August 2020
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 »Capital, Volume 3, 3rd Session
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 »Socialist Register 2020: Beyond Market Dystopia
From the editors Greg Albo and Leo Panitch: By challenging our contributors to address what are the actual and possible ways of living in this century, we saw this as way of probing how to get beyond the deep contradictions of neoliberal capitalism. We did not want contributors to conceive their remit as future-oriented per se, but rather to see their mandate as locating utopic visions and struggles for alternate ways of living in the dystopic present.
Find out more »The 2020 Socialist Register: Market Dystopia BOOK for series
This is where you are easily able to purchase the Socialist Register 2020. Our product button on the WordPress site needs modification so this book purchase is listed under events. Price includes shipping. As a back-up to your order, please email your address to info@marxedproject.org
Find out more »For a Sustainable Future: The Centrality of Public Goods
We should use every means we can to raise people’s understanding that they are 1) the only basis of real security; 2) should be accessible to all as a right, like universal health care, and hence no one should be excluded by the alleged rights of private property; and 3) are foundational to the most rational way to organize society. Nancy’s presentation will consider some examples of strategies that fit this approach.
Find out more »September 2020
Perry Mason and the Case of the Careless Remake
Perry Mason, the indefatigable defender of hopeless cases that the police have seemingly wrapped up, has been reinvented as a no-account Jake Gittes from Chinatown, a two-bit blackmailer and lost generation PTSD war casualty navigating the streets of 1932 Los Angeles at the height of the depression. Hoovervilles, the Bonus March, and the rich in tuxedos with the poor at their feet form the background of the series and suggest our own era where Trumpvilles flourish and will soon expand when unemployment benefits are exhausted.
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 »October 2020
Capital, Volume 3, 3rd Session
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 »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.
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