Prabhat Patnaik’s opening remarks: What framework is needed to understand land acquisition in India? In Marx’s analysis of older, pre-capitalist communities, land acquisition involved the dispossession of the primitive community and their re-absorption as individuals into the proletariat class. This … Continue reading →

Lenin’s The State and Revolution, is a historically- and theoretically-engaged work that provides extraordinary analytical clarity regarding state power.  Writing against the liberal conceptions that consider the state above society, an impartial entity that reconciles class antagonism, Lenin asserts that … Continue reading →

Meeting with Stanley Aronowitz Readings: How Class Works and Paradigm Lost: State Theory Reconsidered These notes are meant to flesh out some of what we discussed with Professor Aronowitz, as well as some of the key ideas that emerge from … Continue reading →

Reading: Giovanni Arrighi’s The Geometry of Imperialism: The Limits of Hobson’s Paradigm These notes are meant to expand on a couple points and raise some questions that came up during the discussion on Arrighi’s work clarifying Lenin and Hobson on … Continue reading →

Some notes on our last meeting… comments, amendments, and additions are welcome! Notes from Marxist Reading Group on Sept 20th, 2011 Readings: Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism Panitch and Gindin, Capitalist Crises and the Crisis This Time In … Continue reading →

In the course of last year’s discussion, the state frequently emerged as an important factor in understanding capitalism’s tendency toward generating both crisis and imperialism.  Recognizing the state’s imbrication in processes of capital accumulation and destruction, however, does little to … Continue reading →