Emancipations Podcast

We are joined by Marxist philosophers Vanessa Wills and Daniel Tutt for a discussion moderated by Sam Greenhouse. This in-person podcast event delves into the philosophy of Marx and how Marx's thought relates to the ongoing quest for freedom in today’s world. We discuss Marx's Ethical Vision, Vanessa's important new book on Marx. Please join us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/c/torsiongroups) to support our efforts.

We welcome Branko Milanović for a discussion on inequality and Marxism and his latest book Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War. A sweeping and original history of how economists across two centuries have thought about inequality, told through portraits of six key figures. Branko Milanovic obtained his Ph.D. in economics (1987) from the University of Belgrade with a dissertation on income inequality in Yugoslavia. He served as lead economist in the World Bank’s Research Department for almost 20 years, leaving to write his book on global income inequality, Worlds Apart (2005). He was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington (2003-2005) and has held teaching appointments at the University of Maryland (2007-2013) and at Johns Hopkins University (1997- 2007). He was a visiting scholar at All Souls College in Oxford, and Universidad Carlos III in Madrid (2010-11). His book The Haves and the Have-nots (2011) was selected by The Globalist as the 2011 Book of the Year. Global Inequality (2016) was awarded the Bruno Kreisky Prize for the best political book of 2016 and the Hans Matthöfer Prize in 2018, and was translated into 16 languages. It addresses economic and political effects of globalization and introduces the concept of successive “Kuznets waves” of inequality. His most recent books are Capitalism, Alone, published in 2019, and Visions of Inequality, published in 2023

We are joined by Dr. Gerald Horne for a discussion on the meaning of the American Revolution and his extensive scholarship on re-assessing 1776 as a "counterrevoluton." At the heart of this discussion is the political and practical question for socialist politics in our time, namely: what is salvageable from 1776, and what is not? How do we read history from a materialist point of view? Dr. Horne's scholarship traces the social forces that brought about the rebellion of 1776 back farther than most historians of the American Revolution have done, by showing how the international forces went to shape the early settlers in relationship to the threat of slave rebellions and resistance. Horne's work also sheds light on a far more extensive network of resistance and rebellion amongst enslaved Africans that has largely gone ignored by historians and he reveals how central the slavery question was to the wider movements of 1776. Chapters Opening and Intro to Dr. Horne Is the American revolution a purely bourgeois revolution? Can we salvage the optimism of 1776? Is there a revolutionary tradition in America? Understanding slave rebellions and resistance pre-1776 How can history help the "class vs. race" debate that often divides the left? How is "counterrevolution" related to Trump? Is Trump Bonapartist or Fascist? How can socialists contest the two capitalist parties in America? Closing and future of Dr. Horne's scholarship and work Please join our Patreon to support us and get early access to all of our interviews, seminars and videos (https://www.patreon.com/c/torsiongroups).  Dr. Gerald Horne holds the Moores Professorship of History and African American Studies. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. He has also written extensively about the film industry. Dr. Horne is the author of more than thirty books and one hundred scholarly articles and reviews. His current research includes two forthcoming books: The Counter-Revolution of 1836: Texas Slavery, Jim Crow and the Roots of U.S. Fascism and Revolting Capital: Racism and Radicalism in Washington, D.C., 1918-1968. His other projects include a study of U.S. imperialism in Northeast Africa, principally Egypt and Ethiopia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and a similar study concerning U.S. imperialism in Southeast Asia during the same period. He won the American Book Award for The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century in 2021.

We turn to a study group on Domenico Losurdo's Class Struggle: A Political and Philosophical History, a crucial text for understanding class struggle within Marx and Engels’ thought that challenges populist understandings of class struggle and seriously incorporates gender, race, and post-colonial thought within the framework of class struggle. If you are interested in joining, we encourage you to support our efforts by becoming a paid patron if you can swing it, although that is not required (https://www.patreon.com/c/torsiongroups).  READING SCHEDULE: Nov 12 - Read to page 52 Nov 26 - Read to page 120 Dec 10 - Read to page 198 Jan 7 - Finish book, final session (link will be provided for final session)