Course 1
Unmasking the state
This course sets out to challenge common assumptions about the state and to reveal,
or unmask, its purpose, its role in society and how it relates to capitalism.
Click on session for programme breakdown
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Session 1: So what is 'the state'?
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Session 2: Putting the jigsaw together
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Session 3: Power and the constitution
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Session 4: What's in a theory?
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Session 5: When, how and why is
the state capitalist?
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Session 6: The neoliberal state
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Session 7: Hegemony aka ‘authorised thinking’
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Session 8: The state and democracy
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Session 9: From liberal to illiberal democracy
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Session 10: Beyond the system: the case for revolutionary change
Course 2
Let's Compost Capitalism
Surveys confirm young people are hostile to capitalism, preferring socialist alternatives.
But what is the capitalist system? Why is it so destructive, to the extent of threatening life on earth?
Click on session for programme breakdown
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Session 1: Capitalism - a system of crisis
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Session 2: Defying the system
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Session 3: So what is the system? It's called capitalism
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Session 4a: Essential features of capitalist production - what makes it work
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Session 4b: Essential features of capitalist production - a system at war with itself
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Session 5: Climate chaos: A threat to our existence
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Session 6: Climate chaos: a way forward
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Session 7: Neoliberalism - ascent and decline
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Session 8: Your data, their profit
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Session 9: A system beyond reform
Course 3
Philosophy for revolution
We explore how philosophical outlooks have evolved, with a view to co-creating a dynamic,
dialectical approach to today’s political and ecological challenges
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Session 1: Philosophy for Revolution
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Session 2: A theory of knowledge: How we know what we know
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Session 3: My thinking toolbox
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Session 4: Perception and contradiction
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Session 5: The Ancients lay foundations
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Session 6: Early Enlighteners
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Session 7: Scandalous thinkers
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Session 8: Hegel: The Dialectic makes a comeback
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Session 9: Postmodernism: a fatal attraction
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Session 10: Exiting postmodernism
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Session 11: Marx and Engels: exiting capitalism
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Session 12: Understanding for revolution
So what is 'the state'?
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Why understanding the state is crucial
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What do we mean by 'the state'?
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Exploring some definitions
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Key features of the modern state
Putting the jigsaw together
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How the UK state comes together
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Looking at core institutions
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Key contradictions in state rule
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Role of political parties in the state
Power and the constitution
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Historical origins of the UK state
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How the constitution embodies power
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How the UK government rules
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Parliament's subordinate role
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Judiciary and other parts of the state
What's in a theory?
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Why theories matter
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Pluralism or how the state can (or should) work for all
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Elitism. A powerful group is always in control
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Marxism. The state privileges capitalism
When, how and why is
the state capitalist?
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Why capitalists need the state
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How does the state support capitalism?
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How does the state rely on capitalism?
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Contradictions within the capitalist state
The neoliberal state
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Neoliberalism and its discontents
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Putting the neo in liberalism: a little history
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Neoliberal state policies and practice
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Social consequences
Hegemony aka ‘authorised thinking’
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Role of dominant ideas in sustaining power
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Antonio Gramsci's contribution
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The transmission belt
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Building counter-hegemony
The state and democracy
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So, what do we mean by democracy?
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Defining representative democracy
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Where our rights come from
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What your rights get you
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What your democratic rights don't get you!
From liberal to illiberal democracy
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From liberal to illiberal democracy
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Democracy is outsourced
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Neoliberalism to new authoritarianism
Beyond the system: the case for revolutionary change
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Democracy chained
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State as a barrier to progress
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Why reforming the state won't work
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The case for a democratic revolution
Capitalism - A system in crisis
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Climate chaos
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Biodiversity loss
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Pollution
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Inequality
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Precarious jobs
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Economic meltdown
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Authoritarian government
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Populist politics
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Mass migration
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Injustice
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Alienation
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and now the pandemic
Defying the system
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The major oppositional movements and campaigns
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How their targets relate to the capitalist system
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How they challenge conventional politics and oppose mainstream economic theories and practices
So what is the system? It's called capitalism
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Goods and services produced for profit
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Class divisions
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Private ownership
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Primary objective is to create profit
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A Social and legal framewrk defining ownership and employment
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A system beset by periodic crises
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Two world wars, facsism, a series of revolutions ...and the age of the pandemic
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Two distinct periods since the second world war
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Keynesian recovery and collapse, Neoliberal recovery and decline
What makes it work
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How Marx cracked the mystery of profit
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How the drive for profit affects the class struggle
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The labour theory of value
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The commodity
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The role of competition
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Productivity
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Growth
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Accumulation and debt
Your data, their profit
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Ownership by equity funds
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Domination by a handful of TNCs in each sector
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Rise, mining and marketisation of data
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Platform capitalism and AI
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Stratospheric rise in debt and debt volatility
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Frequent crises of production & finance
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Exploitation of people and planet
Neoliberalism - ascent and decline
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Neoliberalism - key features
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Extreme concentration of wealth
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Decline in wages share of GDP
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Weakness of trade unions; precarious working
Climate Chaos: A threat to our existence
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Extreme climate events - where we are, where we are going
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Web of life under threat - destruction of species & complex eco-systems
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Impact on human society - loss of agricultural land, water supply crisis
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Forced migration, hunger, war over resources
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Pandemic - it's an ecological issue
A system beyond reform
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Doughnut, circular economy & green new deal
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Why capitalism can't be decoupled from growth
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Populism and a roll back of social gains
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An anarchic system out of control
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Conclusion: it's beyond reform
Exiting postmodernism
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New Materialisms and Object-Oriented Ontology
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Analytic vs. Continental philosophy
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Relativism and social practice
Postmodernism: a fatal attraction
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Challenging systems and power structures
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Capitalism's effect on contemporary culture
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Why are people attracted to postmodernism?
Marx and Engels: exiting capitalism
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Turning Hegel upside down: uniting the dialectic with materialism
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The development of capitalism – the basis for Marx’s concepts
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Philosophy as a tool for analysing social reality: the concepts of alienation and labour
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Marx and Engels brought theory together with practice
Hegel rescues the dialectic
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Hegel rescues the dialectic
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Hegel's basic concepts
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On your Marx
The Ancients lay foundations
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The main strands: idealism and materialism
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Materialism and dialectics early roots in Greece, India and China
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The midwife of European philosophy
Perception and contradiction
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External world; perception and knowledge, being and nothing
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Where does movement come from?
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Who's afraid of contradiction?
A theory of Knowledge: How we know what we know
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What is a theory of knowledge? You already have one!
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The "iceberg beneath our thoughts"
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Some fundamental ways of knowing
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Challenging accepted "truths"
Early Enlighteners
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Scotland and England weigh in as the homes of modern materialism
My thinking toolbox
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Understanding key terms and why we need them
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Epistemology and Ontlogy - what do they mean?
Understanding for revolution
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Knowledge as a spiral path of discovery
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From living perception to abstract dialectical concepts to ideas and then to practice
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Walking the walk together to change the world
Philosopy and Revolution
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What's theory got to do with it?
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Uniting the opposites
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Getting ahead of the curve
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Ideas and Ideals become a physical force
Scandalous thinkers
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Descartes and Spinoza
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The tumultuous 17th century – a battlefield of ideas
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A new class – the bourgeoisie – comes to power in the Netherlands and England
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Philosophy seen through the prism of religion
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Netherlands a haven for freethinkers
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Social and religious/philosophical revolutions
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Philosophers on the run from the Inquisition seek havens abroad
A system at war with itself
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Evidence that the rate of profit declines
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What the rate of profit measures
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Marx's explanation for the decline
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How this explains the drive for growth
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The contradictory pressures on investment
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The inevitability of crisis
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The additional impact of covid
Climate Chaos: A way forward
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Eco-system is changing
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Why did COP fail
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Internalising externalities
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The net zero fraud
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Nationalism and war
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