Reading Group
Events
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Reading ‘Karl Marx in America’
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupAn eight-week study of Andrew Hartman's recently published Karl Marx in America. To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long viewed the United States as the quintessential anti-Marxist nation, but Marx’s ideas have inspired a wide range of people to formulate a more precise sense of the stakes of ... Read more
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Marxist Psychology: Vygotsky’s Cultural-Historical Theory
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupA six-week workshop with Carl Ratner, in which we will seek to solve the riddle Marx posed in his first thesis on Feuerbach: "in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such." Exploring a materialist theory of subjectivity which does know sensuous activity, we will see how historical materialism can be extended to reveal how it is compatible with psychology and how human psychology is itself a historical-materialist phenomenon.
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Immigration and Chicano/Latin American Liberation: Repression & Resistance
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupTuesdays, 7-9 pm ET Join us for an overview study of the relationship between Mexican immigration and the United States: its colonial foundation, vibrant new communities, cyclical labor exploitation, and state-sanctioned repression, liberation struggles. The Chicano liberation movement emerged as a direct response to this, and its legacy is critical to understanding immigration struggles today ... Read more
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Social Reproduction Theory with Lisa Maya Knauer.
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupKarl Marx only sketched the concept of social reproduction in very broad terms, but it was taken up and expanded upon by Marxist and radical feminists, starting in the 1970s and 1980s. They argued that women’s oppression under capitalism is linked to their role in social (as well as biological) reproduction. This reading group will look at one of the germinal texts of social reproduction theory: Lise Vogel’s groundbreaking 1983 work, Marxism and the Oppression of Women.
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Marx’s Capital, Vol. II – On the Circulation of Capital
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupA ten-session study group covering Marx's Capital, Volume II, The Process of Circulation of Capital. Marx addresses the question: How can the reproduction of society as a whole take place, if there is no conscious social planning that ensures that all needs are met, in the necessary proportions, such that life can persist and the capitalist relations of production be sustained? We discover the answer, but we also learn of new contradictions and sources of crisis inherent to capitalist society.
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Hegel for Radicals: The Philosophy of Right
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupThe MEP’s recurring series Hegel for Radicals continues ten sessions on Hegel’s 'Philosophy of Right', a treatise on the meaning of freedom and the kind of institutions that are required for its realization. Our study is inspired by the insight of Andy Blunden, in his recent book, 'The Capital-Logic Debate', that the key to understanding Marx’s dialectical method in his investigation of Capital lies in understanding the method Hegel employed in the Philosophy of Right.
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Reading Science Fiction and Speculative Literature Politically – Spring 2026 Edition
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupAlternate Mondays, next on June 15, 5-6:30 pm ET MEP's alternative literature group begins a new series of novels, short fiction and non-fiction. Speculative fiction, reborn from traditional science fiction, and also known by its alter ego "visionary fiction" and other identities, including horror, more than ever offers space for exploration of class, race, gender, ... Read more
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Topics in Strategic Studies – Spring 2026 Series
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupWe are currently reading 'The Choice of Civil War' by Pierre Dardot et al. Alberto Toscano calls this work "a trenchant and provocative study of the symbolic, legal and material violence that has been deployed over the past half-century to secure the rule of capital across the planet. The Choice of Civil War breaks with antiseptic images of neoliberalism as the production of docile subjects or the marketization of everyday life, revealing it as the theory and practice of class warfare."
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Muskism, Global Trends, and Political Strategy Today
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupWe are currently reading 'The Choice of Civil War' by Pierre Dardot et al. Alberto Toscano calls this work "a trenchant and provocative study of the symbolic, legal and material violence that has been deployed over the past half-century to secure the rule of capital across the planet. The Choice of Civil War breaks with antiseptic images of neoliberalism as the production of docile subjects or the marketization of everyday life, revealing it as the theory and practice of class warfare."
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A People’s Guide to Capitalism
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupSummer introductory sessions on the political economy of capitalism: In ten weekly sessions starting June 8, we will read and discuss Hadas Thier's A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics. This work offers a lively, accessible, and timely guide for those who want to understand, dismantle, and replace the world of the 1%.
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Monthly Literature Group: ‘Tijuana Straits’
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupThe MEP Literature Group's new monthly series meets on or about the last Saturday of each month. Our August selection is 'Tijuana Straits' by Kem Nunn, a noir fiction set along the US-Mexico border.
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Get blood and consciousness moving with “Ring Shout”
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupNext on Monday August 31, 5-6:30 pm ET for Ring Shout Reading Science Fiction Politically, Midterms edition explores climate crisis, artificial intelligence in politics, a reawakened Klan, and more by way of four recent novels and selected short stories. Our next book, Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Cleark, poses a well-timed question: consider with us, what ... Read more
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Topics in Political Strategy: ‘Nerd Reich’ and ‘We Still Here’
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupAs we head toward the US fall elections, the Topics in Political Strategy reading group will continue our mix of currently-published substantive analytical pieces and a monthly book-length treatment of important topics of political theory. Readings include 'We Still Here' by Marc Lamont Hill, and 'The Nerd Reich' by Gil Duran.
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Elections and Tech Futures: Read Malka Older’s ‘Infomocracy’
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupOctober Selection for the Science and Visionary Fiction Reading Group Alternate Mondays, Next on October 12, at 5 pm ET "It’s been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, ... Read more
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Topics in Political Strategy: End Times Fascism
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingVirtual EventReading GroupAs we head toward the US fall elections, the Topics in Political Strategy reading group will continue our mix of currently-published substantive analytical pieces and a monthly book-length treatment of important topics of political theory. Readings include 'We Still Here' by Marc Lamont Hill, and 'The Nerd Reich' by Gil Duran.
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