************************************************************** The New SPACE
(The New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education) ************************************************************** Teachers, speakers, and organizers at The New SPACE include: Stanley Aronowitz, Jack Z. Bratich, Stephen Eric Bronner, Andrea Fishman, Jeannette Gabriel, Loren Goldner, David Graeber, Charles Herr, Jesse Heiwa, Joshua Howard, Anne Jaclard, Andrew Kliman, Louis Kontos, Joel Kovel, Raymond Lampe, Alan Moore, Bertell Ollman, Howard Seligman, Bill Weinberg, Seth G. Weiss ******************************* UPCOMING CLASSES AND TALKS (course descriptions appear below) "Capital, Volume I." Instructor: Andrew Kliman Tuesdays, 6-7:30 pm, March 1-June 14. Tuition: $150-$180, sliding scale. "Finance Capital, Fictitious Capital, and U.S. Economic Decline." Instructor: Loren Goldner Tuesdays, 7:40-9:40 pm, March 1-April 12. Tuition: $88-$115, sliding scale. "Behind the Continuing Disaster in Acheh, Indonesia: Facts, Politics, and Theory." Talk by Reyza Zain and Anne Jaclard Wednesday, March 16, 7-9 pm. Donation: $7-10, sliding scale. “ART LIFE” Instructor: Alan Moore Saturdays, 12-2 pm, 8 sessions starting April 2 Tuition: $88-$115, sliding scale "The Marxist Critique of Ideology: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It's Important - Especially Now." Talk by Bertell Ollman. Wednesday, April 27, 7-9 pm. Donation: $7-10, sliding scale. "Taxation and Finance." Instructor: Howard F. Seligman. Tuesdays, 7:45-9:45 pm, 8 sessions starting May 3. Tuition: $88 - $115, sliding scale. More classes and talks coming soon! Check our website http://new-space.mahost.org ******************************* SPRING AND SUMMER 2005 CLASSES AND TALKS will be held at the FUSION ARTS MUSEUM 57 Stanton Street, NYC (corner of Eldridge & Stanton Streets). This is in Manhattan's Lower East Side, one block south of Houston and one block south of the 2nd Ave. stop on the F and V trains. (See our website for map.) ******************************* For more information about the school and registration for classes, check our website. Please send tuition and pertinent information to P.O. box a week before the class begins. See below for course descriptions. ******************************* Website: http://new-space.mahost.org e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 1 (800) 377-6183 Mailing address: The New SPACE, P.O.Box 19, Planetarium Station, New York, NY 10024-0019. ******************************* The New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education (New SPACE) is a new anti-capitalist educational project dedicated to developing and advancing ideas for liberatory social change. Together with the new movements for global justice, we believe that "another world is possible" - a world free from the domination of capital and free for the flowering of human powers and talents. The New SPACE holds that free dialogue and the protection of dissenting views are essential for the development of liberatory ideas and for forging real unity among those struggling for liberation. We reject the suppression of dissenting views and individuals in the name of "unity," convinced that such suppression is antithetical to the working out of real unity. "Freedom," as Rosa Luxemburg reminds us, "is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently." Accordingly, one distinguishing aspect of our mission is to create an educational space - not existent at present - in which pluralistic dialogue and dissident perspectives are respected and encouraged. The New SPACE will be a place for exploring challenging questions that today's movements confront, such as: How do we build non-hierarchical movements that can sustain themselves? How can such movements safeguard grass-roots democracy? How do conscious-ness and ideas relate to movements for social transformation? Resolutely anti-authoritarian and non-sectarian, the New SPACE brings together anarchists, humanist Marxists, and others. All those who share our mission and goals are invited to join us as students, teachers, and partners in the development of this project. In particular, we will encourage and facilitate the participation of women, people of color, GLBT people and others who face exclusion and discrimination. We also envision a new space that young people, without ties to the old Left, will find welcoming. We seek, though our classes and other activities, to create an environment in which youth, working people from diverse backgrounds, intellectuals, and activists can dialogue and collaborate in order to make sense of, and transform, our world. New York City November 8, 2004 ******************************* COURSE DESCRIPTIONS "Capital, Volume I." Instructor: Andrew Kliman. This 15-week course is devoted to Volume I of Karl Marx's Capital: A critique of political economy. Marx analyzes the capital relation as a process of "self-expanding value." Throughout the course, we will stress the relevance of this concept to the contemporary expansionism of the capitalist system and the new movements against global capitalism. The specific character of Marx's critique of capital, and its differences from others' critiques, will also be highlighted. We will go through most of the text fairly carefully, but proceed quickly through some lengthy discussions of factual material - on struggles over the length of the workday, "machinofacture," and the historical origins of the capitalist system - in order to have more time to devote to more difficult portions of the work. The instructor will provide study questions to assist students as they work through the text. Students are strongly encouraged to obtain the Penguin (or Vintage) edition of Capital, since this is what will be cited in class. (The Penguin and Vintage editions are identical in terms of translation and page numbers.) There will be no class on March 22. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Finance Capital, Fictitious Capital, and U.S. Economic Decline." Instructor: Loren Goldner. This course will attempt to explain the current situation of the U.S., the "lone superpower," which has net $3 trillion in foreign indebtedness (30% of GDP) and roughly $35 trillion in total internal indebtedness (Federal, state, municipal, corporate, personal), or over 3 times GDP. Since the 1960s, the U.S. has obliged its foreign creditors (Europe, OPEC, Asia) to recycle their surplus dollars to support this creaking edifice of debt, while American capital downsizes and ships production overseas. The rest of the world produces, the U.S. consumes. Manufacture now employs a mere 13% of the American work force. We will examine how this situation came about, who are the "winners and losers" of such an arrangement, and above all its impact on the material degradation of life for 80% of the U.S. population. Finally, we will discuss ways in which a potential radical left can raise these questions in a politically meaningful way. The main required readings for the course will be Michael Hudson's book Super-Imperialism: The Strategy of American Empire (1972; reissued 2002), and excerpts from the middle sections of Volume III of Marx's Capital. To get a better idea of where the instructor is coming from, check out the Break Their Haughty Power website at http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner, in particular the post-2001 articles. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ “ART LIFE” Instructor: Alan Moore The name of this class reflects the commitment that artists make to creative life. We will examine how this commitment is extended to creative social change. Weekly meetings will consist of discussion of readings and websites, and presentations of online art information, illustrated books, art work and action, and guests. We may possibly visit sites. Class Objectives: Working together, we will try to come to an understanding of the roots of political work in the arts; evaluate aesthetic and critical positions relevant to that work; evaluate the creative and resistant potential of different artists’ and art groups’ artistic practices; research, review and annotate a list of activist, political, and interventionist artists' sites and works. Areas of Concern: History and Aesthetics – geneology of political art; an overview of the “rules” (modes of practice). Pressure Points – Economies: Real, Symbolic and Libidinal. Theaters of Operation – Art Culture, Progressive Culture, Popular Culture, Media Culture, Cyber Culture. Survey of Tactics of Social Art – Attack, Intervention, Modelling, In- and Redirection. Note: I want everyone in this class to contribute to course content. Single session participants are welcome, but must bear in mind they are visiting a working group. (Single-session tuition is $15.) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ "Taxation and Finance." Instructor: Howard F. Seligman. The course will begin with a brief tutorial on conventional accounting, bookkeeping and financial theory. This will involve some hands on practical training, although the main emphasis will be on the history of the evolution of the theory from its original conception to the current methodologies. This will be followed by an examination of basic economics (price theory) and its use and abuse of (accounting/finance) statistics. Again, the history of the theory from its roots in philosophy and the social sciences to its current state of being applied mathematical models will be scrutinized. We will then survey the U.S. Income Tax System beginning with its history and moving on to its current state (of change) today. The focus will be on the behavioral implications of changes in the tax code and alternate systems being used in other countries (and being proposed by Congress today.) Applying the building blocks of finance and taxation, we will then look at the American financial markets and the culture of the corporation. Particular attention will be paid to 'Wall Street' and the 'entertainment industry' due to their growing influence in our everyday lives via the 'information society.' Emphasis will be placed on economic and non-economic forces that drive the markets and facilitate manipulation by the use of abstract numerical concepts. Finally, the natural symbiosis of private industry and governments will be the subject of specific anecdotes and case studies. No requirements other than potential enthusiasm/ interest. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
