WWP and FIST at U.S. Social Forum in Detroit June 22-26 - click for events schedule

“Without a revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement” -- V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done

Sats Jan 24, Jan 31, Feb 7 and Feb 14 3:00 pm - 4 classes on:

The Capitalist Economic Crisis and the Fight Back:

A Revolutionary Marxist View

Discussions led by Fred Goldstein, member of WWP National Committee and author of Low-Wage Capitalism, Colossus with Feet of Clay.

Part I: The Nature and Causes of the Crisis	Part II: Restructuring of World Capitalism and the Basis for Fight Back
Part III: Lessons from Struggle History as a Guide to Future Fight Back	Part IV: Class Consciousness and Class Struggle

Full Size Videos

Part I: The Nature and Causes of the Crisis – Sat., Jan. 24

• The financial crisis and capitalist overproduction
• Credit, working class debt, militarism and the crisis of the profit system
• Bail outs of the bosses and the permanent crisis of capitalism

Part II: Restructuring of World Capitalism and the Basis for Fight Back - Sat., Jan. 31

• Collapse of the USSR and 1.5 billion workers added to the exploitable global work force
• Imperialist globalization, immigration, and world-wide wage competition
• Marx on wages; Lenin on imperialism and the coming revival of the class struggle
• The impoverishment of the multinational working class and the labor leadership

Part III: Lessons from Struggle History as a Guide to Future Fight Back - Sat., Feb. 7

• 1930s: San Francisco general strike, Flint sit-down strike, Woolworth’s sit-down strike
• The Civil Rights movement, the national liberation struggles of the 1950s and 1960s
• 1980s and beyond: from Minnesota packinghouse workers to New York transit workers
• Significance of the Million Workers March Movement

Part IV: Class Consciousness and Class Struggle --Sat., Feb 14

• Building a class-wide, multinational labor/community/movement alliance for struggle
• The right to a job, to occupy and run a work place, to housing, to universal medical care
• Fighting racism, national oppression, immigrant bashing, sexism and lgbt oppression
• Breaking out of the capital-labor framework, key to victory

Course Readings

Part 1: The Nature and Causes of the Capitalist Crisis

Readings: Fred Goldstein, Low-Wage Capitalism

• About this book, pp. v – x (this reading is just to get an overview of the book)
• A Note on the current capitalist crisis and low wages, pp. xi – xiii.
• Postscript: the crisis within the crisis, pp. xv –xx.
• Global expansion cannot dispel crisis of overproduction, pp. 67 – 71.

Read it Online Here

Optional Readings:

• Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter VI, The Buying and Selling of Labor Power http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm

Part II: Restructuring of World Capitalism and the Basis for Fight Back

Readings: Fred Goldstein, Low-Wage Capitalism

• Chapter I, Doubling of the global workforce, pp. 3 - 17.
• Chapter 5: Marxism and globalization, pp. 49 – 57.
  

Read it Online Here

Optional Readings:

• Low-Wage Capitalism Chapter 2: New global networks of exploitation pp. 19 – 26 (priority)
• Low-Wage Capitalism Chapters 3 and 4.

Read Low-Wage Capitalism Online Here

• Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto, Chapter I
  

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

• Karl Marx, Capital Vol. I Chapter XV, Machinery and Modern Industry, Section 7, Repulsion and Attraction of Working People by the Factory System
  

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm

• Vladimir Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Chapter V The Division of the World Among Capitalist Associations
  

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch05.htm

• Chapter VII Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism
  

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch07.htm

• Chapter X The Place of Imperialism in History
  

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch10.htm

Part III: Lessons from Struggle History as a Guide to Future Fight Back

• Low-Wage Capitalism pp. 173 – 209 and 237 – 244

Read it Online Here

Part IV: Class Consciousness and Class Struggle

• Low-Wage Capitalism: pp. 216-234, pp. 245-278

Read it Online Here

Further Readings:

• Sam Marcy, High Tech, Low Pay

Read it Online Here

All classes will take place at The Solidarity Center 55 West 17th St., 5th Flr., New York 10011, 212-627-2774

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Workers World Party
55 W 17th St
New York, NY 10011
212-627-2994
Fax 212-675-7869
E-mail: wwp@workers.org
Web: workersworld.net/wwp
Workers World Newspaper: www.workers.org
Contact a Workers World branch near you!

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