For Discussion…

WHO ARE WE?

Naturally, many Marxist trends have developed over the years, and new ones are on the rise today. We see ourselves as a left unity project, initiated first by CCDS and now assisted by Liberation Road and others. Everyone who wants to see this project and its goals succeed are welcome here. A PDF flyer file for spreading the word is HERE.

Founder: Carl Davidson.

Initial Core Group: Linda Alcoff, Mark Alper, Gar Alperovitz, Burton Lee Artz, Salvatore Babones, Cameron Baron, Rose Brewer, Renate Bridenthal, Paul Buhle, Roderick Bush, Dominique Caouette, Orlando Caracas, Dana Cloud, Michael Duff, Bill Fletcher, Jr.,  Sidney Gluck, Jon Gobeil, Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Larry Hanley, Jerry Harris, Richard Huggins, Bill Fletcher, Je.David Fryett, Mark Johnson, Timothy Johnson, Keith Joseph, Athina Karatzogianni, Gavin Kitching, Martin Lampter, Lauren Langman, Ken  Lawrence, Marnia Lazreg, Kathy McAfee, Peter Mclaren, Bharat Mehra, Hannah Miyamoto, Gregory Morales, Joshua Morris, Kathleen Newman, Jonathan Nitzan, Bertell Ollman, Juan Pablo Ochoa, Tom O’Donnell, Teresa Pac, William Pelz, Andrew Perchard, Sanjay Perera, Jeff Perry, Frank Phelan, Garry Potter, Zach Robinson, Melvin Rothenberg, Saskia Sassen, Ellen Schwartz, Justin Schwartz, David Schwartzman, David Schweickart, Helena Sheehan, Navin Singh, Geoffrey Skoll, William Tabb, Harry Targ, Bharat Thakkar, Joseph Varga, Rob Watts, David Williams, Richard Wolff.

 

Latest Video Classes

introducing Block & Build: Left Strategy for the MAGA Era

Assessing the Legacy of Frantz Fanon with Peter Hudis

After Capitalism: Where Do We Want to Go? How Might We Get There? By David Schweickart

Nancy Fraser On Capitalism, Gender Oppression, Marxism, And The Post-Left Populist Moment Click HERE for video.

Dannie Glover Talks with Harry Belafonte. An hour long, PBS-TV program provided a rare look inside the life and times of the legendary Harry Belafonte. Taped on November 2, 2000 at The Art Institute of Chicago.

David Harvey on the Grundrisse and Becoming A Marxist David Harvey recalls the formation of his Marxist ideas, intellectual influences, and writing. He also talks about the growth of the populist right and how that is connected to geographical electoral splits

Amiri Baraka’s Blues People Very Important Book! Amiri Baraka (1934 – 2014), widely considered to be the father of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), was an award-winning poet and playwright, educator, activist, and critic whose career spanned 52-plus years; his over 35 published works played an innovative, essential role in transforming Black America. 60 minute YouTube discussion.

Black History Special: 130 Videos on the Civil Rights Movement. The Vimeo Archive was created by veterans of the Southern Freedom Movement (1951-1968). It preserves and makes available original-materials, histories, narratives, remembrances, and commentaries related to that movement. It is where we tell it like it was, the way we lived it, the way we saw it, the way we still see it.

CANNIBAL CAPITALISM Leading Marxist feminist theorist Nancy Fraser charts the voracious appetite of capital, tracking it from crisis point to crisis point, from ecological devastation to the collapse of democracy, from racial violence to the devaluing of care work. 90 minutes, with Q&A;

Amílcar Cabral is introduced here as a radical anti-colonial theorist and National Liberation Marxist revolutionary. We discuss his early life and education, his formation of the PAIGC (African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), and his writings. Video, 30 minutes.

DEACONS FOR DEFENSE is a 2003 television drama film directed by Bill Duke. The film stars Forest Whitaker , Christopher Britton, Ossie Davis, Jonathan Silverman, Adam Weiner, and Marcus Johnson. Based on a story by Michael D’Antonio, the teleplay was written by Richard Wesley and Frank Military. The film is loosely based on the activities of the Deacons for Defense and Justice in 1965 in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The Deacons were an African-American self-defense organization founded in 1965 to protect activists working in the Southern Civil Rights Movement. One hour, 40 minutes.

Karl Marx – Smashing Documentary Learn a lot about Marx in 30 minutes.

King in The Wilderness (2018) This feature film, nearly two hours, chronicles the final chapters of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life, revealing a conflicted leader who faced an onslaught of criticism from both sides of the political spectrum. While the Black Power movement saw his nonviolence as weakness, and President Lyndon B. Johnson saw his anti-Vietnam War speeches as irresponsible, Dr. King’s unyielding belief in peaceful protest became a testing point for a nation on the brink of chaos.

Miliband, Poulantzas and Laclau Discussion and debate on governing power in the advanced capitalist state. 30 minute introduction.

The Real Story of the Black Panther Party. Dr. Curtis Austin tells his story of being labeled a ‘felon’ as a result of his research on the Black Panther Party. Dr. Austin details the major successes of the Black Panther Party and the key action behind those successes. 13 minutes, good discussion starter.

BILL FLETCHER JR: RACE AND LABOR. Fletcher enlightens us with some little known history of how racism has been used since Europeans first came to the western world to control the working class. This analysis illuminates precisely why Capitalism cannot exist without racism. Contrary to what many may think, the concept of “white” which did not previously exist was invented for this purpose, and did not necessarily refer to skin color. The first Africans were brought over as indentured servants and became chattel slaves only later as the American caste system evolved. 80 minutes.

Covid, Capitalism & Ecology Mike Davis and Rob Wallace, each of whom has new books out on this subject, are the two leading left wing writers on the issue of the pandemic in the world. 90 minutes

Eric Hobsbawm: The Consolations of History In this 80 minute video, Anthony Wilks traces the connections between the events of Eric Hobsbawm’s life and the history he told, from his teenage years in Germany and his communist membership, to the jazz clubs of 1950s Soho and the makings of New Labour, taking in Italian bandits, Peruvian peasant movements and the development of nationalism in the modern world, with help from the assiduous observations of MI5.

Capital, All Three Volumes? Let the best teacher today, David Harvey, take you though it, chapter by chapter.

10 Documentaries for Teaching African American History since 1865. These documentaries focus on African American history since 1865. They are short (2 hours or less), accessible, emotionally powerful for viewers, and not overly specialized in their focus. Students can stream, either through Netflix, YouTube, or the educational film database Kanopy, which also includes film transcripts

David Schweickart: What’s Wrong with Capitalism? One-hour video lecture. SCHWEICKART is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He holds Ph.D’s in mathematics and philosophy. He is the author of After Capitalism (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). His primary focus has been on developing and defending, as both economically viable and ethically desirable, a socialist alternative to capitalism, which he calls Economic Democracy.

JERRY HARRIS, GLOBAL CAPITALISM AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY. 75 minute presentation of the author’s new book, with Q&A;, covering the history of the interconnected development of democracy with economic systems of the centuries, and the role of democracy in anti-capitalist strategy. Excellent for study groups reading the book.

THE PRECARIAT, THE NEW YOUNG & DANGEROUS CLASS An 11 minute discussion starter. Author Guy Standing points in this interview the emergence of a new class structure that starts when neoliberals took control over the economy and politics back in the 80s and it´s consolidated with the actual global crisis. The common element of this new class is its rejection of neo-liberalism and social democracy and is becoming aware that it is a class for itself, favoring the emergence of new political forces like Podemos, SYRIZA and Left Ecology and Freedom in Italy. Guy Standing is an economist, professor at the University of London and founder / co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network.

THE WORKING CLASS TODAY. David Harvey explain that organizing workers today might better be done by urban neighborhoods than factories. 20 minutes.

DEMOCRACY, NATURAL RIGHTS & 21ST CENTURY SOCIALISM. A 20 minute video talk by Carl Davidson at the US Social Forum in Detroit. Good discussion starter.

Carl Davidson at Berlin’s Rosa Luxemburg Foundation on Mondragon’s Impact

 

Latest Discussion Documents

The Fox that Gnaws on America’s Brain: A Cult of Fear and Paranoia That Could Swing 2024

By Nina Burleigh…

…Studying media and the low-information voter

U.S. Chistians Pray for Putin 

Andre Gorz And The Path Between Reform And Revolution

By Mark Engler and Paul Engler. Via Jacobin. Editor’s note: This article is the first in a two-part series on the theory and practice of non-reformist reforms. The first part looks at the origins of the concept, examining the contributions of New Left theorist André Gorz. The second part looks at how the idea has been used since Gorz’s time and why it is relevant for movements today.

Michael Denning on Antonio Gramsci and Hegemony.

Interview; The great labor historian Michael Denning reflects on what Antonio Gramsci’s work has to tell us today. From Jacobin.

A Media Ceiling Is About To Fall In On Democrats

By Thom Hartmann: Without conservative talk radio on 1500 stations across the nation, Donald Trump would not have become President in 2016. He probably wouldn’t have even won the Republican nomination: rightwing talk radio was nearly 100% behind him in the primary. And Congress definitely wouldn’t be in Republican hands. Messaging matters, but having the messaging platform is step one. Media is critical to communication. The failure of wealthy people aligned with the Democratic Party to invest in radio infrastructure is coming home to roost again…

American Democracy Was Never Designed to Be Democratic

The partisan redistricting tactics of cracking and packing aren’t merely flaws in the system—they are the system. Louis Menand explains why in this recent New Yorker essay.  Strictly speaking, American government has never been a government “by the people.” This is so despite the fact that more Americans are voting than ever before.

SCIENCE FICTION AS RADICAL POLITICS. Who knew in this dark hour of the climate crisis hope would arrive in the form of a 563-page novel by a sci-fi writer best known for a trilogy about establishing a human civilization on Mars? But alas, that’s what Kim Stanley Robinson – the author of 20 books and one of the most respected science fiction writers working today — has given us with The Ministry for the Future. It’s a trip through the carbon-fueled chaos of the coming decades, with engineers working desperately to stop melting glaciers from sliding into the sea, avenging eco-terrorists downing so many airliners that people are afraid to fly, and bankers re-inventing the economy in real time in a desperate attempt to avert extinction. 

Why is the idea of ‘gender’ provoking backlash the world over?

Judith Butler describes how authoritarians are likening ‘genderism’ to ‘communism’ and ‘totalitarianism’

Media Studies: Why do people believe the ‘big lie’? Because Americans don’t trust the media. Essay from the Washington Post

GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT STRATEGY? Tactics Too? ‘One Against Ten, Ten Against One’ is the classic masterpiece from China in 1966. Here’s a short booklet, but long on ideas, old and new.

NOT A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS.  This article is adapted from the introduction to ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ’S latest book, Not A Nation of Immigrants (Beacon Press)

PROGRESS FOR PEOPLE OF COLOR DOESN’T COME AT WHITE FOLKS’ EXPENSE  A conversation with Heather C. McGhee’s book, ‘The Sum of Us,’  about the zero-sum thinking that has long dominated American attitudes to race and wealth—and how to organize to secure public goods for everyone.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED DURING THE ‘DAYS OF RAGE’? We all know about the Weathermen breaking windows. But what about the  concurrent ‘Rainbow Coalition’ action of some 10,000 that included SDS RYM2, along with the Panthers and Young Lords? This article rescues the full story.

US CAPITALISM’S HISTORY STARTS HERE. ‘Native Land and African Bodies, the Source of U.S. Capitalism’ by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. A book review from Monthly Review.

System Change: A Basic Primer to the Solidarity Economy Alternatives to capitalism are gaining adherents. Here we look at different systems or models of socialism, capitalism, and solidarity economy. By Emily Kawano and Julie Matthaei

RACIALIZED CAPITALISM DEBATE. The Hidden Stakes of the 1619 Controversy, an essay of the New York Times controversy over Black history, by David Waldstreicher in the Boston Review. Great discussion starter for many studies.

GREEN NEW DEAL: Carl Davidson’ New Slide presentation on what caused the crisis, what we need to deal with it, and how to get it. Excellent for people who are just learning about the topic. Article to go with the slides HERE.

How Feminism Became Capitalism’s Handmaiden – And How to Reclaim It Marxist philosopher Nancy Fraser explains how s movement that started out as a critique of capitalist exploitation ended up contributing key ideas to its latest neoliberal phase

CLARA ZEITIN ON THE RISE OF FASCISM. Written in 1923 when she as active in the Comintern.

THE HARD ROAD TO RENEWAL: Thatcherism And The Crisis Of The Left.  Stuart Hall’s Downloadable Book On The Political Impact Of Margaret Thatcher Has Established Him As The Most Prescient And Insightful Analyst Of Neoliberalism Through A Gramscian Lens.