We need a positive vision of a better world and the roads leading to it. So let’s imagine we are future historians living in a peaceful, egalitarian, democratic society on a damaged, but stabilized, planet in the year 2117.

Through theory and practice we will examine the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious in the late 19th to 20th century. Starting with the fin-de-siècle Parisian hospital Salpêtrière, we will touch upon the historical resonances of the invention of mental pathology, and aesthetic forms that resonance has instigated.

The jaws of my mind are in perpetual motion. —Salvador Dali, Gastro Esthetics
The spectacle corresponds to the historical moment at which the commodity completes the colonization of social life.
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

The class that built and continues to build New York City can no longer afford to live here. Meanwhile, the international bourgeoisie with hyper capital accumulation, perch themselves in luxurious multi-roomed lofty palaces as occasional residences. Our aim is to gain the historical and theoretical understanding that can inform our fight to wrest control of our cities from the capitalist class, and to discuss how cities can be reorganized to meet our human needs with a sustainable urban ecology.

Many of us have less time to study it because, as Marx predicted, we have to work longer hours— and often more than one job—in order to survive. Fortunately, even a basic familiarity with the key concepts of the first Volume of Capital offers many tools for understanding capitalism’s dynamics.

Begins October 7 The Institute can be reached via: Email: info@radicalimagination.institute Phone: 718–687-0864 https://radicalimagination.institute/events-directory/  

This reading group will delve into a selection of Marx and Engels’ political writings to gain both a better understanding of the history of working-class and socialist struggles of their times, and explore lessons for our political organizing now. This tasks takes on a special urgency in light of the events in Charlottesville and the increased visibility of racist, anti-Semitic and white supremacist ideologies.