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Dear Comrades:

As with many other past and current members of the Marxist Reading Group, I would like to extend my congratulations on the Group’s memorable 10th anniversary. On the one hand, I can barely contribute any more laudatory comments to the Group than have already been bestowed upon it. However, I would like to point out that one of my first encounters at the University of Nottingham was actually meeting Adam Morton at a first year PGR reception. I vividly recall his interest in my research and how he felt that the Reading Group could enhance my research. And within five minutes of meeting Adam, he had already contacted our comrade Chris Hesketh who was standing across the room. With a huge smile, Chris graciously invited me to sit in the Group’s next meeting and took my e-mail address.

And that was the beginning of a wonderful experience in getting to know and engage with some of most brilliant people I have ever met. Moreover, I will be forever grateful to be part of an incredible group of scholars reading not only the classics; but the “not-so classics” (I think Hayek comes to mind‼) Regardless of we read over those almost four years of being with the Reading Group, it never ceased to amaze me how much we learning we secured from texts written well over 100 years ago and how relevant they remain to this very day. In short, the Reading Group not only enhanced with research, it contributed to my rich PGR experience.

It is with great pleasure that I wish the Group, its past, current and future members, all the best on the Group’s tenth anniversary. Living as I do in the United States with its not so creeping fascist tendencies, I can only hope to put into practice, the praxis that we, as members of the Reading Group, sincerely hold dear. For my comrades, it may not be long before the barricades are built in the land of E Plurbis Unum. And you all will be welcome‼

And I leave you all with the chant that so many of us have chanted in the past and continue to do so. Un pueblo unido, jamás será vencido.

In solidarity,

Dr. Peter S. Cruttenden

Washington, D.C.

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I am very pleased having been a part of the Marxism Reading Group. The MRG was a satisfactory and gladsome experience where I experienced a collective endeavour not just to understand the world but also to seek ways to change it together.  We really require to discuss any possible ways to make it a more just, egalitarian and free place. We need to come together with our emancipatory wishes wherever and whenever possible and thanks to the MRG reminding us that even within the boundaries of universities we can work for this. I also very much appreciate the 10th Anniversary of the MRG, long lasting commitment. Long live MRG!

Ezgi PINAR

Istanbul University / TURKEY

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This is to congratulate the organizers of the Marxism Reading Group (MRG) at the University of Nottingham for its 10th anniversary. This is quite a milestone! In 2012, I spent three months in Nottingham after Adam Morton successfully nominated me for a Highfield Visiting Fellowship at the Centre for Advanced Studies. During this time, one of my key and most enjoyable activities was to participate in the MRG. We read Nikolai Bukharin’s Imperialism and the World Economy and started José Carlos Mariategui’s Seven Interpretative Essays on Peruvian Reality. Along with the guest-speaker series sponsored by the School of Politics and International Relations and with its Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, participating in the MRG was definitely one of the great intellectual highlights of my stay in Nottingham. In fact, I tried to replicate the experience upon my return to Vancouver at Simon Fraser University. With two sociology doctoral students, we organized a MRG and met for four or five times to discuss some of Pierre Bourdieu’s work. Unfortunately, we were not able to attract more participants. The largest contingent was four people at any given session. Therefore, we ended up folding the attempt. This was really too bad, but it also highlights the tremendous merit of Nottingham’s MRG to have survived for 10 years! Congratulations!

Professor Gerardo Otero

Simon Fraser University

Vancouver/Canada

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During my time at Nottingham, the Marxism Reading Group was crucial to enriching my understanding of historical materialism. Although the concept may evoke images of crusty activists engaged in sterile hagiography, the reality was quite the opposite. The group recognized the need to raid a treasure trove of ideas to see how best they could be updated and applied to the modern world. In a time when Brazilian peasants quote Gramsci, Greek politicians invoke Rosa Luxemburg, and urban planners everywhere are reading David Harvey, one can either study Marxism or be left in the dark. Reading 'The Great Transformation' in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, members rightly observed that Karl Polanyi's work would likely return to prominence as observers scrambled to explain what had gone wrong. Equally, we covered Panitch and Ginden's monumental tome 'The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire' shortly before it was awarded the Deutscher Prize, marking the text as a modern classic. With a focus on contemporary contributions, we also had the pleasure of engaging with Doreen Massey's work, whose recent death was a major loss both to the academy and the community. Conversely, we unearthed overlooked gems, in particular Henri Lefebvre's 'Dialectical Materialism.' This text showcased the robust framework underlying the more fashionable contributions of a writer whose analysis of space is becoming worryingly dilute. Collaborating with the group gave my own work more depth and breadth than I could ever have achieved alone.  I hope that members will establish similar collectives wherever they make their future careers

Phil Roberts, PhD

Sydney University

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It's quite hard to fathom that the Marxism Reading Group at the School of Politics and International Relations has been around for ten years already - it seems only yesterday that we got together around a table downstairs in the Law and Social Sciences building to discuss Hannes Lacher's ‘Beyond Globalization’ and David Harvey's ‘Limits to Capital’.

In doing so, I believe that we created a crucial space for critical debate and collective reflection for staff and students at SPIR. And this is perhaps the most important reason why it is so fitting to acknowledge the achievement of the Marxism Reading Group today - namely that it constituted a genuine haven for those of us at the University of Nottingham who wished to swim against the tide of an institutionalized neoliberal managerialism that all too often suffocated creative thinking and free exchange of opinion and dissent. The fact that the Marxism Reading Group is still alive and kicking ten years after our first meeting on a February afternoon in 2006 is testimony to its continued relevance in an academy beleaguered by market imperatives that - if they are not resisted through collective intellectual and political endeavours - threatens to erode the very basis and purpose of the university as an institution of higher learning and research. A luta continua!

Alf Nilsen, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Bergen, and visiting Senior Researcher, SWOP, University of the Witwatersrand.

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The Marxism Reading Group was an important part of my time as a student at Nottingham. Not only did it introduce me to critical texts in political economy and international historical sociology, it also exposed me to rigorous debate with Faculty members and graduate students. The space that it provided, one of honest and open discussion that was rigorous, passionate, yet always respectful, was invaluable to my intellectual development. Keeping these informal spaces of critical dialogue open within the University is a goal of the utmost importance. I hope that the Marxism Reading Group will continue to do so for many years to come.

Jeremy Green

Lecturer

University of Cambridge

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Being part of the Marxist reading group was a great experience, undoubtedly one of the highlights of studying at the University of Nottingham. It was an environment where interesting and engaging conversations were guaranteed, whether we were discussing the relative autonomy of the state or Hayek’s critique of economic planning. It is testament to the strong Marxist community at the University of Nottingham that the reading group is still going strong after ten years. Congratulations!

Max Crook

Adjunct Professor

SUNY New Paltz & Seton Hall University

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I believe that every past and future member of the MRG are among those who take side with the oppressed and exploited women and men of the world. In 2011, when I was involved in the group as a visiting PhD student from Turkey, we read ‘The Accumulation of Capital’ by Rosa Luxemburg from this lens. In the academic world typically characterized by power, repression and competition this makes our group special for me. It reminds me that thinking and producing collectively strengthens our hand in this terrain of struggle. This renders 10 years of commitment more than a ‘successful’ reading endeavour. Many thanks to everyone who made this happen and hope the group continues to inspire many more people!

Sumercan Bozkurt

Middle East Technical University

Ankara/Turkey

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Studying Marxism is not an examination of certain rules and mechanisms but rather a constant and collective search for the possible paths of understanding and elevating working class struggle. Congratulations on its 10th anniversary to the Marxism Reading Group which – like others all over the world – aims to make a humble contribution in this mighty quest of ours.

Ertan Erol - Istanbul University

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A very happy 10th birthday to the Marxist Reading Group! The hitherto history of many a good PhD is the history of the Marxist Reading Group. In earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of academics in various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. This was helpfully broken down with the formation of the reading group where collegiality was fostered and socialization into the academic world facilitated. I fondly remember our lunch time sessions, where each contributed according their ability, whilst eating according to their need (inadvertently serving to demonstrate the material basis of ideas). Discussions and debates during this time have had a lasting impact on my thinking and I am grateful to all comrades who participated in this collective enterprise.

Long may the spectre of the Marxist Reading Group continue to haunt the corridors of power!

Dr. Chris Hesketh

Senior Lecturer in International Relations

Oxford Brookes University

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“Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”. One of the most famous and powerful quotes from Marx, and also the cornerstone for critical theorists.

I had the pleasure to be part of the Marxist reading group during my stay at the CSSGJ during the spring semester of 2012 and I want to say that I understood the practical meaning of the above quote during that period, watching the commitment of many participants from that time. We read some of Kautsky’s chapters and it was enlightening and stimulating from an academic perspective, but the group opened my eyes beyond that. It was the first time I was surrounded by such a Marxist group with huge understanding about theoretical proposals as well as their role as agents of political change within a frame of conflict, in which Marxist concepts are more helpful than ever.

I hope you continue as clever and combative as ever for a long time. The world needs more people like us!

All my best,

Dr. Carolina Cepeda-Másmela

Assistant Professor

School of Political Science and International Relations

Universidad Javeriana

Bogotá, Colombia

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In his carceral notebooks, it was Antonio Gramsci who wrote that ‘studying, too, is a job and a very tiring one, with its own apprenticeship’ and so it is with CSSGJ’s Marxism Reading Group. The group has been a fulcrum of PhD and faculty “apprenticeship” over the last 10 years within the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. It is fantastic to witness this collective endeavour reaching such an important landmark anniversary and also having completed over 30 books across the decade. There is no hub of activity within the institution that hosts it that is comparable and there is no research centre that has achieved more than CSSGJ. Congratulations!

Professor Adam David Morton, University of Sydney

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Congratulations for the tenth anniversary of the reading group. It was a great experience for me to be a part of it. I sometimes catch myself thinking about the themes we were debating. How many passive revolutions did peripheral countries undergo in forming and consolidating the capitalist space? What are limits to capital? How can we shape the politics of praxis under globalisation? It is great to see that this space created by the CSSGJ and Marxist reading group is alive. Please keep passing the Marxist bust to new PhDs.

Elif Uzgoren, Dokuz Eylul    University, Izmir

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Borges once said "I sometimes think that good readers are swans as singular, and as awesome, as great authors themselves." And I always understood that the task of reading is way more an intellectual adventure than the one of writing. I think now, that collective reading is even more so. Collective reading, I guess, has more of the old mole than of a swan.
Congratulations to the Marxist Reading Group for standing so many years to disaster, for providing that minimal and yet insurmountable space that make our academic spaces still bearable and breathable.

Juan Grigera, UCL

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Congratulations to the Marxist Reading Group!! As one of the original members, I appreciated the opportunity to learn with colleagues and think about the application of Marxist thought in the contemporary world. Today, I am leading a community organizing network in the United States, where we are fighting for economic justice and housing and land rights. The seeds of this work and how I think about these issues were planted during my time at the CSSGJ and in the Marxist Reading Group. I hope it has inspired others, too!

Jennifer Martinez, PhD

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For the last 10 years, CSSGJ’s Marxism Reading Group has accomplished the difficult task of retaining a stimulating intellectual environment and continually incorporating a host of both junior and senior researchers into its collective body. This continuum has given birth to extremely productive and invigorating efforts to (I) retrace the lineages of the historical materialist canon in the classical works of Marx and Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, Bukharin, Trotsky and Gramsci; and (II) examine and reflect upon a wide range of conceptual and empirical issues from the heterogeneous prism(s) of Marxist approaches. The latter orientation has included reading key contemporary contributions to radical theory as well as dissecting texts that diverged from—and even positioned against—the premises and principles that comprise the broad church of historical materialism (In case you have not noticed, we did read Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom…).

The impressive quantity of the texts the group has tackled, as well as the equally impressive depth in which those texts has been interrogated is a testimony to the comradeship and intellectual vigour that its members have demonstrated over the past 10 years. Here’s to another 10 years of collective theorising and practising radical politics!

Dr Cemal Burak Tansel

University of Sheffield

(MRG member since 2010)