Haymarket Books Live

Marx is often accused of what has been called a Promethean vision of human social organisation, namely that human beings, using their superior brains, knowledge and technical prowess, can and should impose their will on the rest of the planet or what is called ‘nature’ – for better or worse. On the 200th anniversary of his birth, Engels too must be saved from the same charge.Actually, Engels was well ahead of Marx (yet again) in connecting the destruction and damage to the environment that industrialisation was causing. Engels’ major work (written with Marx’s help), The Dialectics of Nature, written in the years up to 1883, just after Marx’s death, is often subject to attack as extending Marx’s materialist conception of history as applied to humans, into nature in a non-Marxist way. And yet, in his book, Engels could not be clearer on the dialectical relation between humans and nature. it's time to revise the revisionists. Engels and Ecology The Urban Political Ecology of Friedrich Engels - Camilla Royle This paper takes the 200th anniversary of Engels’s birth in November 1820 to rethink his contribution to what we might today call urban political ecology. Marxist thinkers within critical environmental geography, have long argued for a focus on the natural processes that constitute the urban environment, demonstrating how the urban is shaped by both social and ecological processes. Their approach is rooted in a dialectical rather than a mechanistic materialism. While some have cited Engels as an early advocate of these views, others – such as Neil Smith in Uneven Development – have been more critical of his views on nature, seeing them as representing a dualist approach alien to Marx’s understanding. This paper will address these debates by highlighting Engels’s work on housing conditions, air and water pollution as well as his writings on infectious disease pandemics of the time such as typhus and cholera. It will show how Engels’s approach to public health and his accusations of “social murder” perpetuated by the ruling class predates the analysis of structural violence developed by critical theorists of global health over a century later. It will suggest that Engels’s understanding of how capitalist social relations produced an urban environment detrimental to workers aligns with Marx’s views. PLEASE NOTE: All events for HM Online are free to register, however we would ask comrades who are able to please consider supporting the Historical Materialism project. Please consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism journal, published by BRILL, who are currently offering a 25% discount on individual subscriptions, valid until the end of the year. To use the offer, quote the discount code 70997 when subscribing at: www.brill.com/hima Also, please consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism book series through Haymarket Books. For $25 per month, this subscription gets you every new title from the Historical Materialism series when it is released (as long as your subscription remains active) plus a 50% discount on *all* Haymarket books titles via our website. Non-US subscribers will be charged an extra $20/month for international shipping. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/894-haymarket-book-club-historical-materialism-series Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/EbGrV9UzYo4 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

For the first HM online panel this year, please join us for a discussion of David McNally's book: 'Blood and Money: War, Slavery, Finance'. 'In most accounts of the origins of money we are offered pleasant tales in which it arises to the mutual benefit of all parties as a result of barter. In this groundbreaking study David McNally reveals the true story of money’s origins and development as one of violence and human bondage. Money’s emergence and its transformation are shown to be intimately connected to the buying and selling of slaves and the waging of war. Blood and Money demonstrates the ways that money has “internalized” its violent origins, making clear that it has become a concentrated force of social power and domination. Where Adam Smith observed that monetary wealth represents “command over labor,” this paradigm shifting book amends his view to define money as comprising the command over persons and their bodies.'(Text taken from the book cover.) Join us for this discussion with David McNally (author, editor of Spectre Journal, Professor of History at University of Houston), joined by Maia Pal (HM editorial board) & Tithi Bhattacharya. PLEASE NOTE: All events for HM Online are free to register, however we would ask comrades who are able to please consider supporting the Historical Materialism project. Please consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism journal, published by BRILL, who are currently offering a 25% discount on individual subscriptions, valid until the end of the year. To use the offer, quote the discount code 70997 when subscribing at: www.brill.com/hima Also, please consider subscribing to the Historical Materialism book series through Haymarket Books. For $25 per month, this subscription gets you every new title from the Historical Materialism series when it is released (as long as your subscription remains active) plus a 50% discount on *all* Haymarket books titles via our website. Non-US subscribers will be charged an extra $20/month for international shipping. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/894-haymarket-book-club-historical-materialism-series Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/v6psUWDkUjc Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join Critical Resistance and the AbolitionNOW coalition for the final session in their series of virtual teach-in's. ———————————————— The prison industrial complex (PIC) is sold as a solution that you turn to for all of your problems but in reality communities need specific solutions that are tailored and not carceral. This panel will explore what safety actually means and a vision for keeping communities safe from harm without prisons, police and systems of state punishment. ————————————————————— Speakers: Nia Umoja Solange Azor- BYP100 Mirian Porras - Poder Emma Moderator - Cory Lira - Critical Resistance ————————————————————— This event is presented by the AbolitionNOW Network and cosponsored by Haymarket Books, an independent, radical, non-profit publisher. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our continuing to do this important work. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/WLQqzuiTMYQ Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join leading ecosocialist authors and activists Andreas Malm and Thea Riofrancos for a discussion of how to stop the climate crisis. ---------------------------------------------------- From annual ‘once a centuries’ fires, to ‘storms to end all storms’ making landfall every hurricane season, the signs that capitalist climate change represents a civilizational threat have never been more ominously evident. It has become impossible to ignore the dire need to move beyond green tinkering to an overhaul of the entire system, lest we be left with a charred and blasted husk where once there was a planet. As the global fever rages, we are faced with the choice of "Ecosocialism or Barbecue." In his new book, Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency, leading environmental thinker, Andreas Malm points to the state mobilizations across the globe to combat the coronavirus as an example of the scale of intervention that will be required to execute the just-transition we need. If it is possible to conjure trillions of dollars to combat an invisible, epidemiological threat, why is the climate emergency not greeted with similar sized programs? Malm will be joined for this virtual teach-in by fellow activist and author Thea Riofrancos—whose new book Resource Radicals looks at lessons for our movement from the experience in Ecuador— for a conversation that will touch on this question and many more. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Andreas Malm is a scholar of human ecology, and the author of Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency, The Progress of this Storm and Fossil Capital, which won the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize. Thea Riofrancos is an assistant professor of political science at Providence College, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2020-2022), and a Radcliffe Institute Fellow (2020-2021). Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, green technology, social movements, and the left in Latin America. These themes are explored in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020) and her co-authored book, A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). She is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and serves on the steering committee of the organization's Ecosocialist Working Group. ---------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Andreas Malm's Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3704-corona-climate-chronic-emergency Order his other books: The Progress of this Storm: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3140-the-progress-of-this-storm Fossil Capital: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2002-fossil-capital Order a copy of Thea Riofrancos's "Resource Radicals": https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781478008484 Order her other books: A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3107-a-planet-to-win Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/HFK8BPQfyXE Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join independent artists Narcy and Lowkey for a wide-ranging conversation celebrating the release of Narcy’s debut book Text Messages. ---------------------------------------------------- Independent hip-hop artists Narcy and Lowkey on art, technology, empire, and the struggle to survive the end of consumer capitalism. ---------------------------------------------------- Text Messages is the first multi-genre collection by Montreal-based Iraqi hip-hop artist, activist, and professor Yassin “Narcy” Alsalman. Composed entirely on a smartphone during air travel and married to artwork from comrades, Narcy’s writing speaks of the existential crises experienced by diasporic children of war before and during imperialism in the age of the Internet. Narcy 's verses span the space between hip-hop and manifesto, portraying a crumbling, end-stage capitalist society, visions for a new reality, and exposes the myth of multiculturalism in post-9/11 North America. The wordsmith hollows and transmogrifies the grotesque excess of the West by juxtaposing McLife with images of death, destruction, and trauma in the East. From the depths of apathetic consumerism arises a voice of spiritual self-realization that explodes the misrepresented, mythical monolith of Islam in the West and with the rubble builds healing through intelligent resistance and radical love. ---------------------------------------------------------- Real name Yassin Alsalman, Narcy is a musician, director, professor, writer, and actor. He teaches a hip-hop production class and a cultural study of rap and politics at Concordia University. He is the cofounder of WeAreTheMedium, a culture point for publishing, media, and the arts. He currently resides in Montreal, has his heart in the Arab world, and is grounded on planet Earth. Most importantly, he is a father of two. Lowkey is a hip hop artist and political campaigner. He has worked with Immortal Technique , Wretch 32, Akala, Dead Prez and Outlawz. He is part of the super group Mongrel alongside members of the Arctic Monkeys, Babyshambles and Reverend And The Makers. The band released their album Better than Heavy in tandem with the Independent newspaper. In Canada order the book from Fernwood Publishers: https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/text-messages In the US and World: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1474-text-messages Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/1vo8CNFu2w0 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

The second in a series of Critical Conversations organized by Study and Struggle discussing prison abolition and immigrant justice. ————————————————————— The Study and Struggle program is the first phase of an ongoing project to organize against incarceration and criminalization in Mississippi through four months of political education and community building. Our Critical Conversations webinar series, hosted by Haymarket Books, will cover the themes for the upcoming month. Haymarket Books is an independent, radical, non-profit publisher. The third webinar theme is Deconstructing Settler Colonialism and Borders and will be a conversation about how settler colonialism and border imperialism are foundational pillars of the US prison industrial complex. It will include reflections on how the fight for abolition can better integrate a decolonial politics into our organizing against policing, prisons, and borders of all kinds. ————————————————————— Speakers: Kelly Lytle Hernández is a professor of History, African American Studies, and Urban Planning at UCLA where she holds The Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History. She is also the Director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. One of the nation’s leading experts on race, immigration, and mass incarceration, she is the author of the award-winning books, Migra! A History of the U.S. Border Patrol and City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles. Nick Estes is Kul Wicasa, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe born and raised in Chamberlain, SD next to our relative, Mni Sose, the Missouri River. His nation is the Oceti Sakowin Oyate (the Great Sioux Nation or the Nation of the Seven Council Fires). Nick is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico and a member of the Oak Lake Writers Society, a group of Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota writers. In 2014 he co-founded The Red Nation in Albuquerque, NM, an organization dedicated to the liberation of Native people from capitalism and colonialism. Harsha Walia is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism. Trained in the law, she is a community organizer and campaigner in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One Is Illegal and Women's Memorial March Committee. Lorena Quiroz is a 22-year Mississippi resident. Born in Ecuador, by way of New York, she’s an organizer and mother of three amazing girls; first generation Afro Latinas born in the beautiful Delta flatlands. She is the founder of the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity, an organization whose purpose is to amplify the voices of marginalized, multi-racial, and immigrant communities by active participation in civic engagement in deconstructing barriers that perpetuate racial, xenophobic, socio-economical, and gender identity and sexuality disparities and oppression. Christine Castro (moderator) is a former migrant student and current postdoctoral fellow, researching the intersections of industrial agriculture and police militarization. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/LlzPsVthhSo Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Authors Richard Seymour and Wendy Liu discuss how our social-media generated addiction to writing is ruining our lives, and what we can do to escape its vicious cycles. ---------------------------------------------------- What is the Twittering Machine? An addiction-machine organized around the first ever mass, open-air, collective writing experiment. A microcelebrity-farm, where the only incentive to be there is to cultivate, and destroy, a personal idol. A furnace of meaning, wherein the mass of information stands in inverse proportion to truth. A volatile combination of the stock market, 24 hour news and Neighborhood Watch. This is the social industry. It thrives as it occupies every corner of our lives with compulsive, wage-free writing. It programs our social lives by algorithm and code, subordinating us to mercurial hierarchies of status and visibility, and to the grammar of capitalism. With each new tweetstorm, it brings us ever closer to the edge. Faced with such a novel, unprecedented power, we are entitled to ask the minimum utopian question: what else could we be doing, if not this? ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Richard Seymour is a writer and editor based in London. He is the author of The Twittering Machine and is a founding editor of Salvage. Wendy Liu is a tech commentator, software engineer and former startup founder who left the tech industry to pursue a masters degree in inequality from the London School of Economics. She is the author of Abolish Silicon Valley (Repeater Books) and has written for Logic Magazine, Tribune, and New Internationalist. Her articles on tech worker union organizing have been featured in The Atlantic and CNBC.- --------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Richard Seymour's "The Twittering Machine": https://www.versobooks.com/books/3229-the-twittering-machine Order a copy of Wendy Liu's "Abolish Silicon Valley": https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9781912248704 ---------------------------------------------------------- This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books and Verso Books. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work. https://www.haymarketbooks.org https://www.versobooks.com Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/k4zu8Wvoepc Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join Chicago education justice organizers for a conversation about winning Black liberation in our classrooms, our communities and beyond. ———————————————— In recent years, Chicago-area parents, teachers, and youth have built successful grassroots campaigns to win reforms, challenge the priorities of city officials, and capture local elected offices. Educational justice and Black Liberation cannot be made in the classroom alone, at the ballot box alone, or even in the streets alone. Join this conversation with Chicago-area activists to learn more about how their recent work has unfolded, what they’ve learned, and what’s next. ———————————————— Speakers: Kaleb Autman is a Chicago-based creative director and producer, educator, writer, scholar, community organizer, and political strategist. His work focuses on (youth) incarceration, police violence, conscience media making, and social inequities. At the age of 18, this nationally published and internationally traveled social justice scholar has contributed to over 25 political campaigns, ranging from unseating a corrupt states attorney to delivering personal goods and community to people in developing countries. His work is built upon the necessity of relationships and accountability. He has been published by many outlets like Apple, BET, ABC, Truthout, and many more to come in the future. Stacy Davis Gates is the Vice President of the Chicago Teachers Union. In 2019, she helped to lead a 15-day strike and to negotiate an historic contract that provides for smaller class sizes, ensures a nurse and social worker in every Chicago public school, secures sanctuary protections for immigrant families, and supports students and families experiencing homelessness. David O. Stovall is Professor in the Department of Black Studies and in the Department of Criminology, Law & Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His scholarship uses Critical Race Theory to interrogate the relationship between race, place and school. In addition to his duties and responsibilities as a university professor, he works with students, teachers, parents and community stakeholders to abolish the school/prison nexus. Hosted by Bettina Love and Brian Jones ————————————————————— Produced by Haymarket Books, co-sponsored by the Abolitionist Teaching Network & the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important work. Haymarket Books: https://www.haymarketbooks.org Abolitionist Teaching Network: https://abolitionistteachingnetwork.org/ Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture: https://www.nypl.org/locations/schomburg Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/A2o0Fwbmu5g Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join Critical Resistance and the AbolitionNOW coalition for the fourth in their series of virtual teach-in's. ———————————————— During this session, we’ll take a deeper dive into the US imperialist project and its impacts. We’ll discuss resistance movements, transformative solidarity, and the fight for abolition————————————————————— Speakers: Lara Kiswani - Arab Resource and Organizing Center Nicolas Cruz - The Red Nation William Depoo - Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) Deborah - Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project Moderated by Woods Ervin - Critical Resistance ————————————————————— This event is presented by the AbolitionNOW Network and cosponsored by Haymarket Books, an independent, radical, non-profit publisher. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our continuing to do this important work. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/h3hwMJLO7tg Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join grassroots advocates for a conversation on ending the crisis of violence against Indigenous women and girls. In the United States, more than 4 in 5 Indigenous women have experienced violence, and more than 1 in 2 have experienced sexual violence. On some US reservations, Indigenous women are murdered at ten times the national rate. In Canada, Indigenous women are six times more likely to be murdered than non-Indigenous women and girls. In How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America, a new book from Haymarket and Voice of Witness, narrator Gladys Radek shares her own story of becoming an advocate for the countless missing and murdered First Nations women in Canada. In this roundtable conversation, Gladys will be joined by the book’s editor, Sara Sinclair, and other advocates based in the US and Canada to discuss the grassroots efforts currently led by Indigenous communities to find justice, truth, and healing for Indigenous women and their families. ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Gladys Radek (Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en First Nations) is a tireless grassroots advocate fighting for justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) in Canada. Gladys' niece Tamara went missing in 2005 at age 22 along the notorious Highway of Tears. This inspired Gladys to become a community activist and eventually a Family Advocate for the National Inquiry into MMIWG in Canada. Gladys is a co-founder of Walk4Justice, an organization created to fight for the families and all women who went missing or were found murdered, as well as to get all of the answers they deserve. With Walk4Justice, Gladys has crossed the country 7 times and has spoked to thousands of families whose lives have been impacted by violence perpetrated against Native women and girls. Sara Sinclair is an oral historian, writer, and educator of Cree-Ojibwe and settler descent. Sara teaches in the Oral History Masters Program at Columbia University. She has contributed to the Columbia Center for Oral History Research’s Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive, Obama Presidency Oral History, and Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project. She has conducted oral histories for the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and the International Labor Organization, among others. Sara is co-editor of Robert Rauschenberg: An Oral History, published with Columbia University Press in 2019. Find more information about Sara here and learn more about her Spring 2021 teaching at OHMA. Paula Julian is the Senior Policy Specialist for the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center (NIWRC). In her role, Paula assists with policy analysis and development, technical assistance and training, and the development of partnerships to strengthen laws, policies and responses addressing violence against American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian women. Her work has involved supporting Alaska Native advocates to establish the Alaska Native Women’s Resource Center and with Native Hawaiian advocates to form the Pouhana O Na Wahine (Pillars of Women) – both organizations dedicated to addressing domestic and gender-based violence in the Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian community. Prior to NIWRC, Paula worked with Sacred Circle. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/8mUaKdX-Ynw Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks