[act-ma] May 2017 Center for Marxist Education Events Schedule

[Center for Marxist Education]

Center for Marxist Education

May 2017 Events Schedule


Thursday, May 4 | 7:00 – 8:30 PM

BookTalk: Capital

Sandeep Choubey

Capital is Karl Marx's magnum opus, and remains the best explanation of how
capitalism works and why this system is prone to cycles of booms and busts.
Join us for an engaging discussion of this still relevant text, twenty
pages at a time.


Wednesday, May 10

Committee for International Labor Defense

Business Meeting| 6:30 PM  (All are welcome.)

Educational | 7:00 – 8:00 PM

Defense Efforts in the McCarthy Era, Part 2

John Vago, decades-long activist for peace, democracy, labor, social
justice, against racism and imperialism, for socialism; in New York,
Philadelphia, and now in the Boston area.

At the last CILD educational, John Vago provided the historical back drop
for the McCarthy period. For the upcoming May 10 educational, John Vago will
finish the presentation and we’ll learn how he and his family were impacted
under McCarthyism. In this way we’ll get a glimpse of what imprisonment for
communists meant for the prisoners, their families, and defense efforts.



Saturday, May 13 | 3:00 – 4:30 PM

Report Back From China

Wadi’h Halabi, Economics Commission, CPUSA and CME

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the greatest step forward in the history
of humanity, not so much because it solved problems immediately (although
it did some, such as land reform), but for making it possible to address
problems that capitalism is incapable of doing, from jobs for all to
environment. Among thousands of legacies, the Revolution also created the
Communist Parties and the Communist International, and led to the formation
or transformation of unions worldwide. The Communist Party of China is
organizing forums to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Russian
Revolution. This is a report from one such forum, in Wuhan in late April.


Tuesday, May 16 | 7:00 – 8:30 PM

BookTalk: State and Revolution, Part 2

Eddie Carson, CPUSA, CME

Delve into Lenin’s premier work on the role of the state, the dire need for
a proletariat revolution, and the weaknesses of social democracy vis-à-vis
a capitalist framework in granting the rise of a working-class state. Lenin
addresses the criticisms of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, while offering
a crucial critique of bourgeoisie power.


Sunday, May 21 | 2:00 - 3:30 PM

Overcoming the Culture of Exploitation

Wadi'h Halabi, Economics Commission, CPUSA and CME

Strands of a spider's web can trap and kill long after the spider has died.
The same applies to the web of exploitation that ruling classes began to
weave from their earliest days. The Russian Revolution broke the main
strands of exploitation, such as the exploiters' 'bodies of armed men' and
their system of miseducation. But finer strands remained, from idealism to
inequalities such as between men and women or between intellectual and
manual labor. Remaining strands of capital's 'web of exploitation' affected
leaders' ability to speak the truth, and played a role in the collapse of
the Soviet Union and several other states like it. Identifying the many
strands of the culture of exploitation will help workers strengthen
conscious expression of working class power and avoid further defeats.
Based on presentations in China and dedicated to the memory of Richard
Levins.


Wednesday, May 24 | 7:00 – 8:30 PM

BookTalk: Capital

Sandeep Choubey

Capital is Karl Marx's magnum opus, and remains the best explanation of how
capitalism works and why this system is prone to cycles of booms and busts.
Join us for an engaging discussion of this still relevant text, twenty
pages at a time.


Saturday, May 27 | 3:00 – 4:30 PM

Red, Black and Queer

​Gerry Scoppettuolo, Workers World Party, ACT-UP
Red, Black and Queer is a slideshow presentation which demonstrates how
socialists and revolutionaries of all backgrounds brought the LGBTQ
struggle into the labor movement, deepening the class struggle in the
process. While extolling the leading role of the queer community, Red,
Black and Queer is careful to show that this fighting history of working
class people from all nationalities didn't happen by accident. The class
conscious intervention of socialists and communists in the labor movement -
and history itself - over many decades, was crucial in advancing LGBTQ
civil and human rights and liberation. It is these type of struggles that
will eventually contribute to establishing socialism in the area now known
as the United States and internationally.


Sunday, May 28| 6:00 – 8:00 PM

Lumumba ( <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx4Dxfk_sVA>Watch the trailer.)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRPYtkQon10>

Richard Pendleton,  CME

The story of political leader Patrice Lumumba, Congo's first prime minister
who helped lead his country to independence from Belgium in the late 1950s.
Lumumba's vision of a united Africa gained him powerful enemies: the
Belgian authorities, who wanted a much more paternal role in their former
colony's affairs, and the CIA, who supported Lumumba's former friend Joseph
Mobutu. This was in order to protect U.S. business interests in Congo's
vast resources and their upper hand in the Cold War power balance. During
the tenuous first six months of Congo's independence when civil war
threatened to erupt, Lumumba tried to quell hostilities but was eventually
betrayed by Mobutu whom he had appointed as head of the army. In 1961 with
several conspiracies occurring at once, Lumumba met a brutal death--a mere
nine months after becoming the country's first Prime Minister.
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