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DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20220515T140000
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SUMMARY:Socialist Register 2022 — Polarization and Socialism: The Direction Forward
DESCRIPTION:with Greg Albo\, Sam Gindin\, Adolph and Touré Reed\, James Schneider and Hilary Wainwright participating in the concluding session of this  this four-session series\nIt is a truism that electoral politics and political identity in the USA and Europe today are polarized to a degree unknown since the 1930s. It is a commonplace among the pundits of the ruling class that somehow “both sides” must return to “moderate” common sense to avoid a violent rupture of our society. They seldom question the underlying causes of this polarization\, let alone whether it is rooted in the very nature of late capitalism. \nThis is not the case with the contributors to the 58th volume of Socialist Register. From different perspectives\, they ask us to think about the deep social contradictions exposed by increasing polarization of the most economically developed societies along lines of wealth\, race\, gender\, nation-state\, and region. Members of this class meet once each month for four months to discuss selected articles from SR 58 with editor Greg Albo\, joined by various authors organized around the following themes on one Sunday a month from February 20 through May 115\, 2022. \nThe two remaining single sessions will each have a separate ordering position on the website as well. Please pay attention to the international time changes that are not in sync and will occur during the duration of this series. \nPART 4\nMay 15 • Polarization and Socialism: The Direction Forward\nFinding a Way Forward: Lessons from the Corbyn Project  with James Schneider and Hilary Wainwright • American Workers and the Left after Trump with Sam Gindin • The Evolution of Race under Neoliberalism with Adolph and Touré Reed \nThis year’s Socialist Register presentations are presented in honor of Leo Panitch \nLEO PANITCH • 1945-2020 / All of us at The Marxist Education Project appreciate all that Leo did and is continuing to do following his untimely death one year ago this past December. This series which begins on February 20 is presented in his memory as it represents a few of the many fruits that still spring from the myriad seeds that Leo has planted \nA limited number of Socialist Register 58 books are available from the MEP\, SR58 is also available in print and digital forms from MR Press in the US\, Merlin Press in the UK\, and from Fernwood Press in Canada\, or from the Socialist Register website.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/socialist-register-2022-new-polarizations-old-contradictions-the-crisis-of-centrism/2022-05-15/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Accumulation of Capital,Austerity,Capital Studies,Capital vs. Labor,Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Multi-session Classes,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/SR58_BkJkt.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20220515T020000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20220515T160000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20220410T221155Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220410T221155Z
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SUMMARY:Socialist Register 2022: Polarization and Socialism: The Direction Forward
DESCRIPTION:with\nSam Gindin\, Adolph Reed\, Jr.\, Toure Reed\, Vishwas Satgur\, James Schneider and Hilary Wainwright\,\nVISHWAS SATGUR\nEpidemiological Neoliberalism in South Africa\nIn this presentation\, Vishwas Satgar sets out the Covid-19 pandemic in South Africa as an example of polarized access to medical services shamelessly piled on top of acute polarizations of income and employment and ecological vandalism. But the ANC government’s neoliberal pandemic response\, “has also unleashed a cycle of post-apartheid progressive resistance.” \nJAMES SCHNEIDER and HILARY WAINWRIGHT\nFinding a Way Forward: Lessons from the Corbyn Project\nA discussion of the lessons to be learned from the experience of Momentum as a national campaign organization for the left wing of the UK Labour Party and its achievements (despite ultimate failure to elect a government led by Jeremy Corbyn).  They are optimists in their accounting of the new spaces that are now open for a radical democratic politics in Britain. \nADOLPH REED\, JR. and TOURE REED \n“Race” and Racial Justice under Neoliberalism\nThis presentation links the rise of the hard right in US politics to the marginalization of the progressive pole as “the black political class” became embedded in “the Democratic Party’s commitment to a programme of retrenchment.” Addressing poverty and continuing social inequality in the black community requires building a broader working-class movement. \nSAM GINDIN\nAmerican Workers and the Left after Trump: Polarized Options\nSam argues that the inherent limits of Democratic Party “Keynesian” reflation still constitutes a difficult terrain for the left in the USA\, which needs to take care not to slip into the trap of spending all its energies defending the liberal forces exemplified by Biden as opposed to organizing labor and independent social struggles. \n Summary by series editor GREG ALBO \nVishwas Satgar\, associate professor of International Relations\, University of Witwatersrand\, is principal investigator for Emancipatory Futures Studies in the Anthropocene. James Schneider\, communications director of Progressive International\, is a co-founder of Momentum and was a spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn; Hilary Wainwright is an editor of Red Pepper magazine and a fellow of the Transnational Institute and Honorary Associate of the Institute of Development Studies\, Sussex University. Adolph Reed Jr. is Professor Emeritus of political science\, University of Pennsylvania; Touré F. Reed is a professor of history at Illinois State University. Sam Gindin is former research director of the Canadian Auto Workers and co-author of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire. \nSocialist Register #58 is available for $28 including shipping via US Media Mail (this offer is only good for the US and Puerto Rico). In Canada Socialist Register is available from Fernwood Books and in Europe from The Merlin Press.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/socialist-register-2022-polarization-and-socialism-the-direction-forward/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Classes/Events,Covid and Capital,Labor History,Labor Organizing,Late Capital and Fascism,Race and Class,Seminars and Talks,Socialism,Socialist Register
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/EisensteinStageDesign.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20220410T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20220410T160000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20220306T024604Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220306T024604Z
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SUMMARY:Global Political Struggles of the Working Class
DESCRIPTION:The Double Consciousness of Capital with author DAVID HARVEY\nSocial Sources of Political Polarization in Russia with authors ILYA MATVEEV and OLEG ZHURAVLEV\nThe Far Right\, Corporate Power\, and Social Struggles in Brazil with authors VIRGINIA FONTES\, ANA GARCIA and REJANE HOEVELER\nIn “The Double Consciousness of Capital”. DAVID HARVEY turns to Marx’s Grundrisse and to W.E.B.Du Bois’ idea of  double consciousness\, to locate a tension in anti-capitalist politics between the possibilities found in the creative destruction and technological revolutions of capitalism and the alienation and loss of human potentiality which is a result of the same process. The path to socialism requires navigating the contradictions of this double consciousness. \nIn “Social Sources of Political Polarization in Russia”. ILYA MATVEEV and OLEG ZHURAVLEV offer a compelling account of rising urban-rural and core-periphery polarization in Russia under the authoritarian nationalism of Vladimir Putin\, which until recently was able to rely on the apathetic indifference of the people and general appeals to social stability to maintain unchallenged power. \nIn “The Far Right\, Corporate Power\, and Social Struggles in Brazil”. VIRGINA FONTES\, ANA GARCIA\, and REJANE HOEVELER contrast the fictitious polarization in Brazil between electoral oppositions that quarrel over cultural issues without challenging the hegemony of neoliberal capitalism and the real polarization resulting from a combative working class that is developing\, as Gramsci says\, a spirit of cleavage\, determined to pursue its class interests. \nDAVID HARVEY is Distinguished Professor of anthropology and geography at the City University of New York. ILYA MATVEEV teaches politics at the Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration\, St. Petersburg; OLEG ZHURAVLEV is a researcher at the Public Sociology Laboratory\, Center for Independent Social Research\, St. Petersburg. VIRGINIA FONTES is professor of history at Fluminense Federal University\, Rio de Janeiro State\, and a teacher at the Florestan Fernandes National School of the Landless Workers Movement; ANA GARCIA is assistant professor at the International Relations Institute of the Pontifical Catholic University and the graduate program in Social Sciences at the Federal Rural University\, both in Rio de Janeiro; REJANE HOEVELER is a lecturer in the School of Social Service at Fluminense Federal University. \nSocialist Register #58 is available for $28 including shipping via US Media Mail (this offer is only good for the US and Puerto Rico). In Canada Socialist Register is available from Fernwood Books and in Europe from The Merlin Press. \nAll events are sliding scale—choose the level at which you are able to contribute to The Marxist Education Project. No one is denied admission to any event or class because of an inability to pay. Send an email to info@marxedproject.org to obtain an entry url to any event or class presented by The Marxist Education Project.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/global-political-struggles-of-the-working-class/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Capital Studies,Capital vs. Labor,Classes/Events,Crisis,Du Bois,Globalization,Grundrisse,Hegemony,Latin America,Pandemics and Capital,Russia,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Montage_VietnamLibya_Mexico.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20220410T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20220410T160000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20220201T034827Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220430T215742Z
UID:10006311-1649599200-1649606400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Socialist Register 2022 — Polarization and Socialism: The Direction Forward
DESCRIPTION:with Greg Albo\, Sam Gindin\, Adolph and Touré Reed\, James Schneider and Hilary Wainwright participating in the concluding session of this  this four-session series\nIt is a truism that electoral politics and political identity in the USA and Europe today are polarized to a degree unknown since the 1930s. It is a commonplace among the pundits of the ruling class that somehow “both sides” must return to “moderate” common sense to avoid a violent rupture of our society. They seldom question the underlying causes of this polarization\, let alone whether it is rooted in the very nature of late capitalism. \nThis is not the case with the contributors to the 58th volume of Socialist Register. From different perspectives\, they ask us to think about the deep social contradictions exposed by increasing polarization of the most economically developed societies along lines of wealth\, race\, gender\, nation-state\, and region. Members of this class meet once each month for four months to discuss selected articles from SR 58 with editor Greg Albo\, joined by various authors organized around the following themes on one Sunday a month from February 20 through May 115\, 2022. \nThe two remaining single sessions will each have a separate ordering position on the website as well. Please pay attention to the international time changes that are not in sync and will occur during the duration of this series. \nPART 4\nMay 15 • Polarization and Socialism: The Direction Forward\nFinding a Way Forward: Lessons from the Corbyn Project  with James Schneider and Hilary Wainwright • American Workers and the Left after Trump with Sam Gindin • The Evolution of Race under Neoliberalism with Adolph and Touré Reed \nThis year’s Socialist Register presentations are presented in honor of Leo Panitch \nLEO PANITCH • 1945-2020 / All of us at The Marxist Education Project appreciate all that Leo did and is continuing to do following his untimely death one year ago this past December. This series which begins on February 20 is presented in his memory as it represents a few of the many fruits that still spring from the myriad seeds that Leo has planted \nA limited number of Socialist Register 58 books are available from the MEP\, SR58 is also available in print and digital forms from MR Press in the US\, Merlin Press in the UK\, and from Fernwood Press in Canada\, or from the Socialist Register website.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/socialist-register-2022-new-polarizations-old-contradictions-the-crisis-of-centrism/2022-04-10/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Accumulation of Capital,Austerity,Capital Studies,Capital vs. Labor,Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Multi-session Classes,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/SR58_BkJkt.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20220220T140100
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20220220T160000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20220206T063729Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20220206T063811Z
UID:10006325-1645365660-1645372800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Old and New Contradictions: Opening Socialist Register 2022 Session—The Crisis of Centrism
DESCRIPTION:Opening session of the Winter/Spring panels of authors who have presented essays in the current Socialist Register\, No. 58.\nFeaturing\nGreg Albo An Introduction to The Crisis of Centrism\, Socialist Register 58\nWalden Bello At the Summit of Global Capitalism: the US and China\nSimon Mohun Portrait of Neoliberalism: Rise of the One Percent\nSamir Sonti The Crisis of US Labor\, Past and Present\nThe stage is set well for Socialist Register No. 58 in the Preface by Greg Albo and Colin Leys:  [In the midst of the] “current multi-dimensional crisis\, the center-right consensus that was struck around the neoliberal policy regime has been steadily splintering\, with a phalanx of far right and neo-fascist groups inserting themselves into electoral politics and gaining prominence ‘in the streets’ (not least in motley demonstrations against pandemic measures of any kind\, from lockdowns to masking). The observation that capitalism is always characterized by just such economic and political polarizations has preoccupied – even haunted –socialist analysis from its very origins: in Marx’s and Engels’ memorable phrase of revolutionary optimism in The Communist Manifesto\, ‘the more or less open civil war\, raging within existing society\, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution\, and … lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat’. In the much picked-over chapter in Marx’s Capital on ‘The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation’\, the language is just as vibrant but now stark in its imagery: ‘The greater the social wealth\, the functioning capital\, the extent and energy of its growth\, and therefore also the greater the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productivity of itslabor\, the greater is the industrial reserve army…. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is\, therefore\, at the same time the accumulation of misery\, the torment of labor\, slavery\, ignorance\, brutalization at the opposite pole\, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.’ \nThe first panel of the series addresses a number of the new contradictions emerging within global capital during this period —with the centrists attempting to right the neoliberal ship of state ly presenting more crises and a more defiant hard right. \n \nWALDEN BELLO writes from within the social movements of Southeast Asia and from the Philippines\, a particularly auspicious location from which to evaluate the growing rivalry between the US and China. His essay\, “At the Summit of Global Capitalism” provides a judicious assessment of the growing polarizations and contradictions in the inter-state system as the phase of US unilateral power gives way to a much more variegated world order. \nIt is appropriate that Socialist Register 58 begins with SIMON MOHUN’s “Portrait of Contemporary  Neoliberalism”. With the massive growth of inequalities in income and wealth being one of the most  commonly agreed-upon polarizations today\, Mohun argues that most ‘important for understanding the  structure and dynamic of neoliberalism has been the large and sustained increase in income share’ accruing to the richest one per cent. A movement to begin radical state action breaking with neoliberalism is imperative. \nSAMIR SONTI addresses the prospects and strategies for rebuilding a labor movement in the US after Trumpism in his essay on the ongoing crisis for US labor. The challenge in rebuilding a union movement is in organizing campaigns keeping a focus on aligning the interests of the workers who provide essential services with the interests of the communities that depend on those workers. He points out the dangers of having labor campaigns slip into spending their energies aligning with the interests of the Biden administration instead of the communities that they are engaged with. \nWALDEN BELLO is currently the International Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Binghamton and Co-Chairperson of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South. \nSIMON MOHUN is Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at Queen Mary\, University in London. \nSAMIR SONTI has worked as a union organizer in the US and now teaches at the City University of New York School of Labor and Urban Studies. \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n  \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/old-and-new-contradictions-opening-socialist-register-2022-session-the-crisis-of-centrism/
LOCATION:United States
CATEGORIES:Capital Studies,Capital vs. Labor,Class,Class and Gender,Classes/Events,Marx's Capital,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks,Socialist Register
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/LaborAndDems.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20210502T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20210502T163000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20210127T073133Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210429T014708Z
UID:10006180-1619964000-1619973000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Socialist Register 2021: Beyond Digital Capitalism (the entire series)
DESCRIPTION:Beyond Digital Capitalism: New Ways of Living\nContinues on April 27 with another final session on May 2\nThere are tickets for each session for those who are unable to be present for this series. The series tickets provide entrance to the remaining 6 presentations with discussions. \n“In addressing how far digital technology has become integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades the 21st century\, we were deliberately seeking to counter so much facile futurist ‘cyber-utopian’ thinking that has proliferated through these decades. The proof of capitalism’s continued dynamism\, even in the face of severe global economic crisis\, lay in the most successful and most celebrated high-tech corporations of the new information sector which really were restructuring and refashioning not only our ways of communicating but of working and consuming\, indeed ways of living. Yet precisely because this was taking place within the logics of capitalist accumulation and exploitation\, and through the reproduction of capitalist social relations\, this produced new contradictions and irrationalities. Perhaps none of these was greater than those revealed by the contrast between the investment\, planning\, and preparation that went into the interminable competitive race for ‘more speed’ by way of reducing latency in digital communications by so many milliseconds\, on the one hand\, and on the other the lack of investment\, planning\, and preparation that underlay the scandalous slowness of the responses to the spreading Covid-19 pandemic around the world.”   —From the Preface by Leo Panitch and Greg Albo \n  \n \nLEO PANITCH • 1945-2020 \nAll of us at The Marxist Education Project appreciate all that Leo did and is continuing to do following his untimely death this past December. Both this series and the Class\, Party\, Revolution Socialist Register series that will begin in March are presented in his memory; they represent a few of the many fruits that still spring from the myriad seeds that Leo has planted.This series is as significant as it is because so much of it was developed and edited with Leo Panitch.Community Restaurants: Decommodifying Food as Socialist Strategy\nPostcapitalism: Alternatives or Detours? \nPresentations by authors BENJAMIN SELWYN and GREG ALBO Sunday\, May 2\n2:00 to 4:00 PM (US East Coast DST) /6:00 to 8:00 PM (GMT) /7:00  to 9:00 PM (UK DST) \nAll tickets are sliding scale. No one is turned away for inability to pay. Please write to info@marxedproject for the URL for the Zoom link to participate in any event or class of The MEP. Please note that all times are for the New York City Eastern Standard Time\, with GMT times posted next to the NYC times. \nWe do offer all sliding scale tiekets with an option to buy this year’s Socialist Register. The combined ticket and book prices include shipping (to the US and Puerto Rico only\, sorry). \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/socialist-register-2021-beyond-digital-capitalism-the-entire-series/2021-05-02/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Agribusiness,Anti-colonialism,automation,Capital Studies,Class,Class and Gender,Classes/Events,Immigration,Labor History,Pandemics and Capital,Political Economy,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks,Socialism
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/SmallestSocReg2021Cover_BeyondDigiK.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20210420T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20210420T200000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20210410T031811Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210411T223835Z
UID:10006935-1618941600-1618948800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Start Early\, Stay Late: Planning for Care in Old Age
DESCRIPTION:Socialist Register 2021 authors Pat and Hugh Armstrong\nCovid-19 has exposed too many weaknesses in the neoliberal capitalist system to count\, especially when it comes to the most vulnerable. For 10 years our international\, interdisciplinary research team has been documenting the profound weaknesses in nursing home care within Canada\, Germany\, Norway\, Sweden\, the UK\, and the US. Many of the current deficits in resident care originate in various forms of privatization central to neoliberalism. Especially in Canada\, the UK\, and the US\, nursing homes that are heavily funded by the public purse have been handed over to corporations\, providing them with guaranteed pay and often guaranteed full houses. \nThe lines between for-profit and not have become increasingly blurred by various neoliberal strategies. One of these involves non-profit and state-owned homes contracting out services to for-profit firms as – in denial of the literature on the determinants of health – services such as food\, housekeeping\, and laundry have been defined out of care and dismissed as ancillary. This contracting out has not only undermined teamwork\, but has also resulted in poor food\, inadequate cleaning\, and limited laundry – all of which threaten health. At the same time\, fewer and fewer spaces are available in these homes with government funding. The result is twofold. All those who manage to get into these homes have high care needs\, and those who cannot are either forced into the for-profit sector or rely more on unpaid care\, most of which is provided by women. For too many\, neither of these is an option. Another strategy blurring the lines is the promotion of for-profit managerial strategies within the non-profit and public nursing homes that remain. This means the lowest possible staffing levels\, the shifting of as much work as possible to those with the least formal training\, limiting workers’ autonomy\, pay\, hours\, and benefits\, and relying on a labor force already made vulnerable by gender\, racialization\, and immigration status. \nBarely enough services pre-pandemic have proven to be not nearly enough during the pandemic – which has exposed the disastrous life-altering or lethal consequences of all these developments for those elderly requiring care. \nPat Armstrong is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology at York University. Hugh Armstrong is Emeritus Professor of Social Work at Carleton University. \n  \nAll events are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. Email info@marxedproject.org for admission to this event or any other events or classes of The MEP.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/start-early-stay-late-planning-for-care-in-old-age/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Capital Studies,Class,Classes/Events,Emancipation,Globalization,Healthcare,Housing,Multi-session Classes,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/StartEarlyStayLate.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20210330T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20210330T170000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20210312T211327Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210312T211327Z
UID:10006894-1617116400-1617123600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:From Neoliberal Fashion to New Ways of Clothing with Jerónimo Montero Bressán
DESCRIPTION:The past four decades have seen a tremendous transformation in how we clothe ourselves. The way clothes are produced\, traded and sold today around the world reflects many of the problems today’s capitalism poses to the working classes\, with deleterious consequences for the environment as well. Global supply chains\, in which non-finished goods flow back and forth around the world so that brands and retailers can increase their profits\, dominate the landscape of this industry. \nBetween 1995 and 2005\, the liberalization of trade allowed garment companies to pit workers worldwide against each other\, providing the former with enormous savings in labor costs. After the 2008 financial crisis\, growing competition and problems in the sphere of realization forced companies to continuously expand their marketing\, notably by incorporating expensive digital technologies\, while on the manufacturing side\, costs were squeezed to the limit. In core countries\, deregulation of labor markets through neoliberalization allowed manufacturers not only to employ low-wage labor in far-away countries\, but to subcontract production to “local sweatshops\,” which often employ migrants in situations of debt-peonage\, forced labor\, etc. in proximity to end markets\, so that fast fashion retailers and brands can replenish their stores quickly and cheaply. In arguing that the fashion industry is increasingly unsustainable\, economically and ecologically\, Jerónimo Montero Bressán invites us to imagine a different way to organise production\, distribution and consumption of clothing\, starting from a brief series of strategic directions. \nJERÓNIMO MONTERO BRESSÁN is a researcher with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) in Argentina.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/from-neoliberal-fashion-to-new-ways-of-clothing-with-jeronimo-montero-bressan/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Capital Studies,Class and Gender,Classes/Events,Emancipation,Gender,Labor History,Marx's Capital,Political Economy,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks,Social Reproduction
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/NewClothingWaysImage.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20210321T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20210321T160000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20210117T021053Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210117T021053Z
UID:10006170-1616335200-1616342400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Working Class Cinema in the Age of Digital Capitalism
DESCRIPTION:A presentation and discussion with\nMassimiliano (Mao) Mollona\nWhy does the story of cinema begin with the end of work? Is it because\, as has been suggested\, it is impossible to represent work from the perspective of labor but only from the point of view of capital\, because the revolutionary horizon of the working class coincides with the end of work? After all\, the early revolutionary art avant-garde had an ambiguous relationship with capitalism: it provided both a critique of commodification while also reproducing the commodity form. Even the cinema of Eisenstein\, which so subverted the bourgeois sense of space\, time\, and personhood\, at the same time standardized and commodified working-class reality with techniques of framing and editing that molded images on the commodity form. \nSuch dialectics between art and the commodity form continue to be played out in today’s digital capitalism\, as exemplified by so-called ‘debt-artists’\, like the hackers collective Robin Hood\, who appropriate the techniques and modes of sociality of financial capitalism to generate spaces of reciprocity and cooperation with the aim of disrupting their commodity logic\, but who in fact end up reproducing it. The tension between critique and commodification is no less in play as the digital medium erases the specificity of cinema\, the relation between its material bases and its poetics\, opening up as it does to other relations – intertextual\, lateral\, and cross-media – that recall the synchronic aesthetics of the avant-garde. As well as disrupting the materiality of the film medium\, digital film disrupts the temporality of classical cinema\, suspended in-between movement and stillness and experienced in the expanded duration of the time-image. \nMASSIMILIANO (Mao) MOLLONA is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Goldsmiths University of London. One of Mao’s main research interests is to look at the role of art institutions and cultural organizations in relation to the bio-politics and political economy of late capitalism. \n  \nAll events are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for an inability to pay. If you are unable to contribute please write to info@marxedproject.org to be given the URL for the zoom code for admission to this or other events. \nThis essay is available from The MEP in the Socialist Register 2021 book that is for sale in our bookstore. All book prices include shipping (US and Puerto Rico only). \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/working-class-cinema-in-the-age-of-digital-capitalism/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:Capital Studies,Class,Classes/Events,Film Screenings,Intro to Marxism,Literary Studies,Political Economy,Radical Literature,Science and Method,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/ManWithMovie.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20210314T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20210314T160000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20210215T040045Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210304T151822Z
UID:10006880-1615730400-1615737600@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:The Big Tech Monopolies and the State with Grace Blakeley
DESCRIPTION:SOCIALIST REGISTER SERIES: Beyond Digital Capitalism\n \nAs the effects of the coronavirus pandemic swept through the global economy\, the average observer could have been forgiven for missing a critical piece of news: by May 2020\, the combined market capitalization of the four largest US tech companies reached one fifth of the entire S&P 500. Four companies – Microsoft\, Apple\, Amazon and Facebook – now account for 20 per cent of the combined value of the 500 largest US corporations – an unparalleled level of market concentration. Forty years these corporate entitites were either just beyond being plucky start-ups\, or did not even exist. Monopolistic tendencies are not limited to the tech sector. In 1975\, the largest 100 US companies accounted for nearly half of the earnings of all publicly listed companies; by 2015\, their share reached 84 per cent. \nCapitalist corporations appear monopolistic when they are able to access the investment needed to gain total market dominance – and as the 21st Century has progressed\, this has proven easier than ever\, especially in big tech. The tech companies emerged in a world of falling profits and associated rising volatility in financial markets – both of which facilitated their access to investment. Many of these companies were initially either unprofitable or loss making\, as they had not yet developed to a sufficient size to exploit the network effects that would provide the foundation for their monopoly-like power. As a result\, they required significant amounts of upfront investment to maintain their operations and to scale up to reach a position of market dominance that would allow them to turn a profit. \nThe most propitious time for these firms to access such investment was in the wake of a crisis that had depressed returns and when investors were desperately seeking out the next big thing. For the tech companies\, this meant either the tech crisis of the early 2000s\, when Google launched its IPO\, or the financial crisis of 2008\, when companies such as Facebook and Twitter went public. The cheap capital – in part a result of unorthodox monetary policy – swashing around the global economy in the wake of a financial crisis that had depressed returns everywhere provided the perfect conditions for these plucky tech companies to become the behemoths that we know today. \nGrace Blakeley is a staff writer at Tribune and author of Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialization \n  \nAll events are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. If you are unable to pay and would like to attend the event\, please write to info@marxedproject.org and a link with the URL will be sent to you for the link by which to join in for this event.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/the-big-tech-monopolies-and-the-state-with-grace-blakeley/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:automation,Class,Financialization,Political Economy,Seminars and Talks
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20210228T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20210228T160000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20210206T201916Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210211T130441Z
UID:10006877-1614520800-1614528000@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:A New Digital Taylorism? with Matt Cole\, Hugo Radice\, Charles Umney
DESCRIPTION:The Political Economy of Datafication and Work: A New Digital Taylorism?\nwith Matthew Cole\, Hugo Radice and Charles Umney\nThis panel looks at the technologies that underpin our world of work\, and how capital shapes them to meet its needs\, oriented firmly towards the subsumption of wage labor. We cannot repurpose them towards our socialist goal build a world based upon equality and justice for all without directly contesting the existing social order. This requires both a broad vision of a sustainable\, egalitarian and democratic society\, and concrete proposals that connect to existing struggles and also prefigure radical change. \nTechnological change has profound consequences for capitalism\, rendering obsolete even the most profitable businesses\, while creating opportunities for early adopters. New technologies create opportunities for those workers who can acquire necessary skills\, but destitution for those rendered unnecessary. Beyond the immediate effects on individuals and communities\, there are spatial\, organizational\, and cultural consequences that transform the fabric of society. \nIn his analysis of the workplace\, Marx concludes that “Large-scale industry possesses in the machine system an entirely objective organization of production\, which confronts the worker as a pre-existing material condition of production:”\, and defines this condition as the real subsumption of labor. A hundred years later\, his analysis informed modern socialist studies of labor and the struggle for workplace. Since the birth of industrial capitalism socialists have both critically examined technology in its social context\, but also looked forward to radically different futures of work. As Alfred Barratt Brown wrote in 1934\, “We need to look at the whole world of industry with fresh eyes…to the end that the work and its results may alike satisfy human capacities and human needs”. \nMATT COLE is a postdoctoral researcher with Fairwork Foundation at the Oxford Internet Institute\, University of Oxford. \nHUGO RADICE is Head of the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds. \nCHARLES UMNEY is Associate Professor in the Work and Employment Relations Division at the University of Leeds Business School. \n  \nTHE TICKET PRICE OF THE TALK plus 2021 SOCIALIST REGISTER Book from which this essay is taken includes postage. This offer is good for US and Puerto Rico only because US postage policies have increased the costs of mailing to other countries to very high prices. \nAll tickets are sliding scale. No on is denied admission for inability to pay. Write to info@marxedproject.org to receive the URL of the Zoom link for this or other classes and lectures you may want to attend.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/a-new-digital-taylorism-with-matt-cole-hugh-radice-charles-umney/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:automation,Capital Studies,Class,Labor History,Marx's Capital,Marxist Method,Political Economy,Revolutions Study Group,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/DigiTaylor1.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20210223T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20210223T200000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20210204T080832Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210206T001151Z
UID:10006184-1614103200-1614110400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Socialists on Social Media Platforms and Imagine Platform Socialism
DESCRIPTION:Tanner Mirrlees and Derek Hrynyshn\nSocialists on Social Media Platforms: Communicating within and Against Digital Capitalism by Tanner Mirrlees\nBertolt Brecht\, in the 1932 essay ‘The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication’\, made a ‘positive suggestion’ to transform radio into a dialogical medium for many-to-many communications. ‘Radio is one-sided when it should be two’ said Brecht. Brecht saw the state as the only entity capable of remaking radio in this way\, but because radio’s ‘proper application’ might make it a ‘revolutionary’ medium\, Brecht concluded the bourgeois state would have ‘no interest in sponsoring such exercises’. \nBrecht’s ‘positive suggestion’ for a many-to-many communications system seems to have come to fruition with the internet\, and more recently\, with the spread of social media platforms such as Facebook\, Twitter and YouTube. Socialists around the world are now using these platforms to produce\, distribute\, exhibit\, and consume socialist media and cultural works\, and they are openly building events\, movements\, and organizations within digital capitalism\, to go beyond it. That said\, the internet and social media platforms are surrounded by all kinds of deterministic\, optimistic\, and pessimistic rhetorics that cloud a clear view of what they give to and take from socialist communicators\, especially as compared to the twentieth century’s mass media industries\, whose state and corporate owners tended to filter out and vilify socialist ideas. \nWhile digital platforms are enabling socialists to communicate in ways that were not possible in the pre-digital world of mass media\, they are supplements to – not substitutes for – building democratic and sustainable socialist organizations and militant working-class movements. Taking it as axiomatic that communications underpins any possibility for socialist organization and politics\, this essay contextualizes the ‘brave new world’ of digital capitalism\, historicizes socialist communications from the ‘old media’ world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the ‘new digital media’ world of the early twenty-first\, and then maps ‘another world’ of socialists on social media platforms\, with an eye to the novelties\, limitations\, and challenges. \nTanner Mirrlees is Associate Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University \nImagine Platform Socialism by Derek Hrynyshyn\nInvestigations have demonstrated the ways that the operations of the algorithmic processes that select and sort information for users of YouTube\, Facebook\, and Twitter not only distribute such malicious content\, but also amplify its effects. In order to hold the attention of users\, platforms tend to recommend increasingly controversial and sensationalist suggestions\, leading users quickly into rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and extremist views that undermine attempts at informed and reasoned debate. Other studies showed that Google’s search engine was capable of exhibiting serious racist bias\, and that the platforms’ attempts to limit access to hate speech and misinformation were of limited effectiveness. \nAt the same time\, the monopolistic digital platforms are undeniably of great use to activists working for a more democratic world\, including socialists. The events that triggered US President Trump’s demands for stricter platform regulation were part of a mobilization of dissent that came to be known by its Twitter hashtag\, ‘Black Lives Matter’\, and numerous other examples could be found of activists raising awareness in ways that would not be possible with mass media. Social media empowers individuals to participate in the distribution of their own ideas\, although this empowerment is limited by the mediation of the flow of information by the owners of the platforms in ways that can have direct effects on how mobilizations are informed. \nThis makes it all the more necessary to explore the contradictions between our expectations of social media and the reality of its use\, and determine if there are ways to avoid the harms done to democracy while preserving the benefits. The purpose of this presentation is to inquire whether and how social media could be organized more democratically\, so that they allow our expressive capacities to be developed freely and not under conditions determined by capital. \nDerek Hrynyshyn teaches in the Department of Communication Studies at York University in Toronto\, Ontario. \n \n 
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/socialist-on-social-media-platforms-and-imagine-platform-socialism/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:automation,Classes/Events,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20210214T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20210214T160000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20210201T031628Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210201T032538Z
UID:10006182-1613311200-1613318400@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Interpretation Machines: Contradictions of “Artificial Intelligence” in 21st Century Capitalism
DESCRIPTION:with Larry Lohmann\nBYOND DIGITAL CAPITALISM: NEW WAYS OF LIVING (presentation 3)\nSince the nineteenth century\, left movements have sought footholds among the ever-renewing contradictions of capitalist industrial mechanization and its relation to work and energy. These experiments\, begun by Marx\, remain fragmentary and contested. Yet the crises that twenty-first century digital mechanization presents and exacerbates may shed new light on this longer history of automation even as they confront the left with fresh puzzles. \nThis talk proposes three responses to these challenges. 1) It may be more useful to movement organizing to stress continuities between industrial-era and digital-era value-creation than to focus only on differences. 2) The contradiction between living and dead labor that Marx identified not only persists in today’s digital economy\, but also remains fundamental both to understanding crisis and to identifying possibilities for radical political change. 3) It may make more strategic sense for the left to approach the striking innovations in automation advanced over the past decade by the likes of Facebook\, Amazon\, Alibaba\, Microsoft\, and Apple as a new level of the mechanization of interpretive work than to promote mystifying labels such as artificial intelligence (AI). \nLarry Lohmann works with The Corner House\, a UK-based solidarity and research organization. \nAll tickets are sliding scale. We do not deny admission to those with the inability to pay. If you would like to attend this or any other event or class simple write to info@marxedproject.org for a URL with the link for participation.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/interpretation-machines-contraditions-of-artificial-intelligence-in-21st-century-capitalism/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:automation,Capital Studies,Class,Class and Gender,Classes/Events,Labor History,Marxist Method,Pandemics and Capital,Political Economy,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Halifax:20210131T133000
DTEND;TZID=America/Halifax:20210131T160000
DTSTAMP:20260406T120908
CREATED:20210112T162700Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210119T065228Z
UID:10006164-1612099800-1612108800@marxedproject.org
SUMMARY:Socialist Register 2021: Ursula Huws on Reaping the Whirlwind
DESCRIPTION:First session of Socialist Register 2021: Beyond Digital Capitalism: New Ways of Living\nAn introduction to this year’s book with Greg Albo & Stephen Maher (in memory of Leo Panitch)\n“In addressing how far digital technology has become integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades the 21st century\, we were deliberately seeking to counter so much facile futurist ‘cyber-utopian’ thinking that has proliferated through these decades. The proof of capitalism’s continued dynamism\, even in the face of severe global economic crisis\, lay in the most successful and most celebrated high-tech corporations of the new information sector which really were restructuring and refashioning not only our ways of communicating but of working and consuming\, indeed ways of living. Yet precisely because this was taking place within the logics of capitalist accumulation and exploitation\, and through the reproduction of capitalist social relations\, this produced new contradictions and irrationalities. Perhaps none of these was greater than those revealed by the contrast between the investment\, planning\, and preparation that went into the interminable competitive race for ‘more speed’ by way of reducing latency in digital communications by so many milliseconds\, on the one hand\, and on the other the lack of investment\, planning\, and preparation that underlay the scandalous slowness of the responses to the spreading Covid-19 pandemic around the world.” —From the Preface by Leo Panitch and Greg Albo \nfollowed by\nReaping the Whirlwind: Digitalization\, Restructuring\, and Mobilization in the Covid Crisis\nUrsula Huws\nUrsula Huws’ essay addresses the changes sweeping through global labor markets during the coronavirus pandemic\, looking in particular at the concentration of capital and expansion of market share by global corporations\, bringing with it the digital management of supply chains and an exponential growth in algorithmic control and surveillance of workers. Pandemic lockdown conditions have exposed very clearly the polarizations in the workforce between ‘fixed’ workers\, physically isolated in their homes but closely monitored via their computers\, working virtually\, and the precariously employed mobile (‘footloose’) workers\, disproportionately made up of black and migrant workers\, equally closely monitored\, who deliver the physical goods and services the home-bound need to survive and care for their bodily needs when they become sick\, at great personal risk. \nGREG ALBO teaches in the Department of Politics at York University. He is co-editor of the Socialist Register. Greg is also on the editorial boards of Capitalism\, Nature\, Socialism\, The Bullet and Historical Materialism. URSULA HUWS\, Professor of Labor and Globalization at the University of Hertfordshire. She has been researching the social impacts of technological change\, the restructuring of employment and the changing international division of labor since the 1970s. Ursula will visit The MEP again on February 21\, to discuss her current book\, Reinventing the Welfare State: Digital Platforms and Public Policies (Pluto FireWorks\, 2020). STEVE MAHER is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa\, Canada\, and Assistant Editor of Socialist Register.
URL:https://marxedproject.org/event/socialist-register-2021-an-introduction-and-reaping-the-whirlwind/
LOCATION:Online Event – Zoom Meeting
CATEGORIES:automation,Capital Studies,Class,Class and Gender,Classes/Events,Climate Change,Ecosocialism,Intro to Marxism,Labor History,Marxist Method,Multi-session Classes,Political Economy,Science and Method,Science and Technology,Seminars and Talks
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://marxedproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/OpeningSession.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Capital Studies Group":MAILTO:info@marxedproject.org
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