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MEP Elections Discussion #2

Join us online on Tuesday, September 17 at 6:30 pm US ET for an open-ended conversation about the evolving US political conjuncture now shaping the November elections. Drawing on our … Read more

Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life

Tenants march for "Our City, Our Homes"

An open-ended reading group on Henri Lefebvre’s Critique of Everyday Life – a major manifesto of humanist Marxism and a clarion call for revolutionary praxis through sustained critique of daily living. “Lefebvre pushed philosophy out into the streets,” the critic McKenzie Wark has written; his work has influenced fields as diverse as sociology, cultural studies, architecture and urban planning, as well as movements including the Situationist International and the activists of May 1968.

AI versus Labor: Luddism and Beyond

AI-versus-Labor

8 weekly sessions starting Oct 1. Is Artificial Intelligence (AI, sic) really the dire threat to the future of humanity as even some of its proponents claim, or is it a more mundane and familiar threat to working people who face loss of their livelihoods and/or further speed-up and alienation? The entire history of industrial capitalism is punctuated by recurring waves of automation to reduce labor costs and turnover time, each time provoking strong resistance by the affected workforce. This reading group will probe the history both of AI and computer technology specifically and of working-class resistance to capitalist automation in general.

Summer Noir 2024

Illustrating Noir theme with woman sitting in darkened room with the cat.

The MEP Literature Group’s Summer Noir tradition of enjoying the bracing vitality of pulp continues with six short novels on the themes of difficult trips and political mayhem. Be warned: … Read more

Hegel for Radicals: The Science of Logic III

An engraved portrait of a youner Hegel

The MEP’s recurring series Hegel for Radicals continues this summer with a reading of the third and final part of Hegel’s magnum opus, The Science of Logic. This is the discussion of the Notion culminating in the Absolute Idea. There will be a review session for recurring students as well as those who missed Part I, Being, and Part II, Essence. Familiarity with this work greatly aids any reading of Marx’s Capital.

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Reading Gramsci for Today’s Movements

Two photos, Women Life Freedom

An ongoing study group on the Prison Notebooks and other works of Antonio Gramsci. We explore Gramsci’s themes and concepts, including state-civil society relations, historical bloc, hegemony, spontaneity, strategy and tactic, and language. We follow Gramsci’s philological method, addressing such areas as linguistics, cinema, critical theory, literature, journalism, comics, animation, plastic arts, mass media and Machiavellian political studies.