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Was ist revolutionärer Marxismus?

WÜchentlich mittwochs, 18:45-21:45
ab 29. März 2016
Kommunikationszentrum (KomZ) der STV Politikwissenschaft im 2. Stock des Neuen Institutsgebäudes (NIG)
Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Wien
Achtung! Ortswechsel ab 19. Juli 2016:
Cafe Gagarin
Garnisongasse 24, 1090 Wien 

Durch die LektĂźre von bedeutenden Texten der Hochphase des Marxismus in der 2. Internationalen und ihrer Krise im 20. Jahrhundert betrachten wir das Problem des Bewusstseins dieser Geschichte und ihrer politischen Implikationen fĂźr die Gegenwart. Die Textauswahl beinhaltet Schriften von Luxemburg, Lenin und Trotzki, die philosophische Reflexion des Marxismus von LukĂĄcs und Korsch und ihre Auswirkungen auf die Kritische Theorie von Benjamin, Horkheimer und Adorno.

Die Texte werden zu Hause gelesen und beim Lesekreis besprochen. Kein Vorwissen ist nĂśtig, Neueinsteigende sind absolut erwĂźnscht.

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Leseliste

• vorausgesetzte / + empfohlene Texte

Woche 1. Revolutionäre Fßhrung | 29. März 2017
• Rosa Luxemburg, “Die ‘Junius-Broschüre’ / Krise der Sozialdemokratie” Teil I. (1915)
• J. P. Nettl, “The German Social Democratic Party 1890-1914 as a Political Model” (1965)
• Cliff Slaughter, “What is revolutionary leadership?” (1960)


Woche 2. Reform oder Revolution? | 5. April 2017
• Luxemburg, Sozialreform oder Revolution (1899/1908)


Woche 3. Lenin und die Avantgardepartei | 26. April 2017
• Spartakist-Broschüre, “Lenin und die Avantgardepartei” (1978)


Woche 4. Was tun? | 3. Mai 2017
• W. I. Lenin, Was tun? (1902)
+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)


Woche 5. Massenstreik und Sozialdemokratie | 10. Mai 2017
• Luxemburg, „Massenstreik, Partei und Gewerkschaften“ (1906)
• Luxemburg, „Blanquismus und Sozialdemokratie" (1906)


Woche 6. Permanente Revolution | 17. Mai 2017
• Leo Trotzki, Ergebnisse und Perspektiven (1906)
+ Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)


Woche 7. Staat und Revolution | 24. Mai 2017
• Lenin, Staat und Revolution (1917)


Woche 8. Imperialismus | 31. Mai 2017
• Lenin, "Der Imperialismus als höchstes Stadium des Kapitalismus" (1916)
+ Lenin, Sozialismus und Krieg I. Kapitel: Die Grundsätze des Sozialismus und der Krieg 1914/1915 (1915)


Woche 9. Das Scheitern der Revolution | 7. Juni 2017
• Luxemburg, Was will der Spartakusbund? (1918)
• Luxemburg, Unser Programm und die politische Situation (1918)
+ Luxemburg, Die Sozialisierung der Gesellschaft (1918)
+ Luxemburg, “The Russian Tragedy” (1918)
+ Luxemburg, Die Ordnung herrscht in Berlin (1919)
+ Sebastian Haffner, Die deutsche Revolution 1918/19 (1968) [Amazon verlinken? und PDF der englischen Übersetzung]


Woche 10. RĂźckzug nach der Revolution | 14. Juni 2017
• Lenin, Der „Linke Radikalismus“, die Kinderkrankheit im Kommunismus (1920)
+ Lenin, Notizen eines Publizisten (1922/24)


Woche 11. Dialektik der Verdinglichung | 21. Juni 2017
• Lukács, “Der Standpunkt des Proletariats” (Teil III. des Kapitels “Die Verdinglichung und das Bewußtsein des Proletariats”) In: Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein (1923)


Woche 12. Die Lehren des Oktobers | 28. Juni 2017
• Leo Trotzki, 1917 – Die Lehren des Oktobers (1924)
+ Leo Trotzki, Bolschewismus und Stalinismus (1937)


Woche 13. Trotzkismus | 5. Juli 2017
+ Trotzki, "To build communist parties and an international anew" (1933)
• Trotzki, Der Todeskampf des Kapitalismus und die Aufgaben der 4. Internationale (Das Übergangsprogramm)(1938)
+ Trotzki, Die Gewerkschaften in der Epoche des imperialistischen Niedergangs (1940)
+ Trotzki, Brief an James Cannon (12. September 1939)


Woche 14. Der autoritäre Staat | 12. Juli 2017
• Friedrich Pollock, Staatskapitalismus (1941)
• Max Horkheimer, „Autoritärer Staat“ (1940/1942)


Woche 15. Über den Begriff der Geschichte | 19. Juli 2017
• Epigraphe von Louis Menand (über Edmund Wilson) und Peter Preuss (über Nietzsche) über den modernen Begriff der Geschichte
+ Charles Baudelaire, aus FusĂŠes [Rockets] (1867)
+ Bertolt Brecht, "An die Nachgeborenen" (1939)
+ Walter Benjamin, "Zum Planetarium" (aus Einbahnstraße, 1928)
+ Benjamin, "Erfahrung und Armut" (1933)
+ Benjamin, "Theologisch-politisches Fragment" (1921/39?)
• Benjamin, "Über den Begriff der Geschichte" (1940) • Benjamin, "Paralipomena zu den Thesen Über den Begriff der Geschichte" (1940)


Woche 16. Reflexionen Ăźber den Marxismus | 26. Juli 2017
• Theodor Adorno, "Reflexionen zur Klassentheorie" (1942)
• Adorno, "Ausschweifung" (Anhang Minima Moralia) (1944–47)
+ Adorno, "Zueignung", "Vermächtnis“, "Vor Mißbrauch wird gewarnt" und "Zum Ende", aus Minima Moralia (1944-47)
+ Horkheimer und Adorno, Diskussion Ăźber Theorie und Praxis (1956)


Woche 17. Theorie und Praxis | 2. August 2017
+ Adorno, "Zu Subjekt und Objekt" (1969)
• Adorno, “Marginalien zu Theorie und Praxis” (1969)
• Adorno, “Resignation” (1969)
+ Adorno, "Spätkapitalismus oder Industriegesellschaft?" (1968)
+ Esther Leslie, "Introduction to the 1969 Adorno-Marcuse correspondence" (1999)
+ Adorno und Marcuse, "Correspondence on the German New Left" (1969)

On November 7, 2016, the eve of the U.S. presidential election, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel discussion entitled “Immigration and the Left” at the University of Illinois at Chicago [UIC]. Moderated by Joseph Estes of Platypus, the event posed three questions to the panelists: How has the Left approached the question of immigration historically? What opportunities exist in the immigrants’ rights movement today for a renewed emancipatory politics? What role can left-wing civil and political organizations play in immigration politics? Three speakers addressed these questions: Jorge Mujica, seasoned activist and the Strategic Campaigns Organizer for Arise Chicago; Ralph Cintron, professor of English and Latino and Latin American Studies at UIC; and Jacqueline Stevens, professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. What follows is an edited transcript of their discussion.
On October 23, 2016, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel discussion entitled “Immigration and the Left” at the University of Houston. Moderated by Danny Jacobs of Platypus, the event posed three questions to the panelists: How has the Left approached the question of immigration historically? What opportunities for a renewed emancipatory politics exist in the immigrants’ rights movement today? What role can left-wing civil and political organizations play in immigration politics? Three speakers addressed these questions: Alvaro Rodriguez, from the Communist Party, USA; Henry Cooper, from Proyecto Latino Americano; and Liam Wright, a veteran of Occupy Seattle and other social movements. What follows is an edited transcript of their discussion.

7:00pm / 30 November 2016
London School of Economics

Speakers (in order):

Adam Booth (writer and activist with Socialist Appeal and the International Marxist Tendency)
James Heartfield (Sp!ked / Author of 'An Unpatriotic History of the Second World War')
Patrick Neveling (SOAS Development Studies, Utrecht University Cultural Anthropology)
Paul Demarty (Weekly Worker / CPGB)

Panel description:

The Left has for over a generation – for more than 40 years, since the crisis of 1973 – placed its hopes in the Democratic and Labour Parties to reverse or slow neoliberal capitalism – the move to trans-national trade agreements, the movement of capital and labor, and austerity. The post-2008 crisis ofneoliberalism, despite phenomena such as SYRIZA, Occupy Wall Street, the Arab Spring and anti-austerity protests more generally, Bernie Sanders's candidacy, and Jeremy Corbyn's Labour leadership, has found expression on the avowed Right, through UKIP, Brexit, the U.K. Conservatives' move to "Red Toryism" and now Donald Trump's election. The old neoliberal consensus is falling apart, and change is palpably in the air. Margaret Thatcher's infamous phrase "There Is No Alternative" has been proven wrong. What can the Left do to advance the struggle for socialism under such circumstances?

Some background:

In the 1960s the Left faced political and social crises in an era of full employment and economic growth. Departing from official Communism, which had largely supported the development of the welfare state in industrialized capitalist countries, many on the Left challenged the existing political order, of Keynesian-Fordism, through community organising on the principle of expanding individual and collective freedom from the state. Against Keynesian economic demands, many of these Leftists supported the Rights efforts, to integrate formerly oppressed identity groups into the corporate professional-managerial class. Since the 1970s, the significance of the fact that all these aims were taken up, politically, by the Right, in the name of ‘freedom’, in the form of neo-liberalism is still ambiguous today.

Some on the Left have understood this phase of ‘neo-liberalism’ to be continuous with the post-war Fordist state, for example in Ernest Mandel’s conception of “late capitalism” and David Harvey’s idea of “post-Fordism”. The movement of labor and capital was still administered by the Fordist state. Distinctively, others on the Left have opposed neo-liberalism for over a generation through a defence of the post-war welfare state, through appeals to anti-austerity and anti-globalisation.

How does this distinction within the Left between the defense of the welfare state and the defense of individual freedom affect the Left’s response to the crisis of neo-liberalism? Why has the Left recently supported attempts to politically manage the economic crisis post-2008, against attempts at political change? How can the Left struggle for political power, with the aim of overcoming capitalism and achieving socialism, when the political expression of the crisis of neo-liberalism has largely come from the Right, and Trump won the election in November?

A panel on the politics of work held at the University of Houston, December 4, 2016 by Platypus Houston.

Panelists:

Dylan Daney - UNITE HERE!
David Michael Smith - Houston Socialist Movement
Duy Lap Nguyen - Professor of World Cultures and Literatures, University of Houston

"Capital is not a book about politics, and not even a book about labour: it is a book about unemployment." - Fredric Jameson, Representing Capital: A Reading of Volume One

"...the misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all." - Joan Robinson

"The error consists in believing that labor, by which I mean heteronomous, salaried labor, can and must remain the essential matter. It's just not so. According to American projections, within twenty years labor time will be less than half that of leisure time. I see the task of the left as directing and promoting this process of abolition of labor in a way that will not result in a mass of unemployed on one side, and aristocracy of labor on the other and between them a proletariat which carries out the most distasteful jobs for forty-five hours a week. Instead, let everyone work much less for his salary and thus be free to act in a much more autonomous manner...Today "communism" is a real possibility and even a realistic proposition, for the abolition of salaried labor through automation saps both capitalist logic and the market economy." - Andre Gorz

It is generally assumed that Marxists and other Leftists have the political responsibility to support reforms for the improvement of the welfare of workers. Yet, leading figures from the Marxist tradition-- such as Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky-- also understood that such reforms would broaden the crisis of capitalism and potentially intensify contradictions that could adversely impact the immediate conditions of workers. For instance, full employment, while being a natural demand from the standpoint of all workers’ interests, also threatens the conditions of capitalist production (which rely on a surplus of available labor), thereby potentially jeopardizing the system of employment altogether. In light of such apparent paradoxes, this panel seeks to investigate the politics of work from Leftist perspectives. It will attempt to provoke reflection on and discussion of the ambiguities and dilemmas of the politics of work by including speakers from divergent perspectives, some of whom seek after the immediate abolition of labor and others of whom seek to increase the availability of employment opportunities. It is hoped that this conversation will deepen the understanding of the contemporary problems faced by the Left in its struggles to construct a politics adequate to the self-emancipation of the working class.