Labor History
Events
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Commons, Commoning, Communism
Online Event - Zoom MeetingBefore the advent of capitalism, much of humanity produced their immediate livelihoods on lands and with tools to which they either had rights of use or held as individual property. All that came to a violent end with what Marx preferred to call the "original expropriation" (often misleadingly termed "primitive accumulation"). This reading group will explore the historical roots and persistence of such crimes and the resistance they evoke by reading together Ian Angus's recently published The War Against the Commons, Peter Linebaugh's Stop Thief! and related texts.
Free – $80 -
What Do We Need Bosses For? with Pete Dolack
Online Event - Zoom MeetingPete Dolack's latest book, What Do We Need Bosses For?: Toward Economic Democracy, analyzes past and present efforts to establish systems of economic democracy on a national or society-wide basis. In this context the book dissects the mounting inequalities of capitalism and discusses theoretical ideas as to how we might organize a better world.
Free – $12 -
Commons, Commoning, Communism
Online Event - Zoom MeetingBefore the advent of capitalism, much of humanity produced their immediate livelihoods on lands and with tools to which they either had rights of use or held as individual property. All that came to a violent end with what Marx preferred to call the "original expropriation" (often misleadingly termed "primitive accumulation"). This reading group will explore the historical roots and persistence of such crimes and the resistance they evoke by reading together Ian Angus's recently published The War Against the Commons, Peter Linebaugh's Stop Thief! and related texts.
Free – $80 -
Commons, Commoning, Communism
Online Event - Zoom MeetingBefore the advent of capitalism, much of humanity produced their immediate livelihoods on lands and with tools to which they either had rights of use or held as individual property. All that came to a violent end with what Marx preferred to call the "original expropriation" (often misleadingly termed "primitive accumulation"). This reading group will explore the historical roots and persistence of such crimes and the resistance they evoke by reading together Ian Angus's recently published The War Against the Commons, Peter Linebaugh's Stop Thief! and related texts.
Free – $80 -
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Commons, Commoning, Communism
Online Event - Zoom MeetingBefore the advent of capitalism, much of humanity produced their immediate livelihoods on lands and with tools to which they either had rights of use or held as individual property. All that came to a violent end with what Marx preferred to call the "original expropriation" (often misleadingly termed "primitive accumulation"). This reading group will explore the historical roots and persistence of such crimes and the resistance they evoke by reading together Ian Angus's recently published The War Against the Commons, Peter Linebaugh's Stop Thief! and related texts.
Free – $80 -
Commons, Commoning, Communism
Online Event - Zoom MeetingBefore the advent of capitalism, much of humanity produced their immediate livelihoods on lands and with tools to which they either had rights of use or held as individual property. All that came to a violent end with what Marx preferred to call the "original expropriation" (often misleadingly termed "primitive accumulation"). This reading group will explore the historical roots and persistence of such crimes and the resistance they evoke by reading together Ian Angus's recently published The War Against the Commons, Peter Linebaugh's Stop Thief! and related texts.
Free – $80 -
Theodore Allen’s ‘The Kernel and Meaning’: A Strategic Critique of U.S. Labor History
Online Event - Zoom MeetingBefore Theodore W. Allen turned to his magnum opus, The Invention of the White Race, he drafted an essay "The Kernel and Meaning: A Contribution to a Proletarian Critique of U.S. Historiography." In it, he assessed how the industrial bourgeoisie successfully overturned plantation capital's rule while assuring its own ascendancy over the proletariat. Allen reviewed six commonly held explanations as to why, despite favorable objective conditions, the U.S. left and workers movements failed to establish socialism or even a permanent working-class party. Participants in this group will read and discuss the original, 160-page typescript of Allen's unpublished essay.
Free – $80 -
Commons, Commoning, Communism
Online Event - Zoom MeetingBefore the advent of capitalism, much of humanity produced their immediate livelihoods on lands and with tools to which they either had rights of use or held as individual property. All that came to a violent end with what Marx preferred to call the "original expropriation" (often misleadingly termed "primitive accumulation"). This reading group will explore the historical roots and persistence of such crimes and the resistance they evoke by reading together Ian Angus's recently published The War Against the Commons, Peter Linebaugh's Stop Thief! and related texts.
Free – $80 -
Commons, Commoning, Communism
Online Event - Zoom MeetingBefore the advent of capitalism, much of humanity produced their immediate livelihoods on lands and with tools to which they either had rights of use or held as individual property. All that came to a violent end with what Marx preferred to call the "original expropriation" (often misleadingly termed "primitive accumulation"). This reading group will explore the historical roots and persistence of such crimes and the resistance they evoke by reading together Ian Angus's recently published The War Against the Commons, Peter Linebaugh's Stop Thief! and related texts.
Free – $80 -
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AI versus Labor: Luddism and Beyond
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading Group8 weekly sessions starting Oct 1. Is Artificial Intelligence (AI, sic) really the dire threat to the future of humanity as even some of its proponents claim, or is it a more mundane and familiar threat to working people who face loss of their livelihoods and/or further speed-up and alienation? The entire history of industrial capitalism is punctuated by recurring waves of automation to reduce labor costs and turnover time, each time provoking strong resistance by the affected workforce. This reading group will probe the history both of AI and computer technology specifically and of working-class resistance to capitalist automation in general.
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Slavery and Capitalism: A Book Talk by David McNally
Recording available on YouTubeA video of this November 29, 2025, event is available on the MEP’s YouTube channel. A book talk by David McNally on Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History. McNally injects new life into Karl Marx’s writings on enslavement and labor, presenting a new, systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery—using colonial ... Read more
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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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‘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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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.
Free -
‘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.
Free