– DC, historian and activist
  – Kevin Anderson, author of Marx at the Margins

Date: Saturday, January 21, 2012
Time: 2:00 – 4:00 PM
Venue: Community Room A, Westside Pavilion, Los Angeles

Sponsor: West Coast Marxist-Humanists, an affiliate of the International Marxist-Humanist Organization

The collapse of most of the statist regimes ruling in the name of Marxism has contributed to the rise of anarchist and left communist currents. The collapse of statist communism has also led to a rethinking of Marxism and an increased sense of separation between Marx and his political heirs, above all Lenin. This meeting will explore Marx?s mature writings on the state, especially those on the Paris Commune, wherein he argued for the abolition of both the state and capital.

Suggested reading, from Marx’s “Civil War in France“

FUTURE MEETING
Saturday, February 18, 2-4 PM, same location:
The Return(s) of Socialist Humanism and the Need for an Alternative
Speakers:

• Kevin Anderson, author of Marx at the Margins
• Barbara Epstein teaches at UC Santa Cruz in the History of Consciousness Department and writes on social movements; her most recent book is The Minsk Ghetto, 1941-1943:  Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism.  She is currently working on a project on socialist humanism:  its rise, decline, and continuing relevance for the left.

Note: Westside Pavilion is at Pico & Westwood Boulevards; Community Room A is on east side of the mall, third floor, behind food court; 3 hours free parking is available in mall’s lot.

For more information visit U.S. Marxist-Humanists website or email to arise@usmarxisthumanists.org

Speaker: Kevin Anderson
Location: Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library, 6501 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, CA 94609

By his last decade, 1872-83, when Marx again devoted himself to the extensive study of non-Western societies like India, Russia, and Latin America, he had moved away from the Eurocentrism and determinism found in some of his 1853 writings on British colonialism in India. This talk will examine three strands in Marx’s thought during his last decade:  (1) the changes introduced into the 1872-75 French edition of Capital, Vol. I, in order to specify that Western European development was not necessarily a model for the rest of the world; (2) new writings on Russia that suggested that its communal villages could be the starting point for a socialist development; and (3) the extensive 1879-82 notebooks on non-Western and precapitalist societies, many of them still unpublished in any language, which cover a far wider range of societies and historical periods, including Indian history and village culture, Dutch colonialism and the village economy in Indonesia, gender and kinship patterns among Native Americans and in ancient Greece and Rome, and communal and private property in precolonial and colonial Algeria and Latin America. The 1879-82 notebooks are to appear in the Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA2), a projected 114-volume edition of the whole of the writings of Marx and Engels.  Kevin Anderson, who teaches at UC-Santa Barbara, is the author of Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (2010) and a member of the editing group for the MEGA volume containing Marx’s 1879-82 Notebooks.

Date: Saturday, October 22, 2011
Time: 2:00 – 4:00 PM
Venue: Community Room A, Westside Pavilion, Los Angeles

Sponsor: West Coast Marxist-Humanists

As the U.S. marks the 150th anniversary of the Civil War this year, some attention has been given to African-American resistance to slavery and to the northern radical Abolitionists. Increasingly, it is admitted, even in the South, that the Confederacy’s supposedly “noble cause” was based upon the defense of slavery. Yet to this day this country continues to deny the race and class dimensions of the war. There is also a denial, sometimes even on the Left, of the war’s revolutionary implications, not only for African-Americans, but also for white labor and for the U.S. economic and political system as a whole. And there is still greater ignorance of the fact that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote extensively on the dialectics of race and class in the American Civil War, and that Marx participated in solidarity actions in support of the North by British and European workers, actions that also criticized Lincoln’s initial opposition to abolition and to the enlistment of African-American soldiers, while calling for the war to be conducted in a revolutionary manner. Marx’s Civil War writings show him as an impassioned opponent of slavery who sought to unite labor across racial lines in a common struggle for democracy and against capital, with many lessons for today.

Future Meeting (Saturday, December 10 at 2 PM, same location):  From Tahrir Square to Wall Street: Analyzing the Revolutionary Year 2011.

Note: Westside Pavilion is at Pico & Westwood Boulevards; Community Room A is on east side of the mall, third floor, behind food court; free parking in mall lot for the first 3 hours.

For more information visit U.S. Marxist-Humanists website or email to arise@usmarxisthumanists.org

The Brecht Forum
451 West Street
NYC 10014 NY
(212) 242-4201

Race, Class and Slavery:
Marx’s Civil War Writings, 150 Years Later
Kevin Anderson

Marx’s Civil War writings show an incomparable grasp of the dialectics of race and class that still speaks to us today. In these writings, which included journalism, letters, and passages in Capital, he took up several issues, among them:

1. how the revolutionary subjectivity of African-Americans was a driving force in American society;
2. how racism had held back the development of a labor movement in the industrial North;
3. how race had distorted the consciousness of the poor whites of the South;
4. how slavery and capitalism were intertwined;
5. how the struggle against slavery and racism in America was a global cause for labor.

Kevin Anderson teaches Sociology, Political Science and Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara and is the author of the recently published Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies.

Sliding scale: $6/$10/$15
Free for Brecht Forum Subscribers

Register Now!

Loyola University Chicago,
Water Tower Campus
26 E Pearson, Room 303-304
(1 block N of Chicago Ave; ½ block E of State St.)

Race, Class and Slavery:
Marx’s Civil War Writings, 150 Years Later
Kevin Anderson

Sponsored by Loyola University Department of Sociology and Department of Philosophy

Marx’s Civil War writings show an incomparable grasp of the dialectics of race and class that still speaks to us today. In these writings, which included journalism, letters, and passages in Capital, he took up several issues, among them:

1. how the revolutionary subjectivity of African-Americans was a driving force in American society;
2. how racism had held back the development of a labor movement in the industrial North;
3. how race had distorted the consciousness of the poor whites of the South;
4. how slavery and capitalism were intertwined;
5. how the struggle against slavery and racism in America was a global cause for labor.

Kevin Anderson teaches Sociology, Political Science and Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara and is the author of the recently published Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies.

Marx’s Civil War writings show an incomparable grasp of the dialectics of race and class that still speaks to us today. In these writings, which included journalism, letters, and passages in Capital, he took up several issues, among them:

1. how the revolutionary subjectivity of African-Americans was a driving force in American society;
2. how racism had held back the development of a labor movement in the industrial North;
3. how race had distorted the consciousness of the poor whites of the South;
4. how slavery and capitalism were intertwined;
5. how the struggle against slavery and racism in America was a global cause for labor.

Kevin Anderson teaches Sociology, Political Science and Feminist Studies at UC Santa Barbara and is the author of the recently published Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies.

• Mansour M., Iranian cultural worker
• Greg Burris, radical film critic just returned from the Middle East
• Kevin Anderson

Date: Saturday, July 23, 2011
Time: 1:00 – 3:00 PM
Venue: Community Room A, Westside Pavilion, Los Angeles

Sponsor: West Coast Marxist-Humanists

The Arab revolutions of 2011 have changed the face of regional and even global politics. Rooted in struggles against both political authoritarianism and predatory capitalism, they have mobilized broad sectors of the working class as well as students and intellectuals, especially in Tunisia and Egypt. As the mass unrest has spread to Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Syria, new contradictions have emerged, among them NATO intervention in Libya, the relationship of religion to society, the politics of ethnicity, and the support of some parts of the international left for authoritarianism. Two years ago, the mass democratic movement in Iran mobilized millions, but it ended in defeat, at least for now. This meeting will address the deeper meaning of two years of upheaval in the Middle East, assessing the prospects for democratic, labor, anti-capitalist, women’s, and youth movements in the region.

Suggested readings:

1. Preliminary Statement on the Upheaval in Iran (June 2009)
2. Support the Iranian People’s Movement Against the Repressive Regime (September 2009)
3. Arab Revolutions at the Crossroads by Kevin Anderson (April 2011)

Future Meetings (same time and location):

• September 10: On the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War: Marx’s writings on race, class, and slavery before and during the Civil War.

Note: Westside Pavilion is at Pico & Westwood Boulevards; Community Room A is on east side of the mall, third floor, behind food court; 3 hours free parking is available in mall’s lot.

For more information visit U.S. Marxist-Humanists website or email to arise@usmarxisthumanists.org

Date: Saturday, May 14, 2011
Time: 1:00 – 3:00 PM
Venue: Community Room A, Westside Pavilion, Los Angeles

Sponsor: West Coast Marxist-Humanists

In Capital, Vol. I, Marx describes commodity fetishism as a system in which human relations are as relations between things, because that is the reality of life under capitalism.  However, in a little-known part of this analysis of fetishism, he also sketches a positive alternative to capitalism, a society based on freely associated labor.  At a time when the Arab revolutions have toppled dictators and asserted the power of the working class, it is urgent to re-examine Marx’s vision of a truly anti-capitalist revolution.

Suggested readings: Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, chapter 1, section 4 (pp. 163-77, Fowkes edition, esp. pp. 171-3)

Future Meetings (same time and location): June 11, PART 4: on Marx’s discussion of from each according to their abilities and each according to their needs – and the steps to get there – in Critique of the Gotha Program.

Note: Westside Pavilion is at Pico & Westwood Boulevards; Community Room A is on east side of the mall, third floor, behind food court; free parking in mall lot.

For more information visit U.S. Marxist-Humanists website or email to arise@usmarxisthumanists.org

- Mansour M., Iranian cultural worker
- Greg Burris, radical film critic just returned from the Middle East
- Kevin Anderson, author of Marx at the Margins

Date: Saturday, December 10, 2011
Time: 2:00 – 4:00 PM
Venue: Community Room A, Westside Pavilion, Los Angeles

Sponsor: West Coast Marxist-Humanists, an affiliate of the International Marxist-Humanist Organization

The Arab revolutions of 2011 have helped to touch off a global upheaval against neoliberal capitalism and for democracy. This meeting will reflect upon the events of the past year and prospects for the future of the burgeoning anti-capitalist movement.  

Note: Westside Pavilion is at Pico & Westwood Boulevards; Community Room A is on east side of the mall, third floor, behind food court; 3 hours free parking is available in mall’s lot.

For more information visit U.S. Marxist-Humanists website or email to arise@usmarxisthumanists.org

Date: Thursday, May 5, 2011
Time: 7:30 PM
Address: 451 West Street, NY, NY

Sponsor: Brecht Forum

As we mark the 150th anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War in the U.S., Anderson will examine Marx’s extensive writings on the Civil War, which focused on the connections of race, class, and slavery.  It will also discuss his writings on colonized societies and anti-colonial resistance, especially in India.  It will be argued that Marx’s general dialectic is not one of abstract universalism but has plenty of room for the specificities of nation, ethnicity, race, and colonialism, issues on which he makes important and original contributions.

Kevin B. Anderson is a Professor of Sociology, Political Science, and Feminist Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. His research and teaching interests are in social and political theory, especially Marx, Hegel, Marxist humanism, the Frankfurt School, Foucault, and the Orientalism debate. His work has concentrated on the Marxist, Critical Theory, post-structuralist, and post-colonial traditions and on the intersections of class, race, gender, and sexuality with social theory. His most recent book is Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies.

Sliding scale: $6/$10/$15
Free for Brecht Forum Subscribers