A convergent project of The Marxist Education Project, Institute for the Radical Imagination, and Democracy at Work
Classes for Fall, 2018 to be held at the People’s Forum, 320 W 37 Street
1. Saturday Critical Thought Seminars start September 29th:
The Frankfurt School and the paradoxical idea of progress: Thinking beyond Critical Theory with Stanley Aronowitz (12–2pm): an eight week course -$15 per session or $100 for all eight sessions.
This course will address the idea of progress in History through a careful and close reading of texts from Adorno and Horkheimer. Does progress really exist beyond minor reformist tendencies or is it a major symptom of the dialectic of enlightenment that dialectical positivity comes to a standstill? Can we rethink a new principle of hope that can build movement politics against the cynicism and pessimism of the present?
Left to right: Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Ernst Bloch
Purchase all sessions of Frankfurt School and the paradoxical idea of progress:
$100.00Add to cart
Purchase all sessions for any two seminars with the Institute for the Radical Imagination:
$175.00Add to cart
Purchase all sessions for all three seminars with the Institute for the Radical Imagination:
$275.00Add to cart
* It is also possible to pay per session in person.
Marx, Marxism and Philosophy Today with Michael Pelias (2:15–4:15pm): a ten week course — $15 per session or $125 for all ten sessions.
Marx’s relationship to Philosophy from the Greek atomists through Aristotle to Hegel has been commented upon by many in the Marxist tradition. Through a general, yet rigorous survey, this class will examine Marx’s use of philosophical materialism in his early manuscripts as well as a critical and analytical approach to the schools of Marxist philosophy that developed with and after the work of Lukacs, Gramsci, Korsch, and the Frankfurt school through the French existentialists and structuralists to the Italian schools from Della Volpe to Negri.
Left to right: Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, György Lukács
Purchase all sessions of Marx, Marxism and Philosophy today:
$125.00Add to cart
Purchase all sessions for any two seminars with the Institute for the Radical Imagination:
$175.00Add to cart
Purchase all sessions for all three seminars with the Institute for the Radical Imagination:
$275.00Add to cart
* It is also possible to pay per session in person.
Democracy and Marxism with Peter Bratsis (4:30–6:30pm): an eight week course — $15 per session or $100 for all eight sessions.
The ethic of democracy is central to the project of Marxism. This class will examine the concept of democracy and how it has been incorporated within the Marxist tradition. The Marxist critique of liberal ‘democracy’ and the relation of democracy to human creation as well as economic production will also be interrogated. Readings will include works from Aristotle, Marx, Gramsci, Pannekoek, Luxemburg, Castoriadis, and Poulantzas.
Left to right: Emory Douglas Illustration, Aristotle, Nicos Poulantzas
Purchase all sessions of Democracy and Marxism:
$100.00Add to cart
Purchase all sessions for any two seminars with the Institute for the Radical Imagination:
$175.00Add to cart
Purchase all sessions for all three seminars with the Institute for the Radical Imagination:
$275.00Add to cart
* It is also possible to pay per session in person.
2. Sunday Intensives: two sessions 12 noon-4pm, Sept 30 and Oct 7, with Richard D. Wolff:
1st Sunday , Sept. 30: Marxian Class Analysis: What it is and its Value for Understanding Society Today
A Marxian class analysis around four areas of inquiry: Capitalist enterprises — merchant, industrial, and financial; Households and the State; Globalization; and Socialism and Communism.
2nd Sunday, October 7: Comparing Marxian to Mainstream (“neoclassical”) and Keynesian Economics
This course aims to explain how these three significant yet very different ways of understanding economics both reflect and shape modern societies’ political, cultural, and economic conflicts.
Readings will be distributed and Resnick, S. and Wolff, R., Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, MIT Press, 2012 will serve as background to the day long Sunday seminar.
*For both intensives offered by Democracy@Work, $50. For one intensive, $30.
3. Introduction to Marxism for Women Only with Juliet Ucelli
Tuesdays, 6:30 to 8:30 pm
10 sessions, October 2 through December 4
We’ll explore some key concepts about human beings, society and history, and our relationship to the rest of nature. Readings will be short and accessible excerpts from writings by Marx and Engels or later Marxists. I believe that this theory can help us analyze the social and economic realities and structures we live in–who holds power and how–and fight more effectively for liberation.
Some of the central questions that we’ll address are:
• How did the oppression of women, and the division of societies into people who work and others who exploit them, originate and develop historically?
• What are the driving dynamics of capitalism that make it make it so productive, innovative, brutal and ecologically destructive?
• What intellectual tools can help us understand industry’s complex impacts on our bodies, our psyches and the nature around us—impacts that capitalists, and people who think like them, don’t want to see or cannot see?
• What did Marx understand—and not understand—about white supremacy and Eurocentrism, and how has that analysis been deepened and modified by later Marxists?
In a continuing attempt to increase access for those who have been historically excluded, turned off or silenced by the way this theory is often taught and discussed, we are offering an intro class this October through December for women only. Everyone who identifies as a woman is welcome.
Juliet Ucelli has taught labor economics and class/race/gender for unions and activists, and writes on Eurocentrism in Marxist theory, and Marxist understandings of human development. She also teaches Marx’s Capital, Volume One with The Marxist Education Project.
For More information : Contact Michael Pelias at mpelias_@hotmail.com
Please let us know if you’re interested in attending:
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