[Chicago] A Planet at Risk: Capital’s Drive for Infinite Expansion in a World of Finite Limits
Series of Fall/Winter 2021 Discussions by Chicago IMHO
Re-Thinking Socialism in Light of Today’s Attack on Democracy
Today democracy is under attack, from the white supremacist Right and others in the U.S. to authoritarian regimes in Russia, China and beyond. To what extent is the struggle for socialism central to winning the battle for democracy, and what conception of socialism is most adequate for meeting this challenge today?
Meetings via ZOOM
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Most suggested readings are available from the International Marxist-Humanist Organization
Session 5: December 20, 2021, 6:30 pm
A Planet at Risk: Capital’s Drive for Infinite Expansion in a World of Finite Limits
Capital’s drive to increase wealth in monetary form is placing the future of life on this planet in jeopardy. We will explore this crisis in light of the recent discovery of Marx’s Notes on Ecology, which focuses on capital’s destruction of the metabolic relation between humanity and nature.
Readings: 1) Kohei Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism, chapter 6, “Marx’s Ecology after 1868;” 2) Heather Brown, “Capital’s Treadmill of Growth and Destruction” (2020).
Session 6: January 10, 2022, 6:30 pm
Beyond Capitalism: Is Freedom Compatible with the Law of Value?
Capitalism is a global system, based on extracting maximum economic value from the producers in the shortest amount of time. To what extent does an exit from capitalism hinge on breaking from this principle of value production, and how can it be achieved?
Readings: 1) Marx, excerpts from Critique of the Gotha Program (1875); 2) Dunayevskaya, “A New Revision in Marxian Economics” (1944) and Women’s Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution, chapter 22, “The Grundrisse and Women’s Liberation: (1985).