Marx Engels Institute

German elections are on Sunday, September 26th, 2021. These will be the first election in 17 years without Angela Merkel at the fore, who is stepping down. This is shaping up to be an election with historic shifts in power amongst the German political parties, with large gains predicted for the German Green party. These shifts are significant given the importance of Germany as the imperialist pole...

Part 2 available here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/reading-group-2-51481687 Reading notes to follow along here: https://red519.substack.com/p/notes-for-communist-manifesto-chapters Recorded as part of our two-part Reading Group for May, where we read the Communist Manifesto. We review the first two chapters of the Manifesto, exploring the major themes highlighted throughout, including historical...

Full episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/police-and-51978611 In this episode Alex and Leila the emergence of the police under capitalism.  From their beginning as a semi-military force to "manage" the industrial working class and how the role has evolved but also remained the same.  They also look at the contradictions of policing and how the police are actually managers of crime...

Listen to the full episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/interview-with-2-51677876 In the second part of our interview with Angela Nagle, we discuss the stunted development of Irish capitalism, the inter-imperialist rivalry between the USA and China as well as the impact of the Covid year on art and culture. 

Part 2: https://www.patreon.com/posts/interview-with-2-51677876 We sat down last week for an extensive discussion with Angela Nagle to discuss her latest writings on her new substack page, the Blair/third way phenomena, the death of academia and the virtues of going independent.   Be sure to check out Angela's writing on substack - https://angelanagle.substack.com/

Listen to the full episode here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/patron-only-with-51439398 We speak about China under Mao, and China's transition back into capitalism under Deng and subsequent leaders. We also speak about China's role as a rising imperialist leader.

In this episode we look at the developing war between the Palestinian resistance and the Israeli state, dive into the history of the region and explore how zionism has always been a tool of imperialism both British and American.  We start the episode though by examining the growing panic over inflation and the Biden administrations economic contradictions.  A slight amendment to one deta...

Subscribe to our Patreon to get access to the full episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/fall-of-labour-51169851 Can Labour be saved? Is it worth saving? The Labour Party's recent loss in Hartlepool has reignited the debate about whether the Labour Party can still be understood as the UK's workers' party. We talk about why the Labour party lost its recent by-election in Hartlepool, the class comp...

In this episode we speak to Dr Martin Kulldorff of Harvard Medical School on the dubious nature of lockdowns as public health policy.  We begin the episode by reflecting on the nature of conspiracy theories and why Marxists reject them as a way of understanding the world.  Read Dr Kulldorff's article in the Daily Telegraph Music in this episode is taken from the track "Red Square" by The...

Hear the full conversation:   https://www.patreon.com/posts/reading-group-1-50889434 We review the first two chapters of the Communist Manifesto, exploring the major themes highlighted throughout -- historical materialism, class warfare, the advent of capitalism, the family, modernism, and more.

Listen to the full episode by subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/its-just-bad-flu-50787969 We round off our discussion from part one by talking about the impact of covid-19 on health care capacity, covid-19 vaccinations, the class warfare that has been the lockdowns, the horrible effects of the bureaucratisation of science, how a communist society would handle covid-19 and m...

We speak about India's COVID "disaster", outline the grand COVID-19 narratives framing this "pandemic", and give our final verdicts on COVID-19 lethality, its effect on health care capacity, and lockdowns. Part 1 of 2. Part 2 of 2: https://www.patreon.com/posts/patron-only-its-50787969 Some studies mentioned: John Ioannidis meta-analysis showing a 0.15% IFR: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epd...

Listen to the entire episode by subscribing to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/housing-and-50561293 We take a look at the housing bubbles ballooning across the world, investigate the contradictions which give rise to housing bubbles under capitalism and make some predictions of how the whole thing will come tumbling down. Correction: Leila ~@2:00 says residential homes in Japan dec...

For our first piece of content for patrons, we are putting out an unaired portion of the first interview between co-hosts Alexander McKay and Leila Mechoui from back in January of this year.  We talk covid-19, unions, automation, the dumb state of the Left "intellectuals" and more. We also have recorded a new introduction to it where we reflect on what we were right about and how everyone mus...

We analyze the reasons for the failure of the Amazon union drive in Alabama. We then discuss the significance of welfare under capitalism, and what's really behind the so-called Universal Basic Income (UBI).

We are joined by Dr. Elena Lange and Joshua Depaolis. Our interview covers COVID-19 (of course), the problem with modern Left politics, and possible ways forward out of this colossal mess. Their article: https://crisiscritique.org/uploads/24-11-2020/elena-louisa-lange-and-joshua-pickett-depaolis.pdf   Dr. Lange's upcoming book: https://brill.com/view/title/31889

Putin is moving troops to the Ukrainian border and calling in army reserves. Ukraine's comedian President Volodymyr Zelensky has stopped with the jokes and says that he is going to "recover" Crimea for real this time. Biden has put Russia on notice. We look at the recent escalation of aggression in Ukraine and answer the question on everyone's mind: Is WWIII finally going to start? The article we...

In a special episode @default_friend joins to discuss the family, relationships, trads and the dating world.   Follow @default_friend and be sure to subscribe to her substack Outro music - "If You Want Me To Stay" by Sly and the Family Stone

Financial Times has published an opinion piece "Central bankers’ crypto experiments should put investors on alert". We explain what Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are, why they are definitely going to happen and overtake other digital currencies including Bitcoin, and how the banking system is a huge scam (like the rest of capitalism). Article: https://www.ft.com/content/8356521a-0bb1-4a8...

In episode we start with a look at the (wildly overhyped) Pro Act. We then move to a detailed discussion of the major themes of Lenins' "State and Revolution" and talk about why it's an essential work.

We speak about a recent article published in the Financial Times entitled "Bank of Japan wrestles with never-ending stimulus". Our discussion looks at the role of Central Banks in propping up decaying monopoly capitalism, why the Japanese working class has not fought back, the effects that hyper-financialization on Japanese society, and explain in detail how states, monopoly capitalism, and financ...

We look at the issue of borders, using how capitalists use borders within the context of monopoly capitalism. We demonstrate how the contending bourgeois stances of "open" or "restricted" border control makes no sense. 

Has Biden reinstituted the New Deal? Social Democracy? Hoxhaism USA?  Or has the much heralded stimulus bill really just another example of the needs of capital being addressed and the left playing salesman for it?  Alex & Leila dive into this and why this has to be seen as another example of dominance of finance capital and the need for the state to act as it's stabiliser.   Outro Music - Ewan Ma...

In this episode our hosts delve into the Meghan Markle scandal and see it as one more piece of evidence of bourgeois decline and degeneracy.  They then turn to an analysis of the seminal work by Lenin "Imperialism - The Highest Stage of Capitalism" and use it's method to analyse our curretn situation.   Outro Music - Ewan Maccoll - The Ballad of Accounting 

With Wall Street declaring that they want Covid over and done with by April Alex & Leila examine the states in the US reopening.  They reiterate the case against lockdowns, talk about the gigantic amount of bad science created in the last year and examine the "great reset" theory.   Outro music is "The Ballad of Accounting" - Written by Ewan Maccoll and performed by Maccoll and Peggy Seeger