Events

Bring your own bicycle (or rent a “shared” one from Divvy) and join HGS Instructor Bob Jene for a leisurely roll thru the near south area, including Grant Park, Museum Campus, Central Station, Prairie Avenue, and South Michigan Avenue. Taxpayers spent hundreds of millions for infrastructure and amenities serving these areas, resulting in redevelopment but also higher costs for housing, commercial and even parking spaces. Bob will discuss these effects, who benefits and who pays, and how equity might be improved.

America’s only Political Economy Book Club discusses Candide, Voltaire’s 1759 masterpiece that ridicules religion, theologians, governments, armies, philosophies and philosophers through allegory.  As Jean Starobinski notes,”The fast-paced and improbable plot—in which characters narrowly escape death repeatedly, for instance—allows for compounding tragedies to befall the same characters over and over again.”

It’s only a hundred pages or so depending on the translation and format, and is available in English translation free from Project Gutenberg  (in several formats) as well as from the Internet Archive, where there is also an audiobook. 

PEBC coordinator Bob Matter would appreciate an RSVP, if possible, from those planning to attend.

Right on the streets of every American community, robbery takes place every working day. You might not realize how much value the people of Chicago (and every other community) create, simply by going about our daily activities. What is this wealth, how do we create it, and where does it go?

Originally conceived as a field trip for Progress & Poverty students, this stroll — about 2 km and 90 minutes — presents some answers for those interested in finding out.  Additionally, we’ll take a look at recovered loot of a long-ago theft, learn how Thomas Jefferson would have solved the problem of financing Chicago’s public schools, and see an economic development incentive that costs less than nothing.  We might stop for snacks along the way (individual settlement).

Detailed sourced notes will be provided. This is now a free tour, no donation required, although we do appreciate (tax-deductible) contributions from those who can afford it and find the event worthwhile.

We’ll discuss Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s  Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men.  Rousseau sets out to demonstrate how the growth of civilization corrupts man’s natural happiness and freedom by creating artificial inequalities of wealth, power and social privilege. Contending that primitive man was equal to his fellows, Rousseau believed that as societies become more sophisticated, the strongest and most intelligent members of the community gain an unnatural advantage over their weaker brethren, and that constitutions set up to rectify these imbalances through peace and justice in fact do nothing but perpetuate them. Rousseau’s political and social arguments in the Discourse were a hugely influential denunciation of the social conditions of his time and one of the most revolutionary documents of the eighteenth-century.

Henry George was evidently familiar with these ideas but didn’t fully agree with Rousseau.

Multiple English translations of Discourse on Inequality are available free , as is at least one audiobook.

Political Economy Book Club meetings are free and open to everyone, tho donations to help pay the rent are appreciated. PEBC Coordinator Bob Matter requests an RSVP at the phone number or email above.

The People of the Abyss (1903) is a book by Jack London (1876-1916) about life in the East End of London in 1902. He wrote this first-hand account by living in the East End for several months, sometimes staying in workhouses or sleeping on the streets. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.  Decades later, this book inspired George Orwell to write Down and Out in Paris and London.

A bit late to be a contemporary of Henry George, Jack London lived mainly in northern California  and was a passionate advocate of workers’ rights. Both London and George were members of Bohemian Grove.

(source: Wikipedia)

The People of the Abyss is available free on line as text from Gutenberg, and as an audiobook from LibriVox, as well as in hardcopy from various libraries and book dealers.

Political Economy Book Club is open to everyone wishing to participate in the discussion, without charge altho donations are appreciated to help pay for rent and snacks. Convenor Bob Matter appreciates an RSVP from those planning to attend.

Right on the streets of every American community, robbery takes place every working day. You might not realize how much value the people of Chicago (and every other community) create, simply by going about our daily activities. What is this wealth, how do we create it, and where does it go?

Originally conceived as a field trip for Progress & Poverty students, this stroll — about 2 km and 90 minutes — presents some answers for those interested in finding out.  Additionally, we’ll take a look at recovered loot of a long-ago theft, learn how Thomas Jefferson proposed to finance Chicago’s public schools, and see an economic development incentive that costs less than nothing.  We might stop for snacks along the way (individual settlement).

Detailed sourced notes will be provided. This is now a free tour, no donation required, although we do appreciate (tax-deductible) contributions from those who can afford it and find the event worthwhile.

The Political Economy Book Club will be discussing Machiavelli’s most famous work, The Prince. One of the great works of political philosophy, it is regarded as one of the pinnacles of Renaissance thought. Machiavelli was a polymath, immersed in countless academic subjects, and yet simultaneously intimately involved in the politics of his day, holding many titles and offices.

PEBC coordinator Bob Matter would appreciate an RSVP, if possible, from those planning to attend.

In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont were sent by the French government to study the American prison system. In his later letters Tocqueville indicates that he and Beaumont used their official business as a pretext to study American society instead. They arrived in New York City in May of that year and spent nine months traveling the United States, studying the prisons, and collecting information on American society, including its religious, political, and economic character.

— Wikipedia

Democracy in America was one of the products of this trip. It’s available in several translations, some free such as this one and this one, also free in audio format.  On March 29, the Political Economy Book Club will discuss volume 1.

PEBC meetings are free and open to everyone who has read and wishes to talk about the book under discussion. Convenor Bob Matter appreciates an RSVP if possible.

A subsequent meeting will discuss volume 2

Resurrection (1899)
By Leo Tolstoy

This late 19th-century novel about nobleman Dmitri Ivanovich Nekhlyudov’s efforts at redemption after a life of sin is Tolstoy’s last major novel before his death in 1910. The readers will have a complex relationship with the tormented protagonist and his desperate attempts at redemption and forgiveness, since Nekhlyudov’s misguided decisions and youthful errors are often not so dissimilar from our own. Resurrection is a scathing exposition of the myriad prejudices of the man-made justice system and the hypocrisy of the establishment, while it also explores the economic philosophy of Georgism – of which Tolstoy had become a strong advocate toward the end of his life.  [from the Culture Trip]

Political Economy Book Club discussions are open to everyone interested, without charge, and the text (in English translation) is available free from various sources including archive.org, who also offer a free audiobook. There is also a more recent translation by Anthony Briggs, which can be purchased or licensed in various formats and is available in some public libraries.  Any questions about the PEBC may be directed to Convenor Bob Matter,