New Weapons Discussion group: A Really Open Course on Crisis

 

'It's not a question of worrying or hoping for the best, but of finding new weapons.'

 

 

New Weapons first fortnightly discussion group will be kicking off Thursday January 19th with 'The Really Open Course on Crisis.’ We want to create a discussion series where we learn together, where the content is made from what we bring ourselves, from the sparks of inspiration that we take from eachother. We want to learn about 'crisis', as this seems like an important issue for our times and below we have seperated the notion of crisis into five different themes. We've found some texts that we think are interesting, and might be able to act as ideational springboards for discussion. For each section we have highlighted the texts that we like the most and would definitely encourage other people to read. If you're pushed for time, these texts would be a good place to start It doesn't matter if you just read one of them, or all of them, and if you can’t come to all the meetings we would still love you to come along to the ones you can. If you have any recommendations or questions please get in contact at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

From bankrupt PIGS, revolting Greeks and an £1 trillion hole in Italy abroad, to riots, banker bailouts and strikes at home, wherever you look these days there's banter about 'crisis'. But what crisis? Where, and for whom? Facilitated by Leeds Radical Library, this first discussion series, The Really Open Course on Crisis, aims to provide a lively forum for debate about some of the key issues of our time: what is capitalism and does it seem to break again and again? Taking short, weekly texts as a starting point, we want to explore the history of capitalist crisis to find out what 'our crisis' has in common with previous crises, and what might be unique about it. While economists and bankers whom we've never met or elected seem able to make more and more decisions about the way we run our lives, The Really Open Course on Crisis will aim to unravel from the very beginning the modern day myths about 'finance', 'capital' and 'democracy.'

 

Week 1: January 19th

History of Crisis - Mapping the Crisis to the present day
What caused the current crisis of capitalism we’re living through? Where did it come from? What makes it a ‘financial’ crisis? Here we seek to define our terms and understand the roots of the burgeoning debt, gaping inequality and mass unemployment that characterises the UK today.

Recommended Texts (in bold):

Promissory Notes: From Crisis to Commons

Aufheben: Return of the Crisis Part 1

Good Times, Bad Times: An Introduction to the Capitalist Crisis and what it means for us

The State of Debt - The Ethics of Guilt

The Measure of a Monster: Capital, Class, Competition and Finance

Introduction into Zerowork 1

Cutting Government Deficits: Hugo Radice

David Harvey - ‘The Enigma of Capital’ ch. 1 - The Disruption (copies available in LRL)

 

 2. Crisis Theory - Capitalism as Crisis
Why does capitalism seem so accident prone? Here we’ll look at the way capitalism functions as a method for generating wealth and try to diagnose what about capitalism, if anything, sends whole economies spiralling into recession.

Recommended Texts (in bold)

Economic Crisis and Crisis Theory: Paul Mattick

Tremors on the Global Market: Norbet Trenkle

The 99%, the 1%, 'anti-finance'

Euro Crisis is More than a Euro Crisis: The Commune

Crisis, Geographical Disruptions and the Uneven Development of Political Responses - David Harvie

Aufheben: Return of the Crisis: Part 2 - The Nature and Significance of the Crisis

Marx and the Crisis - Nick Potts

The Marxist Theory of Overaccumulation and Crisis - Simon Clarke

Christian Marazzi - ‘The Violence of Financial Capitalism’, ch 2 ‘Financial Logics’  - copies available in LRL

 

 3. Crisis and the Everyday - Precarity, austerity and debt
Building up debt? Unstable employment? We will be looking at how capital reconfigures our daily routines and what this means for our everyday interactions, work patterns and material conditions.

Recommeded Texts (in bold)

Promissory Notes: From Crisis to Commons

From Plan A for Austerity to an Anti-Capitalist Plan C: An Interview with David Harvie

Welcome to the Occupation - Ivor Southwood

The Reproduction of Everyday Life - Fredy Perlman

Mute Magazine: The Precarious Reader

Good Times, Bad Times: An Introduction to the Capitalist Crisis and what it means for us

Non-stop Inertia: Ivor Southwood (copies available at LRL)

Salt - Escalate Collective

And just look around for countless news articles about the growing attacks on the working class through cuts to our services, job losses, increased debt and increase of prices in food, energy and housing.

 

 4. Feminist Perspective on Crisis - Capital and the crisis of reproduction
By taking a feminist perspective we will analyse what we mean by reproductive and affective labour? What role does unwaged labour have in the reproduction of capital? What is meant by the crisis of reproduction and what does this mean for anticapitalist resistance?

Recommended Texts (in bold)

The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community

Precarious Labour: A Feminist Viewpoint - Silvia Federici

Cuts are a Feminist Issue - Feminist Fightback

Feminism, finance, future of #occupy - An interview with Federici.

Adrift through the circuits of feminized precarious work - Precarias a la deriva

 

 5. Resistance, movements and struggle

 How do we resist? How do we gain class power? What strategies and methods of struggle are appropriate in our current political context?

Recommended texts (in bold)

March 26th and the aftermath - where next for the anti-cuts movement?

Promissory Notes: From Crisis to Commons

Thompson and the Decomposition of Abstract Time - John Holloway

DSG:Ten Growth Markets for Crisis

DSG:Class Rules Everything Around Me / WOT, NO DEMANDS?

Feminism, finance, future of #occupy - An interview with Federici

Autoreduction movements in Turin, 1974

Lenin in England - Mario Tronti

 

Please get in contact if you have any questions, suggestions or comments at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it