Book talks
Events
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‘Fake Work’ with Leigh Claire La Berge
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeA video of this September 24, 2025, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. Using the most banal of office settings - corporate documentation - in the most extraordinary of circumstances - a looming Y2K apocalypse, Leigh Claire La Berge's newly published Fake Work offers not only a unique experience of alienated labor, but ... Read more
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The Politics of Collecting with Eunsong Kim
Online Event - Zoom MeetingIn her new book, The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property, Eunsong Kim traces how racial capitalism and colonialism situated the rise of US museum collections and conceptual art forms. Ranging from the conception of philanthropy devised by the robber barons of the late nineteenth century to ongoing digitization projects, Kim provides a ... Read more
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Karl Marx in America with Andrew Hartman
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeA video of this October 26, 2025, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. Historian Andrew Hartman introduces his new book, 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 ... Read more
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Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary, with Mitchell Abidor
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeJoin us for a conversation with Mitchell Abidor, author of the forthcoming book, "Victor Serge: Unruly Revolutionary."
Today, thanks to his classic memoirs and novels, Victor Serge is highly esteemed by virtually all segments of the left. But who was this man, who led such a thrilling life on the frontlines of history? -
Hubert Harrison: Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism
Recording available on YouTubeA video of this November 8, 2025, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. Brian Kwoba's recently published Hubert Harrison: Forbidden Genius of Black Radicalism introduces the working-class journalist, activist, and educator Hubert Henry Harrison (1883-1927), who generated an array of visionary solutions to the systemic injustices of his day. After blazing a trail ... Read more
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Capitalism and the Politics of Nature with Alyssa Battistoni
Recording available on YouTubeRescheduled to November 16 / In her new book 'Free Gifts,' Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to place value on nature. But the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. Recovering and reinterpreting classical economists' idea of "free gifts of nature," Battistoni builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking.
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New Studies on the Left: A Panel Discussion
Online Event - Zoom MeetingVirtual EventContributors Erica Carter, Jay Jurie, Paul Krehbiel, Harry Targ, Janet Tucker, Meta Van Sickle join editor Carl Davidson for a discussion of the latest New Studies on the Left. Contributors to this edition address four related themes: "Analysis and Global Reach," "Labor Rising Helps Everyone Else," and "Civil Society and Campaigns on Social Terrain," and ... Read more
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Extraction: A Book Talk with Author Thea Riofrancos
Recording available on YouTubeVirtual EventBook Event or PanelThea Riofrancos, author of 'Extractions,' unpacks the challenges of "green capitalism" through the lens of lithium, a so-called "critical mineral" essential for its role in decarbonizing one of the most polluting sectors: transportation.
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‘Black History Is for Everyone’ with Brian Jones
FeaturedSee link above to watch the recording on YouTubeBook Event or PanelA video of this May 2, 2026, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. Longtime educator Brian Jones explores how the study of Black history challenges our understanding of race, nation, and the stories we tell about who we are. In Black History Is for Everyone, Jones offers a meditation on the power of ... Read more
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Mikhail Baitalsky’s ‘Notebooks for the Grandchildren’
Online Event - Zoom MeetingVirtual EventBook Event or PanelTranslator Marilyn Vogt-Downey presents a poignant memoir by Mikhail Baitalsky, a Ukrainian survivor of the 1930s purges in Soviet Union. 'Notebooks for the Grandchildren' is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to understand what went wrong after the great Russian Revolution of 1917.
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Capitalism: The Insatiable Machine with Trevor Jackson
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeBook Event or PanelJoin us for a conversation with Trevor Jackson on his book 'The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World.' Full of memorable characters and lively vignettes as well as sweeping quantitative analysis and historical synthesis, The Insatiable Machine makes clear that capitalism is neither a natural, permanent, nor inevitable feature of human life but rather an economic system that has a history. And just as it was made by people, it can also be unmade by them.
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Refusal of Work: The Writings of Harry Cleaver
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingVirtual EventBook Event or PanelJoin editors Robert Ovetz and Kevin Van Meter for a discussion of Points of Departure: Refusal of Work and the Crisis of Capitalism: The Collected Writings of Harry Cleaver, a definitive collection of Harry Cleaver’s best unpublished, translated, or lesser known writings – both historical and current – on the refusal of work, class composition and “inversion of the class perspective,” the crisis of capitalism, and the ongoing necessity of re-reading Marxist theory.
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‘The Future of Revolution’ with Jasper Bernes
FeaturedVirtual EventBook Event or PanelHow might a twenty-first-century revolution against class society succeed? Join us for a conversation with Jasper Bernes, author of The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising. Communism comes from the future, but its hopes haunt our past. Bernes reads the revolutionary history of workers' councils and communes in the light of thinkers from Karl Marx to Paul Mattick and C.L.R. James.
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