For close to four decades, the Brecht Forum/New York Marxist School served as a cultural and educational center for people who work for social justice, equality and a new culture that puts human needs first. Through its programs and events, the Brecht Forum brought people together across social and cultural boundaries and artistic and academic disciplines to promote critical analysis, creative thinking, collaborative projects and networking in an independent community-level environment.

When the Brecht Forum closed its doors in May of 2014, a number of teachers and activists founded The Marxist Education Project that has enabled the continuation of classes and study groups and the maintenance of important elements of the work of the New York Marxist School.

This site is being maintained as an archive. Over time, additional videos, podcasts and other archival materials will be digitalized and posted. There are also extensive materials that have been donated to New York University's Tamiment Library.

The Brecht Forum was founded in October, 1975 as The School for Marxist Education and in 1979 became The New York Marxist School. In 1984, the founding collective incorporated as The Brecht Forum with The New York Marxist School as the Forum's central project. Additional projects which emerged over the years include  The Institute for Popular Education, founded in 1990 in collaboration with the Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory, & Arts at the Brecht which developed ongoing arts programming in collaboration with such projects as Neues Kabarett, an experimental jazz series initiated in 1998, Strike Anywhere Theater Ensemble, and The Ground Floor Collective.

The cornerstone of the Brecht Forum/NYMS's educational conception situated movement-building within a transformative cultural process within society at large. From the beginning, its conception was based on the idea that a fundamental task of the left is to create, within existing society, a counter-hegemonic culture of working people and their allies, who are capable of challenging the capitalist agenda, prefiguring new ways of thinking and of self-organization, as well as creating new ways of relating to each other and nature.

A wide-ranging program of classes, public lectures and seminars, art exhibitions, performances, popular education workshops, and language classes were offered throughout each year. These activities were developed in collaboration with the many social movements and the diverse communities of this most cosmopolitan of cities, and its programs brought together leading intellectuals, activists and artists from New York, across the U.S., and internationally.

Registration & Fees

Most of its activities had a sliding scale suggested donation and no one was turned away for inability to pay. As these funds only covered a portion of their costs, the Forum relied on the progressive community for its financial survival.