Safia Albaiti
Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions
Prereq: None
How does Marxism explain ongoing economic crises and the resistance to it? How does the Marxist theory of social reproduction explain the escalation of attacks on women’s reproductive rights and the misogyny pushing them out of the public sphere during the current crisis? Is environmental degradation caused by having too many people on the planet or is it a result of a system built on the accumulation of profits? How does the Marxist labor theory of value explain the drive to lower wages and benefits for workers in the pursuit of profits, and how does the Marxist theory of imperialism help to explain why the United States is onshoring and rebuilding a manufacturing base within its borders after decades of pronouncements that the United States was a post-industrial country? How have Marxist theoreticians of the past, from Karl Marx to CLR James, explained the central role racism has played in the development of US capitalism? How does Marxism as a revolutionary guide to action explain the role of the working class in revolutionary struggle, past and present, and what it takes to make a political revolution into a social revolution? What will it take to get to a future sustainable society that puts the needs of humanity, from each according to their ability to each according to their need, over the dictates of profit making?
Through this discussion based series of classes, we will take on the Marxist theoretical framework for understanding the world and its many crises today.
Contact: Safia Albaiti, E62-631, 617 253-9747, SALBAITI@MIT.EDU