CSE/Capital and Class Midlands

PREVIOUSLY CANCELLED DUE TO WEATHER – NOW RESCHEDULED, AS FOLLOWS:

Thursday 29 March, 15:00-17:00

Muirhead 113, University of Birmingham

CSE Midlands proudly presents:

The struggles of precarious youth in Tunisia: the case of the Kerkennah movement

By Lorenzo Feltrin (University of Warwick)

Thursday 29 March, 15:00-17:00

Muirhead 113, University of Birmingham

University of Birmingham

Lorenzo Feltrin analyses the origins and the dynamics of the social movement against the energy corporation Petrofac that took place in the Tunisian archipelago of Kerkennah between 2011 and 2016. The Kerkennah movement is seen as part of a broader cycle of mobilisations for social justice that started in 2008 and continues to the present day. The main subjects of these mobilisation are young people lacking sources of regular income and their core demands are secure employment and local development. It is argued that communal solidarities were key in compensating for the lack of occupational cohesion among the protesters.

All welcome!

Friday 2^nd March, 15:00-17:00

CSE Midlands proudly presents:

The struggles of precarious youth in Tunisia: the case of the Kerkennah movement

By Lorenzo Feltrin (University of Warwick)

Friday 2^nd March, 15:00-17:00

ERI (European Research Institute) building [G3], room G52

University of Birmingham

Lorenzo Feltrin analyses the origins and the dynamics of the social movement against the energy corporation Petrofac that took place in the Tunisian archipelago of Kerkennah between 2011 and 2016. The Kerkennah movement is seen as part of a broader cycle of mobilisations for social justice that started in 2008 and continues to the present day. The main subjects of these mobilisation are young people lacking sources of regular income and their core demands are secure employment and local development. It is argued that communal solidarities were key in compensating for the lack of occupational cohesion among the protesters.

All welcome!

Capital and Class/CSE Midlands is hosting an evening with Ian Parker, author of “Revolutionary Keywords for a New Left” (Zero Books, 2017).

Tuesday 28 November
Centrala – Unit 4, Minerva Works, 158 Fazeley Street, Birmingham B5 5RT
FB EVENT

From the publisher: “Revolutionary Keywords for a New Left comprises short essays on fifty revolutionary keywords, each word being put to work on a contemporary political issue. With keywords ranging from academicisation to neoliberalism, from postcolonial to Zionism and with subjects including, Badiou, North Korea, sexual violence and Žižek, the book concludes with an essay mapping the development of progressive keywords before our century of revolution, which began in 1917, keywords that emerged in the fifty years of struggle between 1917 and 1967, and revolutionary keywords for the new left today”.

http://www.zero-books.net/books/revolutionary-keywords-new-left

All welcome!

Picturehouse Strike Speaker Tour
Thursday 23 November, 6-7.30pm
University of Birmingham, Arts Lecture Room 3

The ongoing Picturehouse dispute has seen over 300 cinema workers take strike action for over 12 months. In an event hosted by Capital and Class/CSE Midlands, Kelly Rogers, one of the trade unionists involved in organising the strike, will talk about the campaign and what we can do to support it.

FB EVENT 
—
Workers in the Picturehouse cinema chain have been demanding a real Living Wage since 2014. A series of strikes then resulted in a 26 percent pay rise and a commitment from Picturehouse to work towards implementing the Living Wage over the subsequent two years. The company reneged on this deal, and since September 2016 workers have been back out on strike. Running for over a year now, the renewed dispute has grown considerably: from one cinema on strike, to six; approximately 50 union members in the chain, to over 300. In addition to a real Living Wage, workers are demanding decent sick pay, company maternity and paternity pay, recognition for their chosen union, BECTU, and pay rises for their supervisors, managers, chefs and projectionists.

Predominantly young workers, many of them migrants, the Picturehouse dispute bucks the trend of a trade union movement in decline, and shows us that precarious, low-paid and migrant workers are leading the fight for better pay and conditions today.

Kelly Rogers is an organiser for the Picturehouse strike and one of four sacked union representatives from the Ritzy Picturehouse in south London.
More details: https://www.crowdpac.co.uk/campaigns/250/picturehousestrike 

https://campaign.goingtowork.org.uk/…/picturehouse-cinemas-… 

https://www.bectu.org.uk/news/2723

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: Econocracy_final, University of Birmingham

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!