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New York City SPACE Winter Courses, 2006SPACE Winter Courses, 2006
Winter 2006 Courses, New York City THE SPIRIT OF UTOPIA MARX'S _CAPITAL_, VOLUMES II AND III ERICH FROMM'S ENCOUNTER WITH MARX AND FREUD FROM DADA TO ANTHROPOFFERJISM See course descriptions below. Please see the New SPACE website for additional information on courses and registration.______________________________________________________ Winter 2006 Talks THE EAST ASIAN CLASS STRUGGLE IN WORLD PERSPECTIVE GLOBAL BALKANS: Please see the New SPACE website for additional talks. THE SPIRIT OF UTOPIA Oscar Wilde famously said, "a map of the world without Utopia on it is not worth looking at.” Does Wilde’s impulse still have resonance in a culture that rejects the possibility of a better society, let alone a perfected one? How can we still envision a Golden Age or a New Jerusalem at a time when the utopian imagination is being indicted for everything from Nazism to Stalinism and fundamentalist-inspired terror? We will reflect on the classics as well as contemporary sources of utopian literature and politics in an attempt to answer these questions. We will consider ancient and medieval discussions of a Golden Age and an Ideal City, how these were transformed into visions of bounty and cooperation in the age of Enlightenment, and the further evolution of utopian ideas into the political movements for socialism in the 19th century. We will also look at the growth of utopian communities in the United States such as Oneida and Brook Farm and their ideals of open sexuality and communal living arrangements. We will look especially at the confluence and conflict between Marxism and utopianism. How and why did the scientific, socialist, anarchist and feminist visions of utopia in the early part of the 20th century give way to dystopian literature and politics? We will also consider the last great utopian movement of recent times, the 1960’s student rebellion and counter culture and its aftermath. MARX'S _CAPITAL_, VOLUMES II AND III If you’ve read Volume I of _Capital_ and want to know how the book turns Volumes II and III of _Capital_ complement and complete the analysis begun in Volume I. Volume II situates Volume I’s analysis of the immediate process of capitalist production within the circulation and reproduction processes. Volume III endeavors to show that real-world phenomena do not contradict, but are “forms of appearance” of, the “essential” relations and categories developed in Volume I. We will begin with a 6-week survey of Volume II, focusing on the circuits of capital, the concept of productive labor, and the reproduction schemes. In connection with the latter, we will also discuss the debate over underconsumptionism, from Luxemburg to Hardt & Negri. The remaining 9 weeks, devoted to Volume III, will concentrate on the appearance of surplus-value as profit; the distribution of surplus-value within the capitalist class; Marx’s law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit and crisis theory; and his argument that capitalism’s production relations (not only its relations of income and wealth distribution) are historically specific and transitory. We will also critically examine critics’ persistent efforts to prove that Marx’s account of the transformation of values into production prices, and his theory of the falling rate of profit, are internally inconsistent. Andrew Kliman has taught courses on _Capital_, Volume I and John Holloway’s _Change the World Without Taking Power_ at the New SPACE. A professor of economics at Pace University, he has published extensively on Capital, crisis theory, and value theory. Co-editor of _The New Value Controversy and the Foundations of Economics_ (2004), he has recently finished a book that reclaims Capital from the myth of internal inconsistency. Many of Kliman's writings are available at his website: http://akliman.squarespace.com. ERICH FROMM'S ENCOUNTER WITH MARX AND FREUD In the 1930’s, Erich Fromm, as a member of the Frankfurt School, was one of the first to try to integrate, insights from Marx and Freud. His writings analyzing the psychological roots of authoritarian socio-political systems, such as fascism and Nazism, remain seminal. In this course, we will explore the contemporary relevance of Fromm’s ideas to understanding fundamentalist movements and systems. We will also explore his concepts of social character and the social unconscious; that is, how social structures may mold people to "want to do" what they "have to do" and how strivings for freedom may become largely unconscious – and yet continue to exist. A central question will be: How can these concepts contribute to understanding current social realities and to efforts to create social conditions that support the full development of, as Marx put it in 1844, "a really individual communal being" for whom "the greatest wealth" is "the other person"? Readings will include Fromm’s classic work, _Escape from Freedom_, and _Beyond the Chains of Illusion: My Encounter with Marx and Freud_. Charles Herr, a graduate of the William Alanson White Institute’s Program in Psychoanalysis, is a clinical psychologist and interpersonal psychoanalyst. He has life-long interests in the work of Erich Fromm, the humanism of Marx, and the radical transformation of society. He is also involved in studying the work of Raya Dunayevskaya, Paulo Freire, Eugene Gendlin and Marshall Rosenberg. FROM DADA TO ANTHROPOFFERJISM Dada spoke of the violence of everyday life, of disrupting and destructing history; this destruction is a desire to change the world. Dada was a movement that obliterated its memory, but left traces of influence that are visible in the practices of aesthetic revolutionaries throughout the 20th century and today. In this course, we will explore both the Dadaist movement, birthed in Zurich midst the horrors of World War I, and its traces of influence in anti-capitalist artists groups and cultural projects that exist outside of "the art world" and the apparatus of the state. We will survey the work of the Lettrists and Situationists; Gustav Metzger’s theories on Erika Biddle is an artist, editor and writer living in New York City. A founding member of Artists in Dialogue, which is committed to the co-articulation of art and politics, she also works with the radical book publisher Autonomedia. Her video work has been shown in such venues as White Box, Capsule Gallery, Artists Space, Diorama Arts Center, the Cinema Nouvelle Generation Film Festival, Guestroom, and the DUMBO Short Film and Video Festival. New SPACE classes and talks meet at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & The New SPACE The New SPACE teachers, speakers, and organizers include: Stanley Aronowitz, Erika Biddle, Roz Bologh, Jack Z. Bratich, Stephen New SPACE Mission Statement The New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education (New SPACE) is a new anti-capitalist educational project dedicated to developing and advancing ideas for liberatory social change. Together with the new movements for global justice, we believe that "another world is possible" - a world free from the domination of capital and free for the flowering of human powers and talents. The New SPACE holds that free dialogue and the protection ofdissenting views are essential for the development of liberatory ideas and for forging real unity among those struggling for liberation. We reject the suppression of dissenting views and individuals in the name of "unity," convinced that such suppression is antithetical to the working out of real unity. "Freedom," as Rosa Luxemburg reminds us, "is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently." Accordingly, one distinguishing aspect of our mission is to create an educational space - not existent at present - in which pluralistic dialogue and dissident perspectives are respected and encouraged. The New SPACE will be a place for exploring challenging questions that today's movements confront, such as: How do we build non-hierarchical movements that can sustain themselves? How can such movements safeguard grassroots democracy? How do consciousness and ideas relate to movements for social transformation? Resolutely anti-authoritarian and non-sectarian, the New SPACE brings together anarchists, humanist Marxists, and others. All those who share our mission and goals are invited to join us as students, teachers, and partners in the development of this project. In particular, we will encourage and facilitate the participation of women, people of color, GLBT people and others who face exclusion and discrimination. We also envision a new space that young people, without ties to the old Left, will find welcoming. We seek, through our classes and other activities, to create an environment in which youth, working people from diverse backgrounds, New York City Please visit the New SPACE Pluralism Page: http://www.new-space.mahost.org/pluralism.html The New SPACE |
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