September 2020
Capital, Volume 3, Part 7, the last chapters of volume 3
The 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.
Find out more »China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse
As 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. Richard 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.
Find out more »Lit and Film: Noir for the Summer of Covid-19
Continuing 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.
Find out more »Invention of the White Race
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
Find out more »21st Century Communists of the Commons and Contemporary Proudhonism
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.
Find out more »October 2020
Capital, Volume 1
Marx’s scientific presentation of the laws of motion of capitalist development begins by analyzing the fundamental or elemental form which wealth takes in our society, the commodity. Understanding this form leads us to the most basic law that grounds social reproduction in societies under the domination of capital, the law of value. Therefore, our first task will be to break through the appearance and reveal the social content of the commodity form. This begins the unraveling of the why and how of what we necessarily, under the domination and exploitation of capital, experience every day in our lives.
Find out more »Blood and Money
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.
Find out more »Realistic Metaphysics and the Materialist Conception of History
Marxism's central preoccupation has been that of *class* consciousness. Marx spoke of the working class’s need to transform itself from a class *in itself* (en sich) into a class *for itself* (für sich). After two decades of revolutionary defeats and counter-revolutionary triumphs Trotsky described the situation as “the crisis of proletarian leadership.”
But these were prescriptions, now plainly further from realization than ever. In describing the proletariat as the “universal class,” Marx projected that by establishing its dictatorship (ie., radical democracy) in the proximate interest of all its members, the proletariat begins the human historical project of complete transcendence of class society. The present crisis, however, demands that this concept of “universal” be deepened and enriched. The politics based on consciousness of proximate material interest must give way to the politics of a *planetary* consciousness. The final line of our anthem, “l’Internationale sera le genre humain,” should now be taken literally.
Find out more »Women Write Against Fascism
We will look at themes around resistance and collaboration. Beauvoir and Ginzburg write of the period occupation by the Nazis in Vichy France and the period of Mussolini's fascist dictatorship in Italy, while Jelinek's Wonderful Wonderful Times describes the lingering effects naziism had during the years of recovery from the fascist years in Austria in society and within a family.
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