This is not a whinge or a rant, but a question posed as openly and ingenuously as it’s possible to do. It won’t be long, but I thought it was worth writing about.

In the Space Project, a temporary education and organising space in Leeds, people have been running a reading group on (The) Crisis – discussing and learning about this current depression and why, when and how crises of capitalism occur. It’s been ‘successful’ in terms of the fact that quite a lot of people have come (between 20-35 at each session) and some interesting conversations have been had, people are sharing knowledge and experiences and questions and occasionally arguing. Yesterday, it was the fourth session, ‘Feminist Perspectives on Crisis’, which I was helping facilitate. Three of us involved in the reading group were there. Three others came. And there we were, the six of us.

I am not going to mount a defence of why a feminist analysis is relevant to our understanding and reactions to the crisis, but I nevertheless hope it’s illustrated by the following outline of the hour-or-so long discussion we had, which was one of the best conversations I’ve had the pleasure of having.

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Peter Linebaugh - Jubilee: Or, How The Atlantic Working Class Used the Biblical Jubilee Against Capitalism, With Some Success

http://www.midnightnotes.org/pdfnewenc12.pdf

Linebaugh criss-crosses centuries and the Atlantic to talk about pre-Christian property law, imperialism, slavery, civil disobedience, religious practice, autodidactism, the commons, communism, commoning, pamphleteering, pan-Africanism and singing - lots and lots of singing.