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Identity Politics, Intersectionality, and Class

Worker's power and class struggle in the U.S. are widely considered a thing of the past, swept away by the ruling class's quite successful Neoliberal project. In our talk, we will lay out a different analysis of the current economic period in the US, with an understanding that US production has not gone away, but has drastically changed. And with these changes Marx's fundamental analysis remains critically relevant: the working class, united as a class for itself, has the power to put capitalism in it's grave.

Bernie Sanders has said that he wants to ignite a “political revolution.” But what is a political revolution? In the Marxist tradition, it usually refers to the popular toppling of a government, but without any change in the economic and social structures of society—whereas a social revolution involves these more fundamental changes. This talk will explore the relationship between political and social revolution in the Marxist tradition.

Since the 2015 victory of the Syriza government in Greece, the rise of a new European radical left has shown the promise and the challenges of confronting austerity. Social democratic parties have long abandon their working-class followers, but Syriza's betrayal of its anti-austerity platform only goes to show that winning elections is not enough to confront the combined powers of the continental ruling class and its constellation of state apparatuses. This session will ask how left-wing electoral party formations such as Podemos in Spain, the Left Bloc in Portugal, Left Unity in Greece, Die Linke in Germany, among others, organize in order to strengthen social movements and the class struggle in place of coopting them.

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement

What leadership lessons we can learn from Lenin at the Third Comintern Congress.

A discussion on the struggle for black lives in the past, the present and into the future in America.

During the period of the Mexican Revolution, Ricardo Flores Magón and the Mexican Liberal Party built the first significant cross-border organization dedicated to international solidarity and anti-capitalism. Magonismo also became the foundation for radical politics for Mexican and Chicano working class movements in the United States. This talk will explore the development and evolution of Magonismo in the context of the rising workers' movement, the Mexican Revolution, and the cross-border experiences of Mexican workers in the United States.

Whereas the French, British, and other empires involved seizing vast swathes of the world's territories--and peoples--as colonies, the United States became an imperial power in a different era and in slightly different ways. This talk looks at the history of the US' rise as a world power, which involved establishing its own colonies, wars of conquest and occupation, and other strategies.

One of capitalism's most fundamental characteristics is its frequent descent into crisis. Nevertheless, crisis alone has not ended capitalism. In fact, the global 1% consistently resolves crisis on the backs of working people. This talk explores Marxist explanations of capitalist crises in order to better understand why they happen.

From Occupy Wall Street to Bernie Sanders, class inequality has returned to the forefront of popular consciousness after decades of pretending everyone is “middle class.” How do socialists define class and why do we place so much emphasis on it? How does class relate to other divisions in society such as race, gender, and sexuality?

The presentation will explain why socialists see rank and file workplace militancy as not only the most effective trade union politics, but as integral to the long term goal of fundamental transformation of society. It will draw from current and historical lessons of organized socialists who have operated toward these ends, with a goal of facilitating discussion on the challenges that current activists face.

From the earliest years of enslavement in North America, Africans fought back and also debated the best ways to resist. This talk will focus on the most militant form of resistance -- collective revolt -- including the course and consequences of some major revolts and, as far as we can reconstruct them, the ideas that led the rebels to rise up in the ways they did.

Marx devoted his writing and his life as a revolutionary to the liberation of humanity from the oppression and exploitation of capitalism--to creating a society "in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all." At the same time, Marx argued that humanity cannot liberate itself through the power of thought alone: "it is not the consciousness of [human beings] that determines their existence but their social existence that determines their consciousness." This talk will explore the relationship between these two aspects of Marx's thinking. It will address assertions that Marxism is "deterministic" and assess Marx's claim that "human beings make their own history" but not under conditions and circumstances of their own choosing. It will emphasize the relevance of Marx's theoretical analysis to today's political struggles.

The "Work" of Life: Bread, Liberation, and Social Reproduction