Reading Group - Angry Workers

Dear friends!

We’re starting a new series of discussion meetings – both online and face-to-face in some towns. Below you can find the texts and dates for the online reading group. We meet at 7pm UK time on Zoom. If you are interested, please drop us a line!

If you are based in Bradford, London or Bristol – we will have additional face-to-face group meetings reading the same texts. Please contact us if you want to participate!

Reading group 2022/23

July 27th 2022 – ‘Revolutionary strategy in a warming world’ by Andreas Malm

September 1st 2022 – ‘Introduction: Mapping Social Reproduction Theory’ by Tithi Bhattacharya

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Comrades, friends and fellow readers – Due to a clash of commitments we have reversed the October and November sessions. The revised schedule is below.

October 19th 2022 – ‘Tyranny of structurelessness’ by Jo Freeman and ‘The Tyranny of Tyranny’ by Cathy Levine

November 30th 2022 – What Abolitionists Do and ‘Every fire needs a little bit of help’ by Jarrod Shanahan

January 11th 2023: The moment in Great Britain – Winter of discontent or Seasons of struggle?

The working class in Britain is facing its biggest challenges in many decades. Angry Workers met at the end of November and considered the nature of this phase of the systemic crisis and the class’s ongoing responses.

The first text from that discussion is now at https://www.angryworkers.org/2022/12/31/the-current-moment-background-to-the-current-strikes-in-the-uk/ . That will be the core text at our discussion although comrades might want to check our site for other relevant documents as they are posted.

February 23rd 2023: ‘Class composition and the theory of the party at the origins of the workers’ council movement’ by Sergio Bologna and ‘Mass worker and social worker: reflections on the “new class composition”‘ by Alberto Battaggia

April 5th 2023: Theories of Crisis – Scratching the Surface

Since it first appeared industrial capitalism was incapable of developing at a steady pace. The reality was that periodic crises were an obvious, and apparently inherent, feature of the system.

Since the power of capital has spread to dominate the entire planet its crises have also escalated causing world wide dislocations and catastrophes.

At this session, we will take an introductory look at approaches that analyse the causes of why this particular “Shit happens”.

The core text will be Simon Clarke’s ‘Marx’s Theory of Crisis’. That is a long book so comrades might want to prioritise –

Pp. 1-12 – which is a very basic overview of the concept at stake in crisis theory

Pp. 98-116 – giving more detail about the theories of ‘Disproportionality’ the ‘Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall’

Pp 140-156 – where Clarke deals with these concepts more critically.

A different perspective is offered in an article by Ron Rothbart where he critiques the methodological framework that is characteristic of the ‘Crisis Theory’ school of Marxist thought.

May 17th 2023: Capital and Crisis Part 2

Where are we? How and why did we get here?

This session will allow us to delve further into the causes and features of the current phase of crisis. We will have the opportunity to both revisit the theoretical frameworks and to examine the nature of the existential challenges that are now being posed.

Phil Sutton is one of the joint authors of the recently published E-book, Capitalism’s Endgame – The Catastrophe of Accumulation. He will introduce the book with a focus on the first chapter – “Historical Materialism and Capitalism in Decline”.

June 28th 2023: This session was originally scheduled for May 17th

‘The capitalist use of machinery: Marx versus the objectivists’ by Raniero Panzieri

August 10th 2023: ‘A party of autonomy?’ by Steve Wright