Race, Gender, & the Origins of Capitalism
Full Tuition: $200 — Scholarship Options in Drop-Down Menu
[Please note that for the Anti-Capitalism Summer School courses, we can only offer ONE full-scholarship per person who needs one. If you would like to take more than one course at the full scholarship level, please sign up for only one, and email us to be added to the scholarship waitlist for other courses: nightschoolbar@gmail.com]
Instructor: Andrews | 3 Meetings | Sunday July 23, Tuesday July 25, Thursday July 27 | 6:30-8:30 PM ET ONLINE
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 three sessions, 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.
Classes are recorded to allow for students to participate asynchronously. If you want to take a class but cannot make the class time, sign up for the asynchronous audit option to follow along on your own. Recordings are password protected and will only be available for the duration of the class and two weeks after it ends.
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All tuition goes to paying instructors and staff 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. We are currently able to offer three full scholarships per class, and one full scholarship per person per term. 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.