The New SPACE

(The New School for Pluralistic
Anti-Capitalist Education)

Teachers, speakers, and organizers include:

Stanley Aronowitz, Jack Z. Bratich, Stephen Eric Bronner, Silvia Federici,
Andrea Fishman, Jeannette Gabriel, Loren Goldner, David Graeber, Charles
Herr, Joshua Howard, Anne Jaclard, Andrew Kliman, Louis Kontos, Joel
Kovel, Raymond Lampe, Alan Moore, Bertell Ollman, Howard Seligman, Seth G.
Weiss

UPCOMING CLASSES AND TALKS

"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.

"Women, the Witch-hunt in Europe and America, and the Rise of Capitalism:
Rethinking 'Primitive Accumulation' from a Feminist Viewpoint."
Instructor: Silvia Federici. Saturdays, 3-5 pm, 8 sessions starting March
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.

"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 summer classes and talks coming soon!
For more information, or to register for classes, check our website. See
below for Spring course descriptions.

Website: new-space.mahost.org

e-mail: new-space@mutualaid.org

Tel: 1 (800) 377-6183SPRING 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.)

Mailing address: The New SPACE, P.O. Box 191, Pleasantville, NY 10570.

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 consciousness 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

SPRING 2005 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.

"Women, the Witch-hunt in Europe and America, and the Rise of Capitalism:
Rethinking 'Primitive Accumulation' from a Feminist Viewpoint."
Instructor: Silvia Federici.

The course will examine the transition from feudalism to capitalism from
the viewpoint of its impact on the social position of women, the sexual
division of labor and the reproduction of labor-power. Its objective is to
demonstrate that the devaluation of women's labor, the construction of
gender hierarchies, and the subjugation of women have been essential
conditions for the development of capitalism and capital accumulation.
Studying an aspect of "primitive accumulation" that is absent in Marx's
analysis, the course also provides a critical examination of Marx's
categories and his understanding of the origin of capitalism and the
essential conditions for the existence of capitalist accumulation.

Topics to be studied will include: a) the anti-feudal struggle and the
labor crisis of the late Middle Ages; b) the Great Witch-hunt in Europe
and witch-hunting in colonized America (Peru, Mexico); c) the
mechanization of the body in the social policy and intellectual discourse
of the 16th and 17th centuries; d) the connection between the conquest of
America, the slave trade, the land enclosures in Europe, and social rebellion.