CSE Midlands

This term (Jan – April 2017) we are reading The Econocracy, by Joe Earle, Cahal Moran and Zach Ward-Perkins of the Post-Crash Economics Society at the University of Manchester.

The book gives a unique insight into the mindless indoctrination that passes as an education in the discipline of mainstream economics.

As the authors put it, ‘Economic experts are at the heart of econocracy. Yet their understanding of the world is often limited to a fixed set of models, taught in a manner that is almost completely disconnected from the real world. … The result of teaching students only the neoclassical way of thinking is that economic experts have no critical perspective on the limitations of their expertise. Most students are not even told that there are other ways to think about the economy and as a result they do not see economics as a subject with debate and disagreement. In the words of one bemused student, ‘I had always thought of economics as a lively debate. Until I started university, that is.’.’

9 March, 12.30: Introduction and Chapter 1

23 March, 1.00: The Econocracy.chs2.3., Muirhead Tower, University of Birmingham

6 April, 12.30: Chapters 4, 5, 6, University of Birmingham, room tbc

All welcome!

CSE Midlands are happy to welcome Michael Roberts, to present the main ideas of his new book, ‘The Long Depression’. 

CSE Midlands reading group have scheduled to read Michael Roberts’ The Long Depression: How It Happened, Why It Happened, And What Happens Next, published earlier this year (2016).

Adopting an ‘unapologetically Marxist perspective’, Roberts argues that the global economy remains in the throes of a depression, due to an ongoing problem of low profitability and high levels of debt; the only ‘solution’ to which will be yet another economic slump, which would need to destroy the value of existing capital and therefore restore the profitability of that which remains.

The reading schedule is as follows:

All meetings are to take place at the University of Birmingham, starting at 12.30pm:

20^th October – Intro, chapters 1 & 2 (Thursday) – Strathcona SR2

4^th November – chapters 3 & 4 (Friday) – Strathcona SR 6

17^th November – chapters 5 & 6 (Thursday) – Muirhead 716

2^nd December – chapters 7 & 8 (Friday) – Muirhead 716

15^th December – chapters 9 & 10 (Thursday) – Muirhead 716

6^th January – chapters 11 & 12 (Friday) – Muirhead 716

12^th January – chapter 13, appendix 1 (Thursday) – location tbc

20^th January – Appendix 2 (Friday) – Muirhead 950

All welcome!

The first meeting of CSE Midlands this academic year will take place on Monday 10th October at 12.30 in room 429 in the Muirhead Tower.

This meeting will be to discuss the texts we wish to read this year and any other events we may want to hold. Suggested texts so far include:

• Michael Roberts’ new book ‘The Long Depression: Marxism and the Global Crisis of Capitalism’ (http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/The-Long-Depression)
• Tony Norfield’s ‘The City: London and the Global Power of Finance’ (https://www.versobooks.com/books/2103-the-city)
• Anwar Shaikh’s ‘Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises’ (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/capitalism-9780199390632?cc=gb&lang=en&).
• Jodi Dean’s ‘Crowds and Party’ (https://www.versobooks.com/books/1991-crowds-and-party)

We are open to other book suggestions, so please bring them with you to the meeting or send them through email. If you have any suggestions regarding speakers to invite or events to host, please feel free to let us know. We will also be discussing viable meeting times for this year, so please inform us if you have preferences.

All welcome

Against the commercialisation of the university: strikes, protests and/or Jeremy Corbyn?

A solidarity event hosted by CSE Midlands in support of the UCU pay dispute

25 May 2016, University of Birmingham Chaplaincy (i.e. on the “right” side of the picket line)
12-3.30pm

Over-paid managers are taking over our universities. Our wages continue to decline in real terms, whilst the managers who introduce “5-year plans” and “departmental restructures” see their bloated salaries continue to escalate. The University of Birmingham’s Vice-Chancellor, Sir David Eastwood, earns £416,000 per year, one of the highest in the country. Its Chancellor, Lord Bilimoria, was recently exposed by international press coverage of the Panama Papers, as having earned £3.2 million in dividends at the same time as his company, Cobra Beer, was about to go bankrupt. Should the university be run according to ‘market logic’?

This event, replacing a planned launch event for the current special issue of the journal Capital & Class, on Left Convergence, will see authors from that special issue discuss the various ways in which we can and should learn from past and present discussions and experiences of social struggle, so that we might (re)discover how to end the neoliberal logic that is taking over our universities. The special issue can be found here: http://cnc.sagepub.com/content/current

Itinerary/Speakers:

12.00 Welcome, strike rally and update, Roland Brandstaetter, University of Birmingham UCU Branch President

12.10 Student Support for the Modern Languages campaign

12.20 Elio Di Muccio, University of Birmingham UCU anti-casualisation campaign, “You cannot have your cake and eat it: employers, casualisation and the proletarianisation of the workforce”

12.30 LUNCH (provided)

1.00 Introduction and the case for left convergence, Alex Prichard and Owen Worth

1.30 On representation and prefiguration, Teivo Teivainen

1.45 Lessons from horizontal politics, Nick Kiersey

2.00 Different context, same questions? the Kurdish struggle and the Rojava revolution, Yagmur Savran

2.15 Open discussion: maximising impact and gaining stronger leverage in our campaigns

3.30 END – Drinks (provided)

Location: St Francis Hall, “O2” in this map: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/university/edgbaston-campus-map.pdf

Hosted by CSE Midlands

Open to all picketers, those on strike, and supporters – children welcome

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS EVENT IS NOW REPLACED BY THIS EVENT

Special Issue launch event

Left-Wing Convergence?
Capital and Class, 40(1)

Wednesday 25 May 2016, 1.15 – 5.15pm
University of Birmingham, Muirhead Tower 415

Confirmed speakers: Alex Prichard, Owen Worth, Yagmur Savran, Simon Choat, Nicholas Kiersey, Teivo Teivainen.

The current issue of Capital and Class is a Special Issue: Left-wing convergence. The aim of the special issue is to consider the prospects for convergence between different strands of left thought and practice, and especially that between anarchism and Marxism. As the editors of the special issue, Alex Prichard and Owen Worth, argue, “in the current context, convergence between the two has not merely become a possibility but, one might suggest, a necessity.”

The special issue includes contributions from Alex Prichard and Owen Worth, Teivo Teivainen, Bice Maiguashca, Jonathan Dean, and Dan Keith, Judith Vey, Nicholas Kiersey and Wanda Vrasti, Simon Choat, Stuart Ingham, and Angela Wigger. It can be found here: http://cnc.sagepub.com/content/current

This Special Issue launch event will feature discussion and presentations around the core issues raised.

Itinerary

1.15 Welcome

1.30: Introduction: Left-wing convergence, Alex Prichard (University of Exeter) and Owen Worth (University of Limerick and managing editor of Capital and Class)

This is the reading schedule for the winter and into spring 2016.

As always, all are welcome!

• 6^th November Critical Pedagogy and the Academy I: the politics of academic work

Frederick Moten and Stefano Harney – “The Academic Speed-up” in Workplace: the Journal for Academic Labour. Abstract: http://ices.library.ubc.ca/index.php/workplace/article/view/184003

Stefano Harney and Frederick Moten – “Doing Academic Work” in Chalk Lines: The Politics of Work in the Managed University. Description: https://www.dukeupress.edu/Chalk-Lines

• Friday 27^th November Dialectical Materialism

12.30-1.30

Muirhead 431

Ernst Bloch – Commentary on ‘Theses on Feuerbach’

Following on from last session’s reading and discussion, Ernst Bloch provides an extended commentary of this piece by Karl Marx.

Herbert Marcuse – “The History of Dialectics” in Herbert Marcuse: Marxism, Revolution and Utopia (Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Volume 6)

Marcuse recounts the history of dialectics in an accessible way.

• Friday 11^th December Critical Pedagogy and the Academy II: the political economy of academic work

12.30 – 1.30

Muirhead 431

Ian Pirie – “The Political Economy of Academic Publishing” in Historical Materialism. Abstract: HERE

Massimo De Angelis and David Harvie – “Cognitive Capital and the Rat-Race: How Capital Measures Immaterial Labour in British Universities” in Historical Materialism. Abstract: HERE

Reading over the break: David Lodge – Nice Work (single chapter)

A novel based on campus and in the city of Birmingham by notable English Literature professor David Lodge. This novel follows an English literature academic who is forced to take part in an exchange programme which puts her at the heart of declining local British industry.

• Friday 15^th January Marxism and Value

12.30 – 1.30

Muirhead 431

Karl Marx – “Fragment on Machines” in Grundrisse

This short section of the Grundrisse sees Marx analysing the role of technology in capitalist development. The arguments featured in these pages have notably served as the theoretical basis of developments in autonomous Marxism.

Robert Kurz – The Substance of Capital (single chapter)

This book, from which we would like to select a chapter, is an important contribution to Marxism from the German Wertkritik, or value-form critique. It has recently been translated and is about to be published in English.

• Friday 5^th February Critical Pedagogy and the Academy III: the abolition of academia and independent working class education

12.30-1.30

Muirhead 431

Richard Hall – “On the Abolition of Academic Labour: The Relationship Between Intellectual Workers and Mass Intellectuality” in Triple C. Abstract: HERE

Colin Waugh – PLEBS (pamphlet)

This pamphlet is a strong account of how public education was mobilised in Britain to undermine autonomous working class education. It also tells a tale of how the British working class proceeded to resist and defeat this attempt at co-optation.

• Friday 26^th February The Local State and the Management of Public Money

12.30-1.30

Muirhead 431

CSE State Group – Struggle Over the State (pamphlet)

This is a rare pamphlet by the CSE State Group – featuring a Marxist examination of changes in the British state in the midst of capitalist crisis in the 1970s.

Cynthia Cockburn – The Local State

This is a short but very good book from which we would like to select a chapter. In it, Cockburn theorises the local state from a Marxist perspective on the basis of empirical studies of working class communities in Britain.

Simon Clarke – “State, Class Struggle, and the Reproduction of Capital” in The State Debate

This book chapter is arguably the best contribution of a seminal collection of open Marxist and Marxist-inspired writings on the state. It surveys all preceding literature and summarises the findings of Marxist state theory to date.

• Friday 18^th March – Ways of Seeing

12.30-1.30

Muirhead 431

Boaventura de Sousa-Santos – Epistemologies of the South (single chapter). Description: HERE

John Holloway – “Read Capital: The First Sentence” in Historical Materialism. Abstract: “Contrary to received opinion, Marx’s analysis in Capital does not start from the commodity, it starts from wealth. This has enormous theoretical and political implications”. SEE HERE

• Friday 25^th March – Spring and Summer Group organisational meeting

12.30-1.30

Muirhead 431

All welcome!