This group is reading and discussing original texts by Marx and Engels about their theory of class struggles as the motive force of human social evolution and the modern working class as the political antagonist of the capitalist system. The primary text is the anthology 'Karl Marx: The Political Writings,' recently published by Verso. In this part 2, we will be reading the "Surveys From Exile" section, which begins with "The Class Struggles in France 1848-1850" and takes us through Marx's articles on the Civil War in the United States.

Juxtaposing documentary video footage with selected readings from Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks, we will deepen our understanding of the current uprising among women and young people in Iran. Applying Gramsci's dual perspective on Individuality/Universality, Hegemony/Authority, Force/Consent, Terror/Legitimacy, Strategy/Tactic, Agitation/Propaganda, and State/Civil Society, we will examine spontaneous movements, subaltern groups, and the balance of domestic and international forces. Convened and facilitated by Piruz Alemi.

Close reading and discussion of Marx's magnum opus with Lisa Maya Knauer and other facilitators from the MEP's Capital Studies Group.

The Science and Visionary Fiction Reading Group will read three powerful explorations of human agency, individual and collective--three debut novels from three different time periods. Seventy years ago, in the midst of the Cold War, Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 classic Childhood's End starkly portrayed one path for humanity in addressing its social ills.  Kim Stanley ... Read more

A reading of Theodore W. Allen's unpublished manuscript, "Towards a Revolution in Labor History," convened with Sean Ahern. According to Allen, "the original sin of 'white' labor historiography lies in the misbegotten concept that excludes the Black bond-laborers from the 'working class.'”

A 10-week series of readings to commemorate, celebrate, and learn from the ecological/Marxist works of Mike Davis (1946-2022).

The winter 2023 series of the MEP Literature Group focuses on Iranian women writing since the 1978-79 Revolution whose stories are set in Iran in the 20th and 21st centuries. We will read three novels from the 1920s to the present: 'The Gardens of Consolation,' by Parisa Reza; 'Women Without Men,' by Shahrnush Parsipur; and 'Man of My Time,' by Dalia Sofer.

An ongoing group conducting a page-by-page reading of Karl Marx's Grundrisse, a work that can be seen as a veritable "laboratory" in which we can observe Marx in the very process of unfolding his dialectical investigation of the movement of capitalist social and economic forms. In 2023 we will be working our way through Notebook VII, the final part of the book that includes the widely discussed "Fragment on Machines."

A continuation of the Fall 2022 series in which we introduced Hegel’s mysterious book, The Phenomenology of Spirit.  We will make the Phenomenology less mysterious as we go along and try to tease out the revolutionary implications in the thought of Hegel and explain their significance for our time.