DESCRIPTION:MONDAY • August 24 via Zoom\nWhat Should Socialism Mean in the 21st Century?\nNANCY FRASER\nDrawing on an expanded conception of capitalism\, this presentation will construct an expanded conception of socialism that overcomes the narrow economism of received understandings. NANCY FRASER is the co-author with Cinzia Arruzza and Titihi Bhattacharya of Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto (Verso\, 2019) \nMONDAY • August 31 via Zoom\nThe Affordable Housing Crisis: Its Capitalist Roots & the Socialist Alternative\nKARL BEITEL\n\n\n\nThe essay proceeds as follows: I begin with a short summary of the argument advanced by neoclassical economists that assert that the root of the affordability crisis is excessive regulatory interference on the part of governments. This is followed by a section presenting an alternative approach that draws heavily on Marx’s own work on the circuit of capital to explain the factors underlying the long-term inflation of building costs and housing prices. I briefly discuss the impacts of the long-term decline in interest rates and ‘financialization’ on housing prices in major capitalist cities. I conclude with a section that outlines how socialists can envision the transformation of the provisioning of housing during the transitional phase of creating a postcapitalist\, socialist economy. \n\n\n\n\nSliding Scale—no one turned away for inability to pay • email to info@marxedproject.org for link to events if you cannot pay
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/beyond-market-dystopia-3-events-special-price/2020-08-31/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Climate Change,Immigration,Multi-session Classes,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks,Socialism
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2Events.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200903T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200903T210000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200717T033928Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200814T012608Z
UID:10006763-1599159600-1599166800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Lit and Film: Noir for the Summer of Covid-19
DESCRIPTION:8 sessions\nvia teleconference on Zoom • participation code with registration\nSliding scale admission for teleconference \nContinuing in the MEP LITERATURE GROUP summer tradition\, we will once again delve into Noir genres– but with a twist! Starting August 6\, we will read four books and watch the movies that are based on them. Please join us for four books with the four movies that resulted from them. \nBOOK 1 Odd Man Out /F. L. Green \nF.L. (Laurie) Green’s novel was published in 1945. It followed upon wartime action by the IRA in Belfast\, in consequence of which Northern Ireland undertook its first and only execution of an IRA member\, 19-year old Tom Williams. In the novel\, an IRA plot goes horribly wrong when its leader\, Johnny Murtah\, kills an innocent man\, and he is gravely wounded. Odd Man Out is Green’s most significant novel. \nMOVIE 1 Odd Man Out /Carol Reed • AUGUST 20\nTakes place largely over the course of one tense night\, Reed’s psychological noir\, set in Belfast\, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con who leads a botched robbery. Injured and hunted by the police\, he seeks refuge throughout the city\, while the woman he loves searches for him among the shadows. Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker create images of stunning depth for this fierce\, spiritual depiction of a man’s ultimate confrontation with himself. \nBOOK 2 Clean Break /Lionel White • AUGUST 27\n“… none of them are professional crooks. They all have jobs\, they all live seemingly decent\, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them.” In the opening chapter\, Lionel White sets the stage for the main protagonists of the story: Marvin Unger\, court reporter; George Peatty\, a racetrack cashier and his bored wife\, Sherry; Randy Kennan\, a cop distracted by huge gambling debts; Mike O’Reilly\, a track barman\, regularly bets and loses half his earnings; and Johnny Clay\, just out of jail\, and who has come up with the plan to steal the earnings fromthe Canarsie Stakes. Creating diversions becomes necessary\, including knocking off the favourite in the race (animals lovers beware…). \nMOVIE 2 The Killing /Stanley Kubrick • SEPTEMBER 3\nStanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest\, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative\, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson\, and a phenomenal cast of character actors\, including Sterling Hayden\, Coleen Gray\, Timothy Carey\, Elisha Cook Jr.\, and Marie Windsor\, The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut. And with its precise tracking shots and gratifying sense of irony\, it’s Kubrick to the core. \nBOOK 3 Down There /David Goodis • SEPTEMBER 10\nOnce upon a time Eddie played concert piano to reverent audiences at Carnegie Hall—now he does honky-tonk in a Philly drunk-dive. But then two people walk into Eddie’s life—the first promising Eddie a future\, the other dragging him back into a treacherous past. Down There (bookretitled after film to Shoot the Piano Player) is a bittersweet and nerve-racking exploration of different kinds of loyalty. \nMOVIE 3 Shoot The Piano Player /François Truffaut • SEPTEMBER 17\nFrançois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this\, his most playful film. Part thriller\, part comedy\, part tragedy\, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour\, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags\, guns\, clowns\, and thugs\, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague. \nBOOK 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /George V. Higgins • SEPTEMBER 24\nElmore Leonard said that The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the best crime novel ever written\, though Higgins hated being classified as a crime writer. According to Leonard\, “He saw himself as the Charles Dickens of crime in Boston instead of a crime writer. He just understood the human condition and he understood it most vividly in the language and actions among low lives.” \nMOVIE 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /Peter Yates • OCTOBER 1\nIn one of the best performances of his legendary career\, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Directed with a sharp eye for its gritty locales and an open heart for its less-than-heroic characters\, this is one of the true treasures of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking—a suspenseful crime drama in stark\, unforgiving daylight. \nWe will attempt to watch together. Those who watch the film on their own are of course welcome to join in the discussions following the films as they are presented.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/lit-and-film-noir-for-the-summer-of-covid-19/2020-09-03/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Multi-session Classes
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NoirSummer2020_FB3c.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200904T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200904T200000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200729T080556Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200729T080556Z
UID:10006769-1599242400-1599249600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Perry Mason and the Case of the Careless Remake
DESCRIPTION:A special presentation with Dennis Broe\nPresented by The Marxist Education Project with Institute for the Radical Imagination \nVia Zoom \nIt’s the third most popular book series of all time\, a show that ran in some form for over 35 years and is now the flagship production for HBO’s summer lineup. \nPerry Mason\, the indefatigable defender of hopeless cases that the police have seemingly wrapped up\, has been reinvented as a no-account Jake Gittes from Chinatown\, a two-bit blackmailer and lost generation PTSD war casualty navigating the streets of 1932 Los Angeles at the height of the depression. Hoovervilles\, the Bonus March\, and the rich in tuxedos with the poor at their feet form the background of the series and suggest our own era where Trumpvilles flourish and will soon expand when unemployment benefits are exhausted. \n \nWe’ll take a critical look at this refashioning of the criminal defense attorney\, with a Della Street who wants equal pay in the law office and an African-American investigator\, the refurbished Paul Drake\, who abandons the very low ceiling of a black beat cop on the LAPD to work elsewhere. \nWe’ll also take up questions of how HBO\, now owned and under the tutelage of AT&T\, the conservative telecom company from Dallas\, may be changing as it becomes the centerpiece of the AT&T/Time Warner streaming service. As well as how the American “period fetish” and faithfulness to the letter but not the spirit of the law of the original plays out in this remake. \nFor those who are able\, the Perry Mason series is available every Sunday from 9 to 10 pm EST for new episodes\, and is available on demand for streaming with many local cable / satellite providers of televised content. \nDennis Broe taught Television Studies at the Sorbonne. He is the author of Birth of the Binge: Serial TV and The End of Leisure\, Maverick or How The West Was Lostand the soon-to-be-published Diary of a Digital Plague Year: Coronavirus\, Serial TV and The Rise of the Streaming Services. His TV criticism appears at Bro on the Global Television Beat. His television\, film\, art and literary criticism also appears in the British newspaper Morning Star and on People’s World and Crime Time. He is an associate editor of Culture Matters. His radio broadcasts on his show Breaking Glass appear on Art District Radio in Paris and on Arts Express in New York on WBAI and across the Pacifica Network.   \nAll tickets are sliding scale. No one is refused admission for inability to pay  
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/perry-mason-and-the-case-of-the-careless-remake/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/PerrySnaps.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Anti-Bourgeois Film Series":MAILTO:info@marxedprojet.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200910T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200910T210000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200717T033928Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200814T012608Z
UID:10006764-1599764400-1599771600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Lit and Film: Noir for the Summer of Covid-19
DESCRIPTION:8 sessions\nvia teleconference on Zoom • participation code with registration\nSliding scale admission for teleconference \nContinuing in the MEP LITERATURE GROUP summer tradition\, we will once again delve into Noir genres– but with a twist! Starting August 6\, we will read four books and watch the movies that are based on them. Please join us for four books with the four movies that resulted from them. \nBOOK 1 Odd Man Out /F. L. Green \nF.L. (Laurie) Green’s novel was published in 1945. It followed upon wartime action by the IRA in Belfast\, in consequence of which Northern Ireland undertook its first and only execution of an IRA member\, 19-year old Tom Williams. In the novel\, an IRA plot goes horribly wrong when its leader\, Johnny Murtah\, kills an innocent man\, and he is gravely wounded. Odd Man Out is Green’s most significant novel. \nMOVIE 1 Odd Man Out /Carol Reed • AUGUST 20\nTakes place largely over the course of one tense night\, Reed’s psychological noir\, set in Belfast\, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con who leads a botched robbery. Injured and hunted by the police\, he seeks refuge throughout the city\, while the woman he loves searches for him among the shadows. Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker create images of stunning depth for this fierce\, spiritual depiction of a man’s ultimate confrontation with himself. \nBOOK 2 Clean Break /Lionel White • AUGUST 27\n“… none of them are professional crooks. They all have jobs\, they all live seemingly decent\, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them.” In the opening chapter\, Lionel White sets the stage for the main protagonists of the story: Marvin Unger\, court reporter; George Peatty\, a racetrack cashier and his bored wife\, Sherry; Randy Kennan\, a cop distracted by huge gambling debts; Mike O’Reilly\, a track barman\, regularly bets and loses half his earnings; and Johnny Clay\, just out of jail\, and who has come up with the plan to steal the earnings fromthe Canarsie Stakes. Creating diversions becomes necessary\, including knocking off the favourite in the race (animals lovers beware…). \nMOVIE 2 The Killing /Stanley Kubrick • SEPTEMBER 3\nStanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest\, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative\, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson\, and a phenomenal cast of character actors\, including Sterling Hayden\, Coleen Gray\, Timothy Carey\, Elisha Cook Jr.\, and Marie Windsor\, The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut. And with its precise tracking shots and gratifying sense of irony\, it’s Kubrick to the core. \nBOOK 3 Down There /David Goodis • SEPTEMBER 10\nOnce upon a time Eddie played concert piano to reverent audiences at Carnegie Hall—now he does honky-tonk in a Philly drunk-dive. But then two people walk into Eddie’s life—the first promising Eddie a future\, the other dragging him back into a treacherous past. Down There (bookretitled after film to Shoot the Piano Player) is a bittersweet and nerve-racking exploration of different kinds of loyalty. \nMOVIE 3 Shoot The Piano Player /François Truffaut • SEPTEMBER 17\nFrançois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this\, his most playful film. Part thriller\, part comedy\, part tragedy\, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour\, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags\, guns\, clowns\, and thugs\, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague. \nBOOK 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /George V. Higgins • SEPTEMBER 24\nElmore Leonard said that The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the best crime novel ever written\, though Higgins hated being classified as a crime writer. According to Leonard\, “He saw himself as the Charles Dickens of crime in Boston instead of a crime writer. He just understood the human condition and he understood it most vividly in the language and actions among low lives.” \nMOVIE 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /Peter Yates • OCTOBER 1\nIn one of the best performances of his legendary career\, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Directed with a sharp eye for its gritty locales and an open heart for its less-than-heroic characters\, this is one of the true treasures of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking—a suspenseful crime drama in stark\, unforgiving daylight. \nWe will attempt to watch together. Those who watch the film on their own are of course welcome to join in the discussions following the films as they are presented.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/lit-and-film-noir-for-the-summer-of-covid-19/2020-09-10/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Multi-session Classes
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NoirSummer2020_FB3c.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200914T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200914T201500
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200618T021327Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200905T153841Z
UID:10006757-1600108200-1600114500@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Socialist Register 2020: Beyond Market Dystopia
DESCRIPTION:Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living\nVolume 56 of the Socialist Register\nEach year a new volume of the Socialist Register appears\, effectively laying out for socialists and communists what are burning issues of the day—we now have 56 years of coverage\, and many of the burning issues are now in a full blaze. This year’s edition was published before the global pandemic\, the 40 million additional unemployed in the US alone\, and the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd. The whole world watched the video and responded with a movement that is more widespread than was Occupy Wall Street in 2011 or the first Black Lives Matter upsurge in 2014. \nIn the preface to Socialist Register 2020\, co-editors Greg Albo and Leo Panitch discuss much of what the working classes of the world are confronting with capital’s market dystopia. At one point they cite Colin Leys\, a former co-editor of the Register from his 2001 text\, “Market-Driven Politics\, Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest” \nA strong non-market domain\, providing various core services\, as the common sense of a civilised and democratic society may sound far-fetched in an era of market-driven politics. But it is debatable whether it is really as far-fetched – as hard to imagine or as absurd – as the world towards which market-driven politics is tending\, in which more and more of the workforce is absorbed in ever-intensified competition for ever higher output and consumption\, while the collective services for which democracy depends gradually decay. \nThe editors go on to state that “It is precisely this sensibility that informs this volume\, Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living. By challenging our contributors to address what are the actual and possible ways of living in this century\, we saw this as way of probing how to get beyond the deep contradictions of neoliberal capitalism. We did not want contributors to conceive their remit as future-oriented per se\, but rather to see their mandate as locating utopic visions and struggles for alternate ways of living in the dystopic present. To this end\, a number of he essays interrogate central dimensions of ‘how we live’ and ‘how we might live’ in terms of educating our children\, housing and urbanism\, accommodation of refugees and the displaced\, and (to lean on that all too common phrase) the competitive time pressures for ‘work-life balance’. These are all key questions\, of course\, of ‘social reproduction’\, a theme Register. They are the counterpoint to ‘economic reproduction’ and ‘how we work’ at the heart of several essays here. Today\, this involves exploring and exposing all the hype and contradictions of the so-called ‘gig economy’\, where automation’s potential for increased time apart from work is subordinated to surveillance\, hazardous waste\, speed-up\, and much else that makes for contingent work and precarious living. Finding new ways of living cannot but confront both these obstacles.Yet even amidst all that appears so new in today’s capitalism\, classical socialist themes\, dilemmas\, challenges\, and struggles are still very much with us. Indeed\, several essays in this volume undertake political archaeologies of the past to find their vestiges providing new meaning for the practices of socialism in the twenty-first century. \nWe will meet for ten weeks to consider eleven of this year’s presentations\, one essay per week except for our last session (see schedule below). This reading of the Socialist Register could become a regular feature of MEP summers: it allows for frequent participation but takes into account that all of us may miss a week or more due to summer travel and vacations. \nFour of the ten sessions remain as follows: \nAugust 24 • What Should Socialism Mean in the Twenty-First Century?\nNancy Fraser author will be present \nAugust 31 • The Affordable Housing Crisis: Its Capitalist Roots and the Socialist Alternative\nKarl Beitel author will be present \nSeptember 14 • Communism in the Suburbs?\nRoger Keil\nAnd The Retroactive Utopia of the Socialist City\nOwen Hatherley\nboth authors will be present \nDiscounted copies of the book (2 remaining) are available from The MEP. Write to: info@marxedproject.org or to revsgroup@gmail.com for information. A separate product line will be an on-line item —check website after 6/20 for ordering information.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/socialist-register-2020-beyond-market-dystopia/2020-09-14/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Immigration,Labor History,Marxist Method,Political Economy,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/SocialistRegisterCover2020.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200914T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200914T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200827T045454Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200902T154158Z
UID:10006803-1600108200-1600115400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Communism in the Suburbs?/Retroactive Utopia of Socialist City
DESCRIPTION:from Socialist Register 2020: Beyond Market Dystopia: New Ways of Living\nFinal session\nEach year a new volume of the Socialist Register appears\, effectively laying out for socialists and communists what are burning issues of the day—we now have 56 years of coverage\, and many of the burning issues are now in a full blaze. This year’s edition was published before the global pandemic\, the currently 30 million additional unemployed in the US alone\, and the Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd\, and with the US soon to record 200\,000 coronavirus deaths\, most of which could have been prevented. The whole world watched the video and responded with a movement that became more widespread than was Occupy Wall Street in 2011 or the first Black Lives Matter upsurge in 2014. \nCommunism in the Suburbs?\nRoger Keil\nIn Roger’s words: “The core message here is the need to focus on the small and hidden histories\, the buried stories of the everyday\, the extinguished but smoldering fires at the grass roots of urban society. Both the early twentieth-century commune and the progressive reforms of mid-century in Los Angeles were not untypical for what was happening around the world at those times by way of experiments in widespread reform\, or even revolution. None of these led sustainably to what the dreamers\, reformers\, and revolutionaries had hoped for: a different society\, a new world. Ultimately\, experiment and reform in housing and urban life were perverted by the bureaucracies perpetuating the survival of capitalism\, as well as by the bureaucrats constructing ‘real existing socialism’ in Eastern Europe. Henri Lefebvre\, addressing the state-built housing machines of the banlieue as the dreaded ‘habitat’ of the ‘society of bureaucratic consumption’\, once powerfully exposed how France’s urban policy has had quite the opposite effect of what both experiment and reform had intended: ‘The population in the metropolis is regrouped into ghettos (suburbs\, foreigners\, factories\, students)\, and the new cities are to some extent reminiscent of colonial cities.’ Yet in these histories we find sedimentations of possibilities that I will take up in this essay. \nThe Retroactive Utopia of the Socialist City\nOwen Hatherley\nIn Owen’s words: “In the center of Manchester\, you can find two artefacts of the Soviet Union’s attempt to fuse art\, architecture and everyday life. One is now fairly wellknown. Standing inTony Wilson Square\, a developer-owned ‘Private Public Space’ standing in front of the arts center ‘Home’\, facing various new luxury office and residential units\, is a statue of Friedrich Engels. For another monument without a beard\, you need walk 15 minutes up Deansgate and turn off into the People’s History Museum. This riverside building\, hemmed in by speculative offices and an enormous plate glass and steel Civil Justice Centre\, contains the archives of the Labour Party\, the Communist Party of Great Britain\, and numerous trade unions. The rooms on the post-war\, pre-Thatcher decades contain a particularly unusual trade union banner from the famous Grunwick Strike of 1976-78\, when the mainly Asian and female workforce of a photo-processing plant in west London walked out over their particularly poor pay and conditions. Anyone who knows a bit of twentieth-century art history will recognise the source for the banner – the ‘Suprematist’ strain in early Soviet avant-garde art. The (re)discovery of the Soviet avant-garde – which eventually meant that a striking worker in Dollis Hill in 1976 could know who El Lissitzky was\, and create an image based around his – is a complex story of misunderstandings and appropriations. \nOWEN HATHERLEY is the author of several books on political aesthetics\, and the culture editor of Tribune\, which was relaunched as a print magazine and website with the support of Jacobin in 2018. \nROGER KEIL is a Professor at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change\, York University\, Toronto\, Ontario
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/communism-in-the-suburbs-retroactive-utopia-of-socialist-city/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Political Economy,Socialism
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/EngelsStatueManchester.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200915T183500
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200915T204500
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200701T225738Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200902T154030Z
UID:10006760-1600194900-1600202700@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:The 2020 Socialist Register: Market Dystopia BOOK for series
DESCRIPTION:TWO BOOKS REMAIN AT THIS SPECIAL PRICE (which includes shipping)\nSpecial for class participants\nwho will read and discuss this book beginning Monday\, July 6 which registration information is here \nFirst article is available as PDF on-line here \n\nEdited by Leo Panitch and Gregory Albo\n\n\nHow can we build a future with better health and homes\, respecting people and the environment? The 2020 edition of the Socialist Register\, Beyond Market Dystopia\, contains a wealth of incisive essays that entice readers to do just that: to wake up to the cynical\, implicitly market-driven concept of human society we have come to accept as everyday reality. Intellectuals and activists such as Michelle Chen\, Nancy Fraser\, and Roger Keil connect with and go beyond classical socialist themes\, to combine an analysis of how we are living now with visions and plans for new strategic\, programmatic\, manifesto-oriented alternative ways of living. Crafted with purposeful hope in an age of despair\, each essay in this volume aims to create a world of agency and justice. \nContents \n\nStephen Maher\, Sam Gindin & Leo Panitch: Class politics\, socialist policies\, capitalist constraints\nBarbara Harriss-White: Making the world a better place: restitution and restoration\nAmy Bartholomew & Hilary Wainwright: Beyond the ‘barbed-wire labyrinth’: migrant spaces of radical democracy\nKatharyne Mitchell & Key MacFarlane:  Beyond the educational dystopia: new ways of learning through remembering\nBirgit Mahnkopf: The future of work in the era of ‘digital capitalism’\nMichelle Chen: A new world of workers: confronting the gig economy\nYu Chunsen: All workers are precarious: the ‘dangerous class’ in China’s labour regime\nUrsula Huws: Social reproduction in twenty-first century capitalism\nAlyssa Battistoni:  Ways of making a living: revaluing the work of social and ecological reproduction\nNancy Holmstrom: For a sustainable future: the centrality of public goods\nKarl Beitel: The affordable housing crisis: its capitalist roots and the socialist alternative\nRoger Keil: Communism in the suburbs?\nOwen Hatherley: The retroactive utopia of the socialist city\nNancy Fraser: What should socialism mean in the twenty-first century?\n\nThe price below of $23\,00 includes shipping via Media Mail SHIPPING IS INCLUDED in the $23 price \n\nPlease send an email to info@marxedproject.org with your address and any special shipping instructions regarding your book
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/market-dystopia-book-socialist-register-2020/2020-09-15/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/SocialistRegisterCover2020.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200917T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200917T210000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200717T033928Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200814T012608Z
UID:10006765-1600369200-1600376400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Lit and Film: Noir for the Summer of Covid-19
DESCRIPTION:8 sessions\nvia teleconference on Zoom • participation code with registration\nSliding scale admission for teleconference \nContinuing in the MEP LITERATURE GROUP summer tradition\, we will once again delve into Noir genres– but with a twist! Starting August 6\, we will read four books and watch the movies that are based on them. Please join us for four books with the four movies that resulted from them. \nBOOK 1 Odd Man Out /F. L. Green \nF.L. (Laurie) Green’s novel was published in 1945. It followed upon wartime action by the IRA in Belfast\, in consequence of which Northern Ireland undertook its first and only execution of an IRA member\, 19-year old Tom Williams. In the novel\, an IRA plot goes horribly wrong when its leader\, Johnny Murtah\, kills an innocent man\, and he is gravely wounded. Odd Man Out is Green’s most significant novel. \nMOVIE 1 Odd Man Out /Carol Reed • AUGUST 20\nTakes place largely over the course of one tense night\, Reed’s psychological noir\, set in Belfast\, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con who leads a botched robbery. Injured and hunted by the police\, he seeks refuge throughout the city\, while the woman he loves searches for him among the shadows. Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker create images of stunning depth for this fierce\, spiritual depiction of a man’s ultimate confrontation with himself. \nBOOK 2 Clean Break /Lionel White • AUGUST 27\n“… none of them are professional crooks. They all have jobs\, they all live seemingly decent\, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them.” In the opening chapter\, Lionel White sets the stage for the main protagonists of the story: Marvin Unger\, court reporter; George Peatty\, a racetrack cashier and his bored wife\, Sherry; Randy Kennan\, a cop distracted by huge gambling debts; Mike O’Reilly\, a track barman\, regularly bets and loses half his earnings; and Johnny Clay\, just out of jail\, and who has come up with the plan to steal the earnings fromthe Canarsie Stakes. Creating diversions becomes necessary\, including knocking off the favourite in the race (animals lovers beware…). \nMOVIE 2 The Killing /Stanley Kubrick • SEPTEMBER 3\nStanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest\, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative\, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson\, and a phenomenal cast of character actors\, including Sterling Hayden\, Coleen Gray\, Timothy Carey\, Elisha Cook Jr.\, and Marie Windsor\, The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut. And with its precise tracking shots and gratifying sense of irony\, it’s Kubrick to the core. \nBOOK 3 Down There /David Goodis • SEPTEMBER 10\nOnce upon a time Eddie played concert piano to reverent audiences at Carnegie Hall—now he does honky-tonk in a Philly drunk-dive. But then two people walk into Eddie’s life—the first promising Eddie a future\, the other dragging him back into a treacherous past. Down There (bookretitled after film to Shoot the Piano Player) is a bittersweet and nerve-racking exploration of different kinds of loyalty. \nMOVIE 3 Shoot The Piano Player /François Truffaut • SEPTEMBER 17\nFrançois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this\, his most playful film. Part thriller\, part comedy\, part tragedy\, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour\, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags\, guns\, clowns\, and thugs\, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague. \nBOOK 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /George V. Higgins • SEPTEMBER 24\nElmore Leonard said that The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the best crime novel ever written\, though Higgins hated being classified as a crime writer. According to Leonard\, “He saw himself as the Charles Dickens of crime in Boston instead of a crime writer. He just understood the human condition and he understood it most vividly in the language and actions among low lives.” \nMOVIE 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /Peter Yates • OCTOBER 1\nIn one of the best performances of his legendary career\, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Directed with a sharp eye for its gritty locales and an open heart for its less-than-heroic characters\, this is one of the true treasures of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking—a suspenseful crime drama in stark\, unforgiving daylight. \nWe will attempt to watch together. Those who watch the film on their own are of course welcome to join in the discussions following the films as they are presented.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/lit-and-film-noir-for-the-summer-of-covid-19/2020-09-17/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Multi-session Classes
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NoirSummer2020_FB3c.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200921T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200921T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200731T232806Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200913T022158Z
UID:10006770-1600713000-1600720200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:China's Engine of Environmental Collapse
DESCRIPTION:Book discussion with author Richard Smith\nJust published this July\, 2020 by Pluto Press\nThis event is taking place at 6:30 pm originating in New York City (Eastern Standard Tune)\nAs the world hurtles towards environmental oblivion\, China is leading the charge. The nation’s CO2 emissions are more than twice those of the US with a GDP just two-thirds as large. China leads the world in renewable energy yet it is building new coal-fired power plants faster than renewables. The country’s lakes\, rivers\, and farmlands are severely polluted yet China’s police state can’t suppress pollution\, even from its own industries. \nThis is the first book to explain these contradictions. Richard Smith explains how the country’s bureaucratic rulers are driven by nationalist-industrialist tendencies that are even more powerful than the drive for profit under ‘normal’ capitalism. In their race to overtake the US they must prioritise hyper-growth over the environment\, even if this ends in climate collapse and eco-suicide. \nRichard contends that nothing short of drastic shutdowns and the scaling back of polluting industries\, especially in China and the US\, will suffice to slash greenhouse gas emissions enough to prevent climate catastrophe. Below is an image of the Yangtze River. \n \nHere is a link to Richard’s article in Foreign Policy\, published July 27\, 2020\, entitled The Chinese Communist Party Is an Environmental Catastrophe: Political ambitions make China’s emissions growth inevitable even as the economy falters \nhttps://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/27/chinese-communist-party-environment-co2/\n\nThe book is available at the link below.\n\nhttps://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341576/chinas-engine-of-environmental-collapse/\n\nPeople can get it for 20% off with this coupon code: CHINA30.\nRichard Smith has published articles on the Chinese revolution\, China’s transition to capitalism\, and China’s environment for Against the Current\, New Left Review\, Monthly Review and the Ecologist. He is the author of Green Capitalism: The God that Failed (College Publications. 2016)\, and is a founding member of the US-based group System Change Not Climate Change. \nSliding scale admissions. No on turned away for inability to pay. Write to info@marxedproject.com for info on admission on low or no cost admissions. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/chinas-engine-of-environmental-collapse/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Capital Studies,China,Classes/Events,Extractivism,Marxist Method,Political Economy,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks,Socialism
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Smith_ChinaBook2020.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200924T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200924T210000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200717T033928Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200814T012608Z
UID:10006766-1600974000-1600981200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Lit and Film: Noir for the Summer of Covid-19
DESCRIPTION:8 sessions\nvia teleconference on Zoom • participation code with registration\nSliding scale admission for teleconference \nContinuing in the MEP LITERATURE GROUP summer tradition\, we will once again delve into Noir genres– but with a twist! Starting August 6\, we will read four books and watch the movies that are based on them. Please join us for four books with the four movies that resulted from them. \nBOOK 1 Odd Man Out /F. L. Green \nF.L. (Laurie) Green’s novel was published in 1945. It followed upon wartime action by the IRA in Belfast\, in consequence of which Northern Ireland undertook its first and only execution of an IRA member\, 19-year old Tom Williams. In the novel\, an IRA plot goes horribly wrong when its leader\, Johnny Murtah\, kills an innocent man\, and he is gravely wounded. Odd Man Out is Green’s most significant novel. \nMOVIE 1 Odd Man Out /Carol Reed • AUGUST 20\nTakes place largely over the course of one tense night\, Reed’s psychological noir\, set in Belfast\, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con who leads a botched robbery. Injured and hunted by the police\, he seeks refuge throughout the city\, while the woman he loves searches for him among the shadows. Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker create images of stunning depth for this fierce\, spiritual depiction of a man’s ultimate confrontation with himself. \nBOOK 2 Clean Break /Lionel White • AUGUST 27\n“… none of them are professional crooks. They all have jobs\, they all live seemingly decent\, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them.” In the opening chapter\, Lionel White sets the stage for the main protagonists of the story: Marvin Unger\, court reporter; George Peatty\, a racetrack cashier and his bored wife\, Sherry; Randy Kennan\, a cop distracted by huge gambling debts; Mike O’Reilly\, a track barman\, regularly bets and loses half his earnings; and Johnny Clay\, just out of jail\, and who has come up with the plan to steal the earnings fromthe Canarsie Stakes. Creating diversions becomes necessary\, including knocking off the favourite in the race (animals lovers beware…). \nMOVIE 2 The Killing /Stanley Kubrick • SEPTEMBER 3\nStanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest\, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative\, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson\, and a phenomenal cast of character actors\, including Sterling Hayden\, Coleen Gray\, Timothy Carey\, Elisha Cook Jr.\, and Marie Windsor\, The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut. And with its precise tracking shots and gratifying sense of irony\, it’s Kubrick to the core. \nBOOK 3 Down There /David Goodis • SEPTEMBER 10\nOnce upon a time Eddie played concert piano to reverent audiences at Carnegie Hall—now he does honky-tonk in a Philly drunk-dive. But then two people walk into Eddie’s life—the first promising Eddie a future\, the other dragging him back into a treacherous past. Down There (bookretitled after film to Shoot the Piano Player) is a bittersweet and nerve-racking exploration of different kinds of loyalty. \nMOVIE 3 Shoot The Piano Player /François Truffaut • SEPTEMBER 17\nFrançois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this\, his most playful film. Part thriller\, part comedy\, part tragedy\, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour\, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags\, guns\, clowns\, and thugs\, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague. \nBOOK 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /George V. Higgins • SEPTEMBER 24\nElmore Leonard said that The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the best crime novel ever written\, though Higgins hated being classified as a crime writer. According to Leonard\, “He saw himself as the Charles Dickens of crime in Boston instead of a crime writer. He just understood the human condition and he understood it most vividly in the language and actions among low lives.” \nMOVIE 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /Peter Yates • OCTOBER 1\nIn one of the best performances of his legendary career\, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Directed with a sharp eye for its gritty locales and an open heart for its less-than-heroic characters\, this is one of the true treasures of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking—a suspenseful crime drama in stark\, unforgiving daylight. \nWe will attempt to watch together. Those who watch the film on their own are of course welcome to join in the discussions following the films as they are presented.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/lit-and-film-noir-for-the-summer-of-covid-19/2020-09-24/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Multi-session Classes
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NoirSummer2020_FB3c.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200926T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200926T140000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200714T143512Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200919T151153Z
UID:10006758-1601118000-1601128800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 3\, Part 7\, the last chapters of volume 3
DESCRIPTION:Let’s make the Anthropocene stage of the earth’s evolution\, the turning point of world history. After all\, paraphrasing Marx\, since we are the species that can know ourselves as a product of natural history\, we are responsible to all of nature. We have the power within us to make the Anthropocene not the capitalist endgame but the naturalization of our species and the humanization of nature. Capital\, a Critique of Political Economy\, can help effectively situate ourselves to face the challenges before all of humanity and nature\, and begin the process of reclaiming and putting into effect our human capacities for the betterment and advancement of each and all. \nThe study of Volume III is essential to understanding the complex dynamics at work in the present realities we are facing and how these realities are the necessary results of the inner logic of capital. In this moribund stage of late capitalist/imperialist development we see the rise of rentier and finance capital—the introduction of financial instruments being used to make money make more money\, jumping over and above the actual real wealth produced by trading on future wealth (derivatives and other forms of fictitious capital); overriding supply and demand as a price mechanism in such necessities as foodstuffs so that their prices continuously rise resulting in more poverty and starvation on a world scale and here in the US; turning new technologies into means of collecting rents—the internet\, mobile devices; expropriation of taxes paid by the working class to developers who are often tax exempt while our city and state governments give them tracts of our physical space; commodification of debt; privatization of public spaces\, properties and institutions; foreclosures; and the list goes on. \nCapital\, Volume III\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole\, completes Marx’s task of moving from the imaginary concrete—the researcher and scientist analyzing the appearances we see in everyday life such as in the Grundrisse\, to the abstract concrete. The results of the analytic study of the phenomenon that has revealed the social/natural content of that phenomenon (Volumes I and II)\, to the real concrete—how this content is expressed in everyday life through the mechanisms by which the actors determine their actions and appropriate wealth (Volume III). \nWith the conceptual integration of production and circulation (Volumes I and II) from the standpoint of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, Marx returns to the starting point of the research categories\, the imaginary concrete\, concepts seen as empirical givens as facts in themselves—profits\, interests\, rents\, rate of profit\, prices. These sensuously perceived givens (the way the world directly appears to us) are the starting point of the research analysis\, not the science. But now\, after the analysis\, these interrelated aspects of what appear on the surface of society are no longer imaginary but real\, understood as interrelated dynamics and mechanisms in everyday life by which the actors reproduce the social relations and physical conditions of capitalist society. Volume III integrates and completes the analysis of the process of capitalist production as whole\, enabling us to understand and make sense of how each of the appearances and processes we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the whole. When we do so all the laws of motion previously revealed in the first two volumes take on new dimensions. Internal dynamics and contradictions burst out and situate humanity withina historical process that calls us to figure out how to go beyond capital and develop the conditions that insure that the development of each is the precondition for the development of all. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than nearly three years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-3-3rd-session/2020-09-26/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Marxist Method,Multi-session Classes,Political Economy,Science and Method,Socialism
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1968_JeParticipeSite.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200929T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200929T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200804T030106Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200804T030106Z
UID:10006782-1601404200-1601411400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Invention of the White Race
DESCRIPTION:a reading and discussion group convened by The Revolutions Study Group with Sean Ahern\nSince its origin in the class struggles of colonial Virginia and Maryland\, the “white race\,” the most peculiar aspect of the “Peculiar Institution\,” has remained the most contentious and misunderstood identity in American life. \nThe Invention of the White Race Volumes I & II\, Theodore W. Allen’s historical materialist analysis of racial slavery\, documents how the plantation elite put in place this system of social control following Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676. In the final stage of this uprising\, an army of European and African chattel bond laborers burned Jamestown to the ground and temporarily drove Governor Berkeley into exile across the Chesapeake Bay. The terrified planter bourgeoisie\, in a deliberate response to this display of labor solidarity\, enacted a series of laws and practices in the late 17th and early 18th centuries which implanted a system of ‘white’ racial privileges that enabled the imposition of racial slavery and white male supremacy. \nTheodore W Allen’s The Invention of the White Race\, particularly Volume 2\, subtitled The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America\, has been widely recognized by activists and scholars alike as a seminal work and deeply radical history. Allen was drawn to study of the “white” race by his engagement in the movements of his time; in West Virginia coal mines\, the Congress of Industrial Organization\, the Communist Party\, the Civil Rights/Black Liberation/anti-war and student led movements of the 1960’s and 70’s and his reading of W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction. Allen had concluded by the mid 1960’s that white supremacism was the central obstacle to progressive movements in American life\, past and present\, yet the “white” race itself remained the most peculiar\, contentious and generally misunderstood “identity\,” blocking all efforts to achieve a just society. Accordingly\, Allen spent the next 40 years in writing and primary research to discern when\, where\, how and why the Plantation Bourgeoisie invented this “white” race in colonial Virginia and Maryland (and how and why it has been maintained since then). Through a careful reading of this text supported by discussion\, a new narrative of our history emerges that offers strategic guidance to the momentous struggles now unfolding. \nAllen concludes Volume II with the following message to a new generation of activists: “Perhaps in the impending renewal of the struggle of ‘the common people’ and the ‘Titans\,’ the Great Safety Valve of white-skin privileges may finally come to be seen and rejected by laboring-class European-Americans as the incubus that for three centuries has paralyzed their will in defense of their class interests vis-a-vis those of the ruling class.” \nThe Revolutions Study Group (started at the Brecht Forum) has met since 2009. The groups has recently completed a year-long study of W.E.B. Dubois’ Black Reconstruction. 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 1848 European Revolutions\, the May 68 movement in France and the Hot Autumn of Italy and much more. \nAll fees are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Please write to info@marxedproject.org for more information.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/invention-of-the-white-race-2/2020-09-29/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Class and Gender,Classes/Events,Gender,Race and Class,Revolutions Study Group
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/WhiteSupreme2.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20200930T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20200930T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200905T153626Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200927T155951Z
UID:10006135-1601490600-1601497800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:21st Century Communists of the Commons and Contemporary Proudhonism
DESCRIPTION:A presentation and discussion with Radhika Desai\n \n(co-sponsored with the Geopolitical Economy Research Group: https://geopoliticaleconomy.org) \nIf Proudhonism in the nineteenth century was\, as Marx argued\, a petty bourgeois ideology\, Radhika argues that the new communism of the commons propounded by Badiou\, Hardt and Negri\, and Zizek (among others) is a twenty-first-century avatar of the Proudhonism that was a perennial obstacle to developing a broad opposition to capital during the 19th and 20th centuries. The 21st Century Proudhonist speaks not for what Poulantzas called the‘traditional petty bourgeoisie’\, as Proudhon did\, but for the ‘new petty bourgeoisie’ of ‘non-productive wage earners’\, which has also lately styled itself the ‘creative class’. \nA failure to comprehend the dynamics of capitalist accumulation and a general antipathy to any general organization of labor in society\, and thus to any serious politics\, are common to both. In addition\, the protection of the cultural commons\, the core of the project\, is but a program aiming for the continued reproduction of the creative class within the dictates of capital. The sum of what the 21st Century Proudhonists put forth as innovation\, is instead prey to a series of misunderstandings – of the concept of the commons itself\, of contemporary capitalism whose dynamics forms the backdrop of their project and key economic and political ideas of Marx whose authority they seek to attach to their project. \nRadhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies\, and Director\, Geopolitical Economy Research Group\, University of Manitoba\, Winnipeg\, Canada. She is the author of Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony\, Globalization and Empire (2013)\, Slouching Towards Ayodhya: From Congress to Hindutva in Indian Politics (2nd rev ed\, 2004) and Intellectuals and Socialism: ‘Social Democrats’ and the Labour Party (1994)\, a New Statesman and Society Book of the Month\, and editor or co-editor of Russia\, Ukraine and Contemporary Imperialism\, a special issue of International Critical Thought (2016)\, Theoretical Engagements in Geopolitical Economy (2015)\, Analytical Gains from Geopolitical Economy (2015)\, Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today’s Capitalism (2010) and Developmental and Cultural Nationalisms (2009). Currently she is working on three books: Capitalism’s Geopolitical Economy: From Imperialism to Multipolarity\, Marx as a Monetary Theorist and The Making of the Indian Capitalist Class.  \n  \nall tickets are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Please write to info@marxedproject.org for access if you find yourself unable to purchase tickets. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/21st-century-communists-of-the-commons-and-contemporary-proudhonism/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Class,Classes/Events,Intro to Marxism,Marxist Method,Political Economy,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks,Socialism
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/NewProudhoniansSocMedia.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20201001T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20201001T210000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200717T033928Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200814T012608Z
UID:10006767-1601578800-1601586000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Lit and Film: Noir for the Summer of Covid-19
DESCRIPTION:8 sessions\nvia teleconference on Zoom • participation code with registration\nSliding scale admission for teleconference \nContinuing in the MEP LITERATURE GROUP summer tradition\, we will once again delve into Noir genres– but with a twist! Starting August 6\, we will read four books and watch the movies that are based on them. Please join us for four books with the four movies that resulted from them. \nBOOK 1 Odd Man Out /F. L. Green \nF.L. (Laurie) Green’s novel was published in 1945. It followed upon wartime action by the IRA in Belfast\, in consequence of which Northern Ireland undertook its first and only execution of an IRA member\, 19-year old Tom Williams. In the novel\, an IRA plot goes horribly wrong when its leader\, Johnny Murtah\, kills an innocent man\, and he is gravely wounded. Odd Man Out is Green’s most significant novel. \nMOVIE 1 Odd Man Out /Carol Reed • AUGUST 20\nTakes place largely over the course of one tense night\, Reed’s psychological noir\, set in Belfast\, stars James Mason as a revolutionary ex-con who leads a botched robbery. Injured and hunted by the police\, he seeks refuge throughout the city\, while the woman he loves searches for him among the shadows. Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker create images of stunning depth for this fierce\, spiritual depiction of a man’s ultimate confrontation with himself. \nBOOK 2 Clean Break /Lionel White • AUGUST 27\n“… none of them are professional crooks. They all have jobs\, they all live seemingly decent\, normal lives. But they all have money problems and they all have larceny in them.” In the opening chapter\, Lionel White sets the stage for the main protagonists of the story: Marvin Unger\, court reporter; George Peatty\, a racetrack cashier and his bored wife\, Sherry; Randy Kennan\, a cop distracted by huge gambling debts; Mike O’Reilly\, a track barman\, regularly bets and loses half his earnings; and Johnny Clay\, just out of jail\, and who has come up with the plan to steal the earnings fromthe Canarsie Stakes. Creating diversions becomes necessary\, including knocking off the favourite in the race (animals lovers beware…). \nMOVIE 2 The Killing /Stanley Kubrick • SEPTEMBER 3\nStanley Kubrick’s account of an ambitious racetrack robbery is one of Hollywood’s tautest\, twistiest noirs. Aided by a radically time-shuffling narrative\, razor-sharp dialogue from pulp novelist Jim Thompson\, and a phenomenal cast of character actors\, including Sterling Hayden\, Coleen Gray\, Timothy Carey\, Elisha Cook Jr.\, and Marie Windsor\, The Killing is both a jaunty thriller and a cold-blooded punch to the gut. And with its precise tracking shots and gratifying sense of irony\, it’s Kubrick to the core. \nBOOK 3 Down There /David Goodis • SEPTEMBER 10\nOnce upon a time Eddie played concert piano to reverent audiences at Carnegie Hall—now he does honky-tonk in a Philly drunk-dive. But then two people walk into Eddie’s life—the first promising Eddie a future\, the other dragging him back into a treacherous past. Down There (bookretitled after film to Shoot the Piano Player) is a bittersweet and nerve-racking exploration of different kinds of loyalty. \nMOVIE 3 Shoot The Piano Player /François Truffaut • SEPTEMBER 17\nFrançois Truffaut is drunk on the possibilities of cinema in this\, his most playful film. Part thriller\, part comedy\, part tragedy\, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour\, in a triumph of hangdog deadpan) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair. Loaded with gags\, guns\, clowns\, and thugs\, this razor-sharp homage to the American gangster film is pure nouvelle vague. \nBOOK 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /George V. Higgins • SEPTEMBER 24\nElmore Leonard said that The Friends of Eddie Coyle was the best crime novel ever written\, though Higgins hated being classified as a crime writer. According to Leonard\, “He saw himself as the Charles Dickens of crime in Boston instead of a crime writer. He just understood the human condition and he understood it most vividly in the language and actions among low lives.” \nMOVIE 4 Friends of Eddie Coyle /Peter Yates • OCTOBER 1\nIn one of the best performances of his legendary career\, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle. Directed with a sharp eye for its gritty locales and an open heart for its less-than-heroic characters\, this is one of the true treasures of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking—a suspenseful crime drama in stark\, unforgiving daylight. \nWe will attempt to watch together. Those who watch the film on their own are of course welcome to join in the discussions following the films as they are presented.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/lit-and-film-noir-for-the-summer-of-covid-19/2020-10-01/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Literary Studies,Multi-session Classes
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/NoirSummer2020_FB3c.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="MEP Literature Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20201003T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20201003T140000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200714T143512Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200919T151153Z
UID:10006759-1601722800-1601733600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Capital\, Volume 3\, Part 7\, the last chapters of volume 3
DESCRIPTION:Let’s make the Anthropocene stage of the earth’s evolution\, the turning point of world history. After all\, paraphrasing Marx\, since we are the species that can know ourselves as a product of natural history\, we are responsible to all of nature. We have the power within us to make the Anthropocene not the capitalist endgame but the naturalization of our species and the humanization of nature. Capital\, a Critique of Political Economy\, can help effectively situate ourselves to face the challenges before all of humanity and nature\, and begin the process of reclaiming and putting into effect our human capacities for the betterment and advancement of each and all. \nThe study of Volume III is essential to understanding the complex dynamics at work in the present realities we are facing and how these realities are the necessary results of the inner logic of capital. In this moribund stage of late capitalist/imperialist development we see the rise of rentier and finance capital—the introduction of financial instruments being used to make money make more money\, jumping over and above the actual real wealth produced by trading on future wealth (derivatives and other forms of fictitious capital); overriding supply and demand as a price mechanism in such necessities as foodstuffs so that their prices continuously rise resulting in more poverty and starvation on a world scale and here in the US; turning new technologies into means of collecting rents—the internet\, mobile devices; expropriation of taxes paid by the working class to developers who are often tax exempt while our city and state governments give them tracts of our physical space; commodification of debt; privatization of public spaces\, properties and institutions; foreclosures; and the list goes on. \nCapital\, Volume III\, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole\, completes Marx’s task of moving from the imaginary concrete—the researcher and scientist analyzing the appearances we see in everyday life such as in the Grundrisse\, to the abstract concrete. The results of the analytic study of the phenomenon that has revealed the social/natural content of that phenomenon (Volumes I and II)\, to the real concrete—how this content is expressed in everyday life through the mechanisms by which the actors determine their actions and appropriate wealth (Volume III). \nWith the conceptual integration of production and circulation (Volumes I and II) from the standpoint of the process of capitalist production as a whole\, Marx returns to the starting point of the research categories\, the imaginary concrete\, concepts seen as empirical givens as facts in themselves—profits\, interests\, rents\, rate of profit\, prices. These sensuously perceived givens (the way the world directly appears to us) are the starting point of the research analysis\, not the science. But now\, after the analysis\, these interrelated aspects of what appear on the surface of society are no longer imaginary but real\, understood as interrelated dynamics and mechanisms in everyday life by which the actors reproduce the social relations and physical conditions of capitalist society. Volume III integrates and completes the analysis of the process of capitalist production as whole\, enabling us to understand and make sense of how each of the appearances and processes we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the whole. When we do so all the laws of motion previously revealed in the first two volumes take on new dimensions. Internal dynamics and contradictions burst out and situate humanity withina historical process that calls us to figure out how to go beyond capital and develop the conditions that insure that the development of each is the precondition for the development of all. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for more than nearly three years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have dedicated themselves to a chronological reading of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital. Newcomers are encouraged to join when your schedule permits.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/capital-volume-3-3rd-session/2020-10-03/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Marxist Method,Multi-session Classes,Political Economy,Science and Method,Socialism
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/1968_JeParticipeSite.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20201005T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20201005T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200802T052040Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201110T021457Z
UID:10006771-1601922600-1601929800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Blood and Money
DESCRIPTION:From Primitive Accumulation to Racial Capitalism\nCapital Studies Group of The MEP\nAll tickets are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Email info@marxedproject.org for zoom info if you are unable to pay \nThe birth and development of capitalism since its origins in the fifteenth century is entirely bound up with the subordination of racialized peoples. Even before capitalism arose – in a process Marx termed the “so-called primitive accumulation” – money and markets were implicated in the rise and fall of states and empires that conquered and enslaved vast numbers of human bodies. This group will address these histories and their persisting consequences. We will read and discuss David McNally’s Blood and Money: War\, Slavery\, Finance\, and Empire and Jairus Banaji’s The History of Commercial Capitalism\, both new works along with the now-classic text Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition by Cedric Robinson. Additional readings will include chapters from Marx’s Capital; essays by Robin D.G. Kelley and Barbara Fields; and selections from the July-August 2020 Monthly Review devoted to Racial Capitalism. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for nearly four years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have nearly completed a chronological reading all three volumes of Marx’s Capital along with other important works such as these sessions will explore. Newcomers are always encouraged to join. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/blood-and-money/2020-10-05/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Agribusiness,Classes/Events,Indigenous Peoples,Multi-session Classes,Political Economy,Race and Class,Science and Method
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/slaverySM.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20201006T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20201006T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200804T030106Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200804T030106Z
UID:10006783-1602009000-1602016200@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Invention of the White Race
DESCRIPTION:a reading and discussion group convened by The Revolutions Study Group with Sean Ahern\nSince its origin in the class struggles of colonial Virginia and Maryland\, the “white race\,” the most peculiar aspect of the “Peculiar Institution\,” has remained the most contentious and misunderstood identity in American life. \nThe Invention of the White Race Volumes I & II\, Theodore W. Allen’s historical materialist analysis of racial slavery\, documents how the plantation elite put in place this system of social control following Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676. In the final stage of this uprising\, an army of European and African chattel bond laborers burned Jamestown to the ground and temporarily drove Governor Berkeley into exile across the Chesapeake Bay. The terrified planter bourgeoisie\, in a deliberate response to this display of labor solidarity\, enacted a series of laws and practices in the late 17th and early 18th centuries which implanted a system of ‘white’ racial privileges that enabled the imposition of racial slavery and white male supremacy. \nTheodore W Allen’s The Invention of the White Race\, particularly Volume 2\, subtitled The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America\, has been widely recognized by activists and scholars alike as a seminal work and deeply radical history. Allen was drawn to study of the “white” race by his engagement in the movements of his time; in West Virginia coal mines\, the Congress of Industrial Organization\, the Communist Party\, the Civil Rights/Black Liberation/anti-war and student led movements of the 1960’s and 70’s and his reading of W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction. Allen had concluded by the mid 1960’s that white supremacism was the central obstacle to progressive movements in American life\, past and present\, yet the “white” race itself remained the most peculiar\, contentious and generally misunderstood “identity\,” blocking all efforts to achieve a just society. Accordingly\, Allen spent the next 40 years in writing and primary research to discern when\, where\, how and why the Plantation Bourgeoisie invented this “white” race in colonial Virginia and Maryland (and how and why it has been maintained since then). Through a careful reading of this text supported by discussion\, a new narrative of our history emerges that offers strategic guidance to the momentous struggles now unfolding. \nAllen concludes Volume II with the following message to a new generation of activists: “Perhaps in the impending renewal of the struggle of ‘the common people’ and the ‘Titans\,’ the Great Safety Valve of white-skin privileges may finally come to be seen and rejected by laboring-class European-Americans as the incubus that for three centuries has paralyzed their will in defense of their class interests vis-a-vis those of the ruling class.” \nThe Revolutions Study Group (started at the Brecht Forum) has met since 2009. The groups has recently completed a year-long study of W.E.B. Dubois’ Black Reconstruction. 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 1848 European Revolutions\, the May 68 movement in France and the Hot Autumn of Italy and much more. \nAll fees are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Please write to info@marxedproject.org for more information.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/invention-of-the-white-race-2/2020-10-06/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Class and Gender,Classes/Events,Gender,Race and Class,Revolutions Study Group
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/WhiteSupreme2.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20201012T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20201012T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T230528
CREATED:20200802T052040Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201110T021457Z
UID:10006772-1602527400-1602534600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Blood and Money
DESCRIPTION:From Primitive Accumulation to Racial Capitalism\nCapital Studies Group of The MEP\nAll tickets are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Email info@marxedproject.org for zoom info if you are unable to pay \nThe birth and development of capitalism since its origins in the fifteenth century is entirely bound up with the subordination of racialized peoples. Even before capitalism arose – in a process Marx termed the “so-called primitive accumulation” – money and markets were implicated in the rise and fall of states and empires that conquered and enslaved vast numbers of human bodies. This group will address these histories and their persisting consequences. We will read and discuss David McNally’s Blood and Money: War\, Slavery\, Finance\, and Empire and Jairus Banaji’s The History of Commercial Capitalism\, both new works along with the now-classic text Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition by Cedric Robinson. Additional readings will include chapters from Marx’s Capital; essays by Robin D.G. Kelley and Barbara Fields; and selections from the July-August 2020 Monthly Review devoted to Racial Capitalism. \nThe CAPITAL STUDIES GROUP has been meeting on Saturdays for nearly four years. We are a group of workers\, students\, activists and teachers who have nearly completed a chronological reading all three volumes of Marx’s Capital along with other important works such as these sessions will explore. Newcomers are always encouraged to join. \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/blood-and-money/2020-10-12/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Agribusiness,Classes/Events,Indigenous Peoples,Multi-session Classes,Political Economy,Race and Class,Science and Method
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/slaverySM.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR