Introduction

Welcome to the curriculum of the People’s Academy — a set of readings selected to facilitate your progress through the course and to serve as a lifelong guide to learning. This is a living document. The curriculum will evolve and grow with time.

The People’s Academy begins with a quick introduction to the fundamental methodology of Marxism. It is brief, because Marxist thought weaves through the entire program, and your knowledge of theory will develop as we progress through the Chapters.

Each Unit contains a set of “Required”, “Additional” and “Supplementary” readings. Participants are expected to engage with all the “Required” readings, while the other resources are intended to give you additional context that you can read ahead of each class or return to in your own time to enrich your understanding.

The curriculum begins with a four-unit Chapter called The Rebellion is Brought to the North — Internationalism and National Liberation, which seeks to give us the tools to make sense of a historical moment marked by Palestine’s anti-colonial resistance, the rise of a global movement of solidarity, and the retributive genocide of empire.

It then delves deeper into the inner workings of imperialism, seeking to expose the many arteries that bind the world to a globalized system of capital accumulation. And then it turns to the question of socialism, exploring the political forces that were able to overcome capitalism and imperialism and build a new world in their place.

A fourth Chapter, currently under construction, will explore contemporary movements for socialism and liberation — studying the theories, strategies, and historical circumstances that shape them.

Lecture Timetable

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Last Updated: 12 September 2025

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Chapters

The struggle for national liberation and socialism is a story told through the theories and everyday practices of revolutionary movements throughout the history of the Global South.

The curriculum of The People's Academy is structured in Chapters, each dealing with a critical theme on the long road to liberation.

Introduction: Studying for Liberation — The Analytical Field of Marxism

In many parts of the world, even as demands for “systems change” grow louder, the theories and strategies underpinning them resolve into a politics of advocacy that focuses on appealing to existing institutions rather than building new ones — a politics from above that refuses or fails to walk in step and build with the masses. Never in history has a transformation on the scale necessary today been achieved through such means.

The history of the struggle against imperialism — and for socialism — offers an antidote. From Petrograd to Yan’an, from Ho Chi Minh City to the Sierra Maestra, revolutionary movements have swept away the old world and begun to construct a new one in their image — in the image of the worker or the peasant. Studying the theories and practices underpinning these historic projects gives us a way of making sense of the present and working collectively past its impasses.

Today, millions have become attuned to the realities of imperial and colonial violence through the genocide in Gaza. But how do we transform that rising consciousness into a flood that can sweep away the old and make way for the new? The People’s Academy aims at giving us the intellectual and strategic tools to carry forward the torch of revolution into a new era. And it begins with a central question: Why do we learn? And how do we learn?

VIEW THE READING LIST:

Introduction: Syllabus

Chapter I: The Rebellion is Brought to the North — Internationalism and National Liberation