About this Event
About the Books
Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline
Here’s the news from the first two months of Donald Trump’s inglorious reign: globalization as we know it is over. Policies such as tariffs, dismissed as obsolete for decades have been embraced by governments. Worldwide, geopolitical tensions are rising higher and higher. Resurgent far-right movements threaten the foundations of contemporary democracies. In Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline, (ReakCon Books), Jamie Merchant traces the roots of this decline beyond the oft-blamed failures of the post-Cold War era. Instead, Merchant argues that the great political and economic changes of the last decade are due not to globalization but to the long-term decay of the market-based economic order. By historicizing this period of globalization and decline, Endgame illuminates a path forward for both the global economy and international politics.
Purchase your copy of Endgame here.
The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising
Communism comes from the future, but its hopes haunt our past. Reading revolutionary history from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising by the light of communist theory, from Marx to C. L. R. James, The Future of Revolution by Jasper Bernes illuminates the possibilities for overcoming class society in the twenty-first century. “Instead of beginning at the beginning, (we) will have to begin at the end, to truly start again, with new forms of organization and self organization adequate to a stagnating capitalism, in which proletarian movements will find no allies among liberal or nationalist modernizers. What those forms of organization will look like we cannot say, but we can perhaps say something about what they will not look like as well as the fundamental tasks they need to achieve. We can look to the communist movement of the past for an understanding of the logical structure of communism, what would have needed to happen, if only to understand better what will need to happen in the future.”
Pre-order your copy of The Future of Revolution here.
About the Authors
Jamie Merchant is an author based in Chicago who writes about political theory and political economy. His work has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, The Baffler, The Nation, In These Times, and elsewhere. Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline is his first book, published in ReakCon Books' Field Notes series in 2024.
Jasper Bernes lives in Oakland and teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. A regular contributor to the Field Notes section of the Brooklyn Rail, he is the author of The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization and two books of poetry, We Are Nothing and So Can You and Starsdown.
About the Organization
Red May is a month-long spree of red arts, red theory, and red politics based in Seattle, Washington. We gather in bookstores, movie theaters, bars, parks, cafes, alleys, and auditoriums to share in discussion and plot ways forward toward a world in common: a world beyond capitalism.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Avenue, Seattle, United States
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