Anti-Capitalist Studies 201: Race, Gender, and Primitive Accumulation [4-weeks, $200 Suggested]

Instructor: Andrews | Tuesdays 6:30-8:30 PM | October 4-25

The rich have never been richer, and the poor have never been poorer. How did we come to live in a world where so many are subject to poverty, environmental degradation, race and gender discrimination, debt, impairment, and insufficient resources in the service of the profit of a tiny few? In the course of four weeks, we’ll learn about the original hoarding of resources–what Marx termed “primitive accumulation”–and the violent domination that has been necessary from the Middle Ages onwards to keep those resources in the hands of the elite. In particular, we’ll concern ourselves with the troubling reality that under capitalism, everything is subject to becoming private property for someone’s accumulation–common lands, shared resources, even people themselves–laying the groundwork for the devastating spread of racial capitalism. We’ll learn how particular ideas about “private property” were historically deployed, disseminated, codified in law, and enforced by violence that made some people (primarily white men) the owners of property and others subject to being property, through chattel slavery, marriage contracts, and age laws among others. And we’ll see how people who refused this particular conception of private property were systematically dispossessed of their indigenous cultural spaces and practices. Ultimately, we’ll study how those formative legal and economic values still structure social organization today through the ongoing realities of patriarchal racial capitalism, and ask how we might challenge those realities in order to lead more meaningful, enjoyable, shared lives. Along the way we’ll read works by: Karl Marx, Silvia Federici, Cedric Robinson, Cheryl Harris, David Graeber, Stuart Hall, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and David Harvey, among others. You do not need to have taken Anti-Capitalist Studies 101 to take this class, although a familiarity with Marxist concepts and anti-capitalist analysis will be helpful.

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For each class, four (4) full tuition scholarships and five (5) 80% tuition scholarships are available. Due to limited scholarship funds, we are currently only able to offer one class per term at the full scholarship level to any individual student—if you need a full scholarship, please sign up for the class you most want to take and email us to waitlist for any additional classes. We will add you when funds become available. Direct student donations are a crucial aspect of our funding model, and without them, we are not able to pay instructors a living wage. We encourage you to pick the payment tier that corresponds with your needs, but ask that you please consider our commitment to fair labor practices when doing so. If the scholarship tier you need is sold out or you would like to pay tuition on an installment basis, please email us directly, and we will work with you.

If at any point up to 48 hours before your first class session you realize you will be unable to take the class, please email us and we will reallocate your funds to a future class, to another student’s scholarship, or refund it. After classes begin, we are only able to make partial refunds and adjustments.