Friday, August 11, 2006

Imperialism discussion August 26th, 3-5pm

The rescheduled imperialism and monopoly discussion will be
Saturday, August 26th, 3-5pm at Durham's Southwest
Library (3605 Shannon Rd. in western Durham).  The Library can
be reached by turning south onto Shannon Rd. from
University Dr., across from where South Square Mall
used to be, now a Super Target, or north onto Shannon
from MLK Parkway.  The meeting room is off of the
front lobby.  

The readings are the same as before (all of
Imperialism, chapter 1 of Monopoly Capital, the Smithfield
Foods case study, and the rest of Value, Price, and Profit).
It would be best to read everything, but you can
participate without reading everything, since the
discussion is usually general.  


It would be helpful to read the rest of Marx's Value,
Price, and Profit
, though it might not come up
directly (the first 7 sections were suggested for the
June meeting).  Imperialism:  The Highest Stage of
Capitalism
, is a major work on this subject.  My
edition has 123 pages, but unless we have more than
one meeting on this, reading the entire book will be useful for
the meeting (but the most important chapters for this meeting are probably
chapters 1-5, 7, and the last chapter).  We could focus on the
economics of imperialism at the August meeting and
look more at the superstructure and politics of
imperialism later.  It is probably still in print from
International Publishers and it is online at
www.marxists.org/archive/lenin /works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm.
The Marx reading is also available at
www.marxists.org .

Monopoly Capital, by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, is
about American monopoly capitalism and was written in
1966.  It builds on the Lenin reading and argues that some features
of capitalism have changed since then.  The chapter on "The Giant Corporation"
is informative for the upcoming meeting.

As practical example of monopoly we could look at
short article from a few years ago on how
Smithfield Foods is an example of monopoly capitalism.
Smithfield is a mainly pork producing company
and is illegally and violently opposing unionization
of its huge pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North
Carolina.  The article is available online at:
www.allianceml.com/paper/2004/carolinas.html .  
 
For more recent updates, covering the labor and environmental
situations, see
www.allianceml.com/indexpages/whatisnew.html; the
links are under the current issue, labeled as a series
on monopoly and agriculture.  There is also an article
on the unionization struggle at Case Farms, a chicken
processor, in western North Carolina.  Smithfield is also the topic of
the main front page article in this month's
Triangle Free Press (www.trianglefreepress.org). 
 
Also, this Saturday a bus will be leaving from NCCU by the student union at 6am for the
national protest in Washington of Israeli aggression in Lebanon.  Tickets are on alse for $25
(scholarships are probably also available) at The Know Bookstore and probably The Regulator Bookstore
and Internationalist Books.  At 2pm the monthly anti0torture vigil will be going on along Highway 70,
near Smithfield, and there will be carpools from Brightleaf Square and Falconbridge at 1pm.  There are also
the usual peace vigils, most likely with many Lebanon related signs now, at 5pm in Chapel Hill and Raleigh 
and Saturday at 12pm in Durham.   

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