Jacobin reading group in London
In January 2018, I started an informal Jacobin reading group, mostly consisting of fellow masters students at LSE. Since then, the group has expanded to include people from outside LSE, with a variety of different political backgrounds & experiences, though all broadly on the radical left.If you’re interested in joining us
The goal of this whole thing is radical political education within a small network, while also building a bit of a community at the same time. Some of us go to the pub after the sessions, but that’s obviously not a requirement. I started the group with people I knew who were in the same boat as me (in terms of being new to the left and wanting to catch up), but we’ve since expanded to include people within a variety of different political traditions within the left.
The group is on hiatus at the moment, and will be relaunched sometime in early 2019 with new management. If you’d like to be informed when the group relaunches, feel free to drop me an email.
If you’ve been asked to speak
The environment is meant to be casual and more like a pub discussion than a lecture. We try not to get too academic/theoretical, though at least some grounding in theory is always good. No need to prepare a talk in advance - the facilitator (either myself, or whoever is leading that week’s discussion) will ask questions and moderate.
If you’ve written articles that you’d like participants to read in order to frame the discussion, please send them over. We’d prefer 2-3 shorter articles (under 2000 words) written for contemporary left publications like Jacobin, New Socialist, Novara, Red Pepper, etc, but can be flexible. Podcasts are good too!
Past speakers and readings
Probably unnecessary disclaimer: someone being listed here does not imply that I endorse all of their views, or that they endorse all of my views, or that they endorse the views of past speakers, or anything similarly ridiculous.
December 14: Lea Ypi
Lea Ypi, Professor of Political Theory at the LSE, on Brexit, the meaning of citizenship under capitalism, and whether we need a new international.
- There is no left-wing case for Brexit: 21st century socialism requires transnational organization for the LSE blog
- Citizenship in a capitalist state for Red Pepper
- Capitalism will not give us the will to fight capitalism – what we need is a new International for the LSE blog
December 7: Richard Seymour
Richard Seymour is one of my favourite contemporary Marxist writers. I’m actually kind of obsessed with his writing (his article on the politics of style in the latest issue of Salvage absolutely floored me).
Topic: a fairly wide-ranging discussion on the current political moment in Britain (and elsewhere). The disarray of the ruling classes (esp over Brexit); general precarity and malaise for everybody else; and coming ecological collapse. How did we get here? And where do we go next - is there an opening for the left amidst the rubble?
Readings from Richard’s Patreon:
November 30: Sahil Dutta
On management culture, the RAND think tank, and the institutionalisation of neoliberalism. Sahil is a lecturer in political economy at Goldsmiths University, and an affiliate of the Political Economy Research Centre. Chaired by Hettie O’Brien.
- Managers, not Markets from the August issue of the IPPR Progressive Review (behind an academic paywall)
- Servants of Industry? Getting Financialisation Wrong for New Socialist
- Barely managing: on what’s missing from left political economy for Nww Socialist
November 15: Will Davies
On his recently-released book, Nervous States. Chaired by Hettie O’Brien.
- Thoughts on the sociology of Brexit (a 2016 article that was a precursor to the book)
- How feelings took over the world (an excerpt from the book, published in The Guardian)
Recommended podcast: Will Davies discussing the book with James Butler on NovaraFM.
November 1: Mathew Lawrence
On reinventing ownership. Chaired by Hettie O’Brien.
- John McDonnell’s worker ownership funds could be the left’s Right to Buy for the New Statesman
Other background reading:
October 25: Lydia Hughes
On grassroots resistance and what it means for precarious workers to organise.
October 12: Ben Tippet
- Who Wants to Build a Left-wing Private Equity Firm? for Novara Media (co-written with Dani McDonald)
Other background reading:
- NEF’s report on cooperatives: Co-operatives unleashed
- This Jacobin article on the Meidner plan: Revisiting the Meidner Plan
September 27: Owen Hatherley
Readings selected from Owen’s recent book, Trans-Europe Express. Main readings: the essays on Bologna & Bergen. Extra readings: introduction + the essays on Skopje & Stockholm. Chaired by Hettie O’Brien.
September 14: Stephen Armstrong
We read a chapter from Stephen Armstrong’s 2017 book, The New Poverty (Chapter 3 - Health: The Rise of DIY Dentistry). You can get the book from Verso (no excerpt freely available online, sadly). Chaired by Hettie O’Brien.
September 7: Jo Littler
On meritocracy.
August 30: Brett Scott
On currency and fintech.
August 23: Amelia Horgan
On work and alienation. The main reading was a chapter from Amelia’s dissertation which is unfortunately not yet public.
Recommended background reading by others:
- Wages against housework by Silvia Federici
- The Case Against a Basic Income by Daniel Zamora for Jacobin
August 16: Hettie O’Brien
On municipal socialism. Chaired by Kulsoom Jafri.
- Who Owns the City? for New Socialist
Recommended background reading by others:
- Barcelona’s Experiment in Radical Democracy by Masha Gessen for The New Yorker
- The ‘Preston Model’ and the modern politics of municipal socialism by Thomas Hanna and Joe Guinan for Open Democracy
August 9: Maya Goodfellow
On migration, the concept of “open borders”, and what progressive migration policy would look like under a Labour government. Chaired by Benny Hunter.
- Labour and Migration: No More Racing to the Bottom for Novara Media
- Labour & Immigration for New Socialist
- A New Face Won’t Change the British Government’s Racist Heart for The New York Times
August 3: David Adler
On centrism and why it’s a threat to democracy.
- Beware the authoritarian centre for OpenDemocracy
- Centrists Are the Most Hostile to Democracy, Not Extremists for The New York Times
July 27: Alyssa Battistoni
On climate change and how politics must adapt. Held, coincidentally, on an excruciatingly hot day. (The speaker couldn’t make it in the end, but it was a good discussion nonetheless.)
- Living, Not Just Surviving for Jacobin
- States of Emergency: Imagining a politics for an age of accelerated climate change. for The Nation
July 20: Clive James Nwonka
On race & class in British film, as well as the concept of “diversity” and how it got hijacked by corporate/neoliberal agendas. Chaired by Kulsoom Jafri.
- Empty tank for Red Pepper, on social realism in British cinema
- The Condition of the Working Class: what’s changed? for Red Pepper
July 12: Tech Workers Coalition
Featuring someone from Tech Workers Coalition as a guest speaker. On worker power in the tech industry and what it would mean to abolish Silicon Valley.
- Now is the Time for Worker Power in the Tech Industry by me for Novara
- Prospects for Organizing the Tech Industry for Notes From Below
July 6: Oonagh Ryder
On prison abolition. Oonagh hosts a podcast on the criminal justice system for Novara called The Lockdown (first episode: Britain’s Prison Industrial Complex).
- What Does Justice Look Like Without Prisons? for Novara
June 29: Marijam Didžgalvytė
On gaming and politics.
- Tech & the left interview #2: Marijam Didžgalvytė for Fully Automated Luxury Communism Newsletter
- GAME WORKERS UNITE AND FIGHT for Left Left Up (2-minute video)
- Gaming Needs Feminism for Left Left Up on Novara (4-minute video)
June 21: Ashok Kumar and Annie Olaloku-Teriba
On the identity politics special issue of Historical Materialism, which Ashok edited. All pieces are from that issue. This one was a lot more theoretically heavy/dense than previous sessions. I took copious notes, which I will probably post at some point.
(If you’re wondering why there was such a huge gap between sessions: I was out of the country for 2 weeks.)
- Afro-Pessimism and the (Un)Logic of Anti-Blackness by Annie Olaloku-Teriba
- Marxist Interventions into Contemporary Debates by Ashok Kumar, Dalia Gebrial, Adam Elliott-Cooper, Shruti Iyer
- Intersectionality and Marxism: A Critical Historiography by Ashley J. Bohrer
May 31: Me
Didn’t have time to get a speaker so I just pontificated about how awful Silicon Valley is (by this point, I hadn’t yet stumbled upon the idea of “abolition”). I mostly read excerpts from Corey Pein’s book Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley and talked about my own experience in tech (which I’ve written about for Notes From Below: Silicon Inquiry).
If you’re curious about the book, here’s some recommended reading/audio:
- Excerpt at NYMag
- Review for The New Republic by Shuja Haider
- Review for the New York Times by Nikil Saval
- Episode of The Discourse podcast featuring Corey Pein as a guest
- Appearance on a podcast with Doug Henwood
May 23: Jeremy Gilbert
On radical political education and a theory of solidarity.
- Notes Towards a Theory of Solidarity, transcript of a talk
- it’s a bit long, but I highly highly recommend this. May post some of my favourite quotes at some point
- Antisemitism, cosmopolitanism and the politics of Labour’s ‘old’ and ‘new’ right-wings for openDemocracy
- this is also really really good, especially on where anti-Corbyn sentiment within the Labour Party comes from
- Why did ‘working-class culture’ disintegrate in the 1980s? A sort of reply to Paul Mason for openDemocracy
- What is Acid Corbynism? for Red Pepper
May 18: Nick Srnicek
On accelerationism, platform capitalism, and what to do about the tech giants.
- Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics with Alex Williams
- reading this basically changed my life, lol
- We need to nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon. Here’s why for The Guardian
- kind of a sensationalist headline (the editor’s choice, not his) but very reasonable tbh
May 10: Tom Mills
On political bias in the media. Special guest appearance from Ronan Burtenshaw, who talked a bit about Jacobin’s history and why a project like that was needed. (This Vox article covers some of the same points.)
- It Was a Fantasy: Centrist Political Commentators in the Age of Corbynism for New Socialist
- Public Ownership of the Public Sphere for New Socialist (co-written with Dan Hind)
May 4: Michael Walker
On building a mass movement + the results of the local elections from the day before. No readings ahead of time, but this episode of TyskySour, featuring Aydin Dikerdem, covered some of the same topics a few days afterward.
April 18: Riley of TrashFuture
On alternative media (like podcasts) and politics. Riley hosts TrashFuture, a podcast about “late stage capitalism fucking our lives up”. No readings, just suggestions to listen to the podcast (especially the book club episodes).
April 11: Callum Cant
On organised worker resistance, especially in the context of gig economy platforms like Deliveroo.
- Wildcat at Orion for Notes From Below
- Precarious couriers are leading the struggle against platform capitalism for Political Critique
- The Workers’ Inquiry and Social Composition for Notes From Below (the editorial for the first issue, No Politics Without Inquiry!)
April 6: Will Stronge
(Will is cofounder of the think tank Autonomy Institute, which explores how we can get to a post-work future while situated in the fields of political economy and critical theory.) Topic: work, and how we can move beyond it.
- A right-wing think tank is now supporting Universal Basic Income – but they’ve missed the point for The Independent
- Misconstruing Post-Work for Autonomy
March 22: David Madden
This week’s session was hosted by Joe Bambridge, who took David Madden’s Urban Inequalities module at LSE the previous semester. On housing.
- The Permanent Crisis of Housing for Jacobin
- an excerpt from his book, In Defense of Housing (co-written with Peter Marcuse)
- No Rent for Rats
- same as above
- the first 3 chapters of his book (not publicly available, sadly)
- audio of a panel discussion at LSE on housing last semester
March 16: Artin Giles
No readings. On the story behind Corbyn’s leadership campaigns + the movement behind Corbyn more broadly.
March 6: Peter Frase
Was too lazy to organise an actual session this week, so I just piggy-backed onto an existing event held by Basic Income UK and featuring Peter Frase, editor at Jacobin.
- Four Futures for Jacobin
- this eventually became his book of the same title, which I highly recommend
- Ours to Master for Jacobin
- this was one of my favourite pieces from Jacobin’s print issue on technology. so, so good
- Beyond the Welfare State
March 2: Jamie Woodcock
On organised worker resistance, particularly in light of the UCU strike.
- Six points on the eve of the UCU strike for Notes From Below
- Bullshitting Jobs by Benjamin Noys for Review 31 (a review of Jamie’s book, Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres)
Feb 21: Grace Blakeley
On financialisation and what a socialist economic policy could look like.
- The problem with outsourcing is not Carillion but the market itself for the New Statesman
- The Emperor’s Clothes: How Do Markets Value Companies? for Novara
- Universal Basic Services Won’t Fix Our Economy for New Socialist
- Carillion: Scam, Scandal, Opportunity for NovaraFM (podcast, with Ann Pettifor and James Butler)
(after this, a bunch of us went over to TrashFuture’s “accidental live show” and ended up making a cameo appearance on the podcast episode from that night)
Feb 14: Marcus Barnett
On the history of the UK labour movement + the Corbyn moment.
- The World Within a World for Jacobin
- Generation Jezza for Jacobin