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

Although humanism was an important theme in Marx’s writings, in recent years radical thought has often rejected all forms of humanism, confusing socialist humanism with liberal or even conservative humanist narratives of individual agency in a Eurocentric context. This series will explore varieties of socialist humanist thought, from Marx’s own humanist writings extending through later socialist humanist thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Erich Fromm, E. P. Thompson, Lucien Goldmann, and Raya Dunayevskaya. In so doing, we will look at the challenges to humanism that have emerged from movements of the Left and from structuralist and post-structuralist thinkers like Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, and Antonio Negri, some of them connected to Maoism as well. We will also consider whether socialist humanism offers grounding for a contemporary radical politics that moves us beyond resistance and toward real human emancipation.

Barbara Epstein teaches at University of California, 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. Her presentation will concentrate more on the political ramifications for the Left of these debates.

FUTURE MEETING
Saturday, March 31, 2-4 PM, same location:
The Return(s) of Socialist Humanism and the Need for an Alternative, Part II
Speaker: Kevin Anderson, author of Marx at the Margins -

Kevin Anderson teaches Sociology, Political Science, and Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written on Marx, Hegel, the Frankfurt School, Foucault, and the Orientalism debate. His most recent books are Foucault and the Iranian Revolution (with Janet Afary, 2005) and Marx at the Margins (2010). He is a member of the U.S. Marxist-Humanists.  His presentation will concentrate more on the philosophical side of these debates.

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

  – 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

Marx from a Multiculturalist Perspective

First & Third Wednesdays, October 2011 – January 2012
6:30-9.00 pm @ Chicago Public Library
Harold Washington Library Center, 400 South State St. Chicago IL

 In an increasingly globalized world, the cross-cultural exchange of ideas and struggles between those in developed and developing countries takes on added importance. It is often overlooked that one thinker who had a lot to say about the role of multiculturalism in an increasingly globalized world was capitalism’s most important critic—Karl Marx. This series of six discussions will explore Marx’s lesser-known writings on nationalism, ethnicity, and non-Western societies that take on new importance in light of today’s realities. Readings will include excerpts from Marx’s works as well as Kevin Anderson’s new book Marx at the Margins. Readings are available from USMH.

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Books: Page numbers in the schedule refer to the following books. An earlier translation of Capital & other Marx readings are online at Marxists.org, & are linked in the schedule. Starred readings* are available by emailing USMH. The Anderson can be bought from USMH & as an e-book. The Dunayevskaya is also available from USMH.

• Anderson, Kevin. Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Print.
• Dunayevskaya, Raya. Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Print.
• Marx, Karl, Ben Fowkes, and Ernest Mandel. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol 1. Tran. Ben Fowkes. New York:NY: Penguin Classics, 1992. Print.

Schedule and Readings

October 19th, Room 7N-5 (7th Floor)

Marx’s Initial Response to the European Encounter with India & China.

Did Marx support the European colonization of Asia and Africa, or was he a sharp critic of it? How do his views speak to the today’s increasingly globalized world? This meeting will explore Marx’s writings of the 1850s on Asia, especially his response to the Sepoy revolt in India and the Tai’ping rebellion in China.

Suggested readings:

• Marx: British Rule in India (6/25/1853)
• Future Results of British Rule in India (8/8/1853)
• Revolution in China and Europe (6/14/1853)
• Marx at the Margins, pp. 9-41.

Leading the discussion: Peter Hudis, General Editor, The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg

November 2nd, Room 3N-6 (3rd Floor)

In Defense of National Self-Determination: Marx on Poland & Ireland.

Although Marx famously proclaimed, “Workers of the word, unite!” he also strongly supported struggles against national oppression and racism. This meeting will explore his defense of national liberation movements in Poland and Ireland and how he viewed their relation to the overall aims of the labor movement.

Suggested Readings:

• Marx: Proclamation on Poland (October 1863)*
• Letter to Engels (12/10/1869)
• Marx at the Margins, pp. 56-78, pp. 115-95.

Leading the discussion: J Turk, U.S. Marxist Humanists.

November 16th, Room 7N-5 (7th Floor)

Racism as the Achilles Heel of U.S. Society: Marx’s Writings on the Civil War

Marx was a strong supporter of the North in the U.S. Civil War, as seen in his journalism, his correspondence with Abraham Lincoln, and the text of his greatest theoretical work, Capital. This meeting will explore why Marx held that “labor in the white skin cannot be free where labor in the black skin is branded.”

Suggested Readings:

• Marx: Letter to Engels (8/7/1862)
• Marx at the Margins, pp. 79-114.

Leading the discussion: Miguel A. Rodriguez, student at Loyola University

November 30th, Room 3N-6 (3rd Floor)

The “Rosy Dawn” of Capitalist Accumulation: The Impact of Capitalism on the Developing World-

Why is each period of capitalist expansion accompanied by the penetration and destruction of non-capitalist economic formations in technologically less-developed countries? This class will explore the “so-called primitive accumulation of capital”—which Marx held accompanies all periods of renewed capitalist expansion.

Suggested Readings:

• Marx: Capital Vol. I, chapters 26 and 33 (pp. 873-76, pp. 931-42)
• Marx at the Margins, pp. 154-95.

Leading the discussion: Eileen Grace, Hobgoblin Collective

December 14th, Room 3N-6 (3rd Floor)

Marx on the Peasantry and Communal Agrarian Relations: Pillar of Reaction or Force of Revolution?

Are peasant movements inherent conservative and patriarchal, or are they a progressive factor in fostering social transformation—especially in the developing world? This meeting will explore Marx’s writings on the Russian peasantry and the liberatory potential of its communal social relations, composed at the end of his life.

Suggested Readings:

• Marx: Draft Letters to Vera Zasulich (1881)*
• Marx at the Margins, pp. 224-236.

Leading the discussion: Ali Reza, Iranian activist: Solidarity with the People of Iran and their struggles for bread, freedom and democracy.

January 11th, Room 3N-6 (3rd Floor)

Marx’s Late Writings on India, China, Native Americans, and Islam-

Marx engaged in a series of important studies of indigenous cultures and non-Western societies in the last decade of his life as he searched for new pathways to liberation. This meeting will discuss this long-neglected dimension of his work speaks to debates over the meaning of multiculturalism today.

Suggested Readings:

• Marx at the Margins, pp. 196-224.
• Dunayevskaya, Raya, “The Last Writings of Marx” in Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution, pp 175-98 *

Leading the discussion: Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, author, Neither Victim nor Survivor: Thinking Toward a New Humanity

Sponsored by the U.S. Marxist-Humanists

Email: arise@usmarxisthumanists.org Website: www.usmarxisthumanists.org Phone: 773-561-3454

The inane politics of Newt Gingrich and his ilk is a symptom of the degeneration of U.S. capitalism, which has created a danger to humanity — Editors

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Answer: no, he is a real idiot. What to say of a man who, a few decades ago as leader of the Republicans, was able to shut down Washington, succeeding in paralyzing government agencies in a political dispute with the Democrats and the White House as a (rather delusional) show of political power? As a consequence, Mr. Gingrich, the “anti-government” ideologue, made everybody, that is, the public at large — contractors, veterans, retired people, businesses, school children, hospital workers and patients, etc. — keenly aware of how much the daily work of the government was vital for the everyday life of the whole nation. I don’t know of a worse piece of political “strategy” than that.

Now, in an interview for a pro-Israel political group, Mr. Gingrich calls the Palestinians an “invented” people. Not only is the man shameless in displaying his profound ignorance and bad faith in public, which is no surprise at all considering Mr. Gingrich himself and the party of the late Ronald Reagan and Bush, but he opens the way to the questioning of Israel itself as an “invented” state. Invented in fact in 1948!

One might begin to think that Mr. Gingrich is an “invented” candidate, invented by the Obama party to facilitate the reelection of a president whose politics of defending the interests of finance capital at all costs has alienated an important part of his support base.

Beyond the episodic nature of the opinions of an ignorant right wing politician (certainly a redundant phrase nowadays), the occurrence is a reminder of the pitiful state of the American political scene, where a man like Newt Gingrich, with his history of private and public scandals and demonstrated incompetence, is at this time a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination.

“When it rains, it pours”, as the saying goes. It appears that the current troubles of the U.S. are only in their initial stages: a general crisis of leadership is ever more patent. It is a crisis of the quality, intelligence and vision of those in positions of power, inside the state apparatuses, inside the party machines, etc, but also within the more restricted or “selective” power circles of the ruling class, right and “left,” conservative or liberal. And when compounded with the structural crisis, it is accelerating the debasement of the once “sole superpower.”

U.S. neoliberal capitalism has created its own Nomenklatura: Closed groups and closed circuits of economic, political and media power are alienated from society at large, from the daily troubles and struggles, from the hopes and needs of the working people. And it is more grave and dangerous that this Nomenklatura increasingly believes in its own fabrications and lies.

This is indeed a sign of a group of people that has exhausted its usefulness. The U.S. ruling circles show more and more signs that they are about to or have already exhausted their capacity to master the crises they are compelled to eternally produce and reproduce in order to sustain their power and the structures of power they depend upon. This is a ruling class clearly condemned – in the long run, if not sooner — to the “dustbin of history.” As the creator of instability for all and of insecurity and misery for the many, it wants to make sure by all means necessary that we all will go down with it.

Just as Mr. Gingrich once paralyzed a Democratic administration, they will act out their fantasies of omnipotence in the same “paranoid-schizophrenic” fashion as the present Republican candidate for the presidential nomination; that is, with acts of violence against a reality that stubbornly frustrates the final realization of their desires: the absolute and universal empire of the commodity form.

In fact, they have already deepened the economic crisis as a matter of policy or strategy: profit at all cost is both the means and the goal. Individuals, social groups and social classes, institutions, countries, and states must all serve the dictatorship of global capital or be disciplined and/or eliminated. Their unchecked power is more and more clearly a danger to us all. Their dream they are acting out is our collective nightmare.

– Paulo Morel is a Latin American writer

The Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, London in 1848.

The Chartist movement of the 1830s and 1840s went beyond 18th century popular radicalism toward socialism.  Leaders like George Julian Harney not only called for social revolution but also published Helen Macfarlane’s first English translation of the Communist Manifesto. This article was first published in The Platypus Review No. 42 (Dec. 2011-Jan. 2012) – Editors

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