Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants
AI versus Labor: Luddism and Beyond
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participants8 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.
The Circulation of Capital: Volume II of Marx’s Capital
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsA weekly study group covering Marx's Capital, Volume II, The Process of Circulation of Capital. In this volume, Marx addresses the question: How can the reproduction of society as a whole take place, if there is no conscious social planning that ensures that all needs are met, in the necessary proportions, such that life can persist and the capitalist relations of production be sustained? We discover the answer, but we also learn of new contradictions and sources of crisis inherent to capitalist society.
Studies in Marx’s Capital
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsFollowing up on the MEP's long-running study group on Karl Marx's Grundrisse, we have been reading closely and discussing Marx's 'Theories of Surplus Value' and related works. At present we are completing a study of capitalist landholding and ground rent. Future readings may include Soren Mau's 'Mute Compulsion' and Beverley Best's 'The Automatic Fetish.'
Conversations on the US Elections – What happens next?
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsJoin us for a first-impressions conversation on whatever results are known of the 2024 US elections. We will not know everything; many things will play out over the months that follow. We will know some things that have already taken shape. We can ask what will governing look like, what new shapes may fascism take, what directions will capitalism take, and how resistance will evolve. What does the election mean for climate struggle, Palestine solidarity, reproductive freedom, challenging the carceral state?
Reading Marx’s Capital Volume I
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsParticipants in this class are closely reading and discussing Volume I of Karl Marx’s 'Capital, A Critique of Political Economy.' At present we are reading Part Seven, "The Process of Accumulation of Capital."
Conversations on the US Elections
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsJoin 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 recent study of political strategy and fascism, we will assess the contending social and political forces in the US election campaign and consider the various approaches put forward by currents on the American left.
Hegel for Radicals: The Science of Logic III
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's recurring series Hegel for Radicals concludes our reading of Hegel's magnum opus, The Science of Logic, Part III. Familiarity with this work greatly aids any reading of Marx's Capital. Alex Steinberg guides participants past the legendary obstacles to understanding this unsurpassed presentation of dialectics. Its depth and systematic structure is without parallel in any other of Hegel's works.
Marxism and Planetary Crises: New Works, New Debates
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's Ecosocialist Study Group resumes consideration of capitalism's catastrophic impact on the Earth's climate and other critical systems, and ecosocialist strategies to challenge it. In eight weekly sessions beginning April 24, we will address important new work in ecological Marxism and environmental justice.
Palestine: Celebrating 75 Years of Literature
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsRead Palestinian fiction, poetry, and related literature in weekly meetings with the MEP's Literature Group. The ongoing catastrophe in the Middle East breaks our hearts daily. As part of our mission to explore creative political resistance to oppression, we will read several novels and poems by Palestinian authors.
Marxism and Planetary Crises: New Works, New Debates
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's Ecosocialist Study Group resumes consideration of capitalism's catastrophic impact on the Earth's climate and other critical systems, and ecosocialist strategies to challenge it. In eight weekly sessions beginning April 24, we will address important new work in ecological Marxism and environmental justice.
Animals, Capitalism, Marxism: A Conversation
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsDinesh Joseph Wadiwel and Alex Blanchette explore the potential and limits of Marxist theory for addressing the roles and fates of nonhuman animals, as well as ways to connect anticapitalist struggles to animal liberation and environmental justice. Wadiwel is the author of Animals and Capital and Blanchette is the author of Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm.
If We Burn: Mass Protest and Political Strategy for the 21st Century
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsWhy has the worldwide wave of mass protest in the decade of the 2010s given way to such a strong tide of reaction? And even with that counter-trend, what accounts for what some have called the Marxist revival, a new trend of theorizing and strategizing on the left. Join us this winter to read and reflect on what went right in the last decade, what new organizing now reflects its legacy, and what remains unfulfilled.
Reading Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks – Spring 2024
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsIn this ongoing weekly reading group, we continue to read and learn from Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. We explore key themes and concepts related to politics and civil society, including race, class and gender, religion, linguistic and other methods of analysis, critical theory, mass media, the arts and cinema, hegemony, and subaltern studies.
Hegel for Radicals: The Science of Logic II
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsThe MEP's recurring series Hegel for Radicals continues our reading of Hegel's magnum opus, The Science of Logic, Part II. Familiarity with this work greatly aids any reading of Marx's Capital. Alex Steinberg guides participants past the legendary obstacles to understanding this unsurpassed presentation of dialectics. Its depth and systematic structure is without parallel in any other of Hegel's works.
Chile’s 9/11: Fifty Years of Literary Resistance
Online: Zoom link will be provided to registered participantsReading group in progress, ending 2/8/24. September 2023 marked fifty years since the overthrow of Salvador Allende's socialist government on September 11, 1973. To honor the struggles and sufferings of the Chilean people, the MEP's Literature Group is reading Chilean writers active before, during, and since the Pinochet dictatorship.