Our next session will be with Prof. Mehmet Tabak from NYU. We will be reading chapters from his new book Dialectics of Human Nature in Marx’s Philosophy.

Thursday 2/14 at 6pm in the Globalization Room (room 5109)

the readings are:

Chapter 5 “Marx’s Critique of Law, Justice, and Morality” (recommended)
Chapter 6 “The State in Bourgeois Society” (main reading)

Tuesday 12/4 @ 6:00pm
location: Globalization room (5109) at the CUNY Graduate Center

S’Bu Zikode, “The Shackdwellers Movement of Durban”

Massimo De Angelis, “Enclosures, Commons, and the ‘Outside'”

Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Revolution (chapters 6, 7, and 8)

Richard Sandbrook et al, “Kerala: Deepening a Radical Social Democracy”

Alvaro Reyes, “Revolutions in the Revolutions: A Post-counterhegemonic Moment for Latin America?”

Raquel Gutiérrez, “The Rhythms of the Pachakuti”

Our upcoming meeting with Don Robotham will address the tension of rights/liberal democracy and political-economic transformation. What is the relationship between a long-term goal of transformation and the everyday contingency of action?

Tuesday, 11/20 at 4:15pm in the Globalization Room (rm 5109)

Readings:

Slavoj Zizek, “Against Human Rights” in NLR 34 2005

Nicolas Dot-Pouillard, “Syria Divides the Arab Left” in Le Monde Diplomatique 2012

V.I. Lenin, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination”

James Holston, “Insurgent Citizenship in an Era of Global Urban Peripheries” in City & Society (2009)

Raj Patel, “The Third Nelson Mandela”

S’bu Zikode, “We are the Third Force”

Otto Kirchheimer, “Legality and Legitimacy” in Rule of Law Under Siege

Carl Schmitt, “The Concept of the Political”

next meeting: Tuesday 10/23 from 4:30 – 6:30 in Rm 5109 (globalization room)

We will be reading

1. Alain Badiou’s Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings

Intro (read)
Chapter 1: Capitalism Today (skim/optional)
Chapter 4: Historical Riot (read)
Chapter 5: Riots and the West (skim/optional)
Chapter 6: Riot, Event, Truth (read)
Chapter 7: Event and Political Organization (skim/optional)
Chapter 9: Doctrinal Summary (read)

2. Vijay Prashad’s Arab Spring, Libyan Winter

Please join us for the first meeting of the year as we plan out readings/speakers/themes. There will be no readings for this session but please bring ideas for things you would like to discuss this semester.

Monday, October 1 @ 2pm
Globalization room (5109) at the CUNY Graduate Center

Our next meeting will focus on the work of Antonio Gramsci, with special guest Kate Crehan.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012 @ 6:30pm
Room 5109

the readings are:
Gramsci, “Some Aspects of Southern Question”
Gramsci, “Notes on Italian History” from the Selections from the Prison Notebooks

These are particularly interesting texts where Gramsci discusses the concept of the subaltern, the modern political party, passive revolution, and hegemony, as well as city-countryside relationships and worker-peasant alliances and dynamics. They might be helpful in thinking about current (and earlier) uprisings and social movements within the context of imperialism, (capitalist) nation-state formations, center-perphers divide, class relations and possibilities of alliances, political strategies and so on.

Please email if you need pdfs of either of these readings.

Our next meeting will be………..

C.L.R. James
Tuesday April 24th @ 6:30pm
Room 5109 (in the Graduate Center)

readings:

1. Cedric Robinson, “C.L.R. James and the Black Radical Tradition” in Black Marxism.

He discusses James’ work in relation to both Western Marxism and the Black Radical Tradition. Its about 40 pages, and covers everything from the Black Jacobins to his later engagement with the U.S. working class, Stalin, and Trotsky. Available here.

2. C.L.R. James, Black Jacobins. We were thinking of focusing on chapters 1, 4, and 12. (Please email if you need a copy of this)

Its a lot of reading at a very busy time in the year… please just focus on whatever you can get/want to and we’ll go from there in the discussion.

Comrades,

Here are the details for our reading session on Mao:

Tuesday, March 27, 6:30pm @ Slattery’s Bar (8 East 36th st)

We will be reading Mao’s five essays on philosophy: “On Practice”, “On Contradiction”, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People”, “Speech and the CP’s National Conference”, and “Where Do Correct Ideas Come From.”

Background reading is: Corrigan, Ramsey, Sayer’s For Mao: Essays In Historical Materialism.

Imperialism and the Neoliberal State in the Middle East and South Asia

States in the Middle East and South Asia embrace international finance capital even as they remain under the threat of foreign intervention. This panel considers the entwinement of third world sovereignty and neoliberal development in Turkey, Egypt, Sri Lanka, and India, in light of recent global events in these regions. How has the Arab Spring reverberated within South Asia? How does the U.S. left advance an anti-imperialist position without unwittingly lending support to repressive and authoritarian regimes elsewhere?

Saturday 3/17, 12:00pm in Room W617 (Pace University, 1 Pace Plaza)

Sponsored by: South Asia Solidarity Initiative (SASI) and the Graduate
Center Marxist Reading Group

Speakers:
Ahilan Kadirgamar
Samar Al-Bulushi
Yunus Telliel
Neil Agarwal
Saygun Gokariksel (in absentia)

Our next session with feature readings by Stuart Hall, Bob Jessop, and Philip Abrams.

Tuesday, March 13 @ 6:30pm at Slattery’s.

The readings are:

Stuart Hall, “The Great Moving Right Show,” Marxism Today 1979.
Bob Jessop, “Authoritarian Populism, Two Nations, and Thatcherism,” NLR 1984.
Stuart Hall, “Authoritarian Populism: A Reply to Jessop et al,” NLR 1985.
Bob Jessop, “Thatcherism and the Politics of Hegemony,” NLR 1985.
Philip Abrams, “Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State,” 1977. (optional)