What is the Left? What is Marxism? (2014)

What is the Left? What is Marxism?
Platypus primary Marxist reading group

Room 318 Student Union Building, Dalhousie University
Tuesdays 6–8PM
contact: dalhousie@platypus1917.org

• required / + recommended reading

Week A. Sep. 9, 2014 | 1960s New Left: Neo-Marxism

Ÿ Martin Nicolaus, “The unknown Marx” (1968)
Ÿ Moishe Postone, “Necessity, labor, and time” (1978)

Week B. Sep. 16, 2014 | 1960s New Left: Gender and Sexuality

Ÿ Juliet Mitchell, “Women: The longest revolution” (1966)
Ÿ Clara Zetkin and Lenin, “The woman question” (1920)
Ÿ Theodor W. Adorno, “Sexual taboos and law today” (1963)
Ÿ John D’Emilio, “Capitalism and gay identity” (1983)

Week C. Sep. 23, 2014 | Frankfurt School Precursors

Ÿ Wilhelm Reich, “Ideology as material power” (1933/46)
Ÿ Siegfried Kracauer, “The mass ornament” and “Photography” (1927)

Week 1. Sep. 30, 2014 | What is the Left?  Capital in History

Ÿ Chris Cutrone, “Capital in history” (2008)
Ÿ Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis” (2010)

Week 2. Oct. 7, 2014 | What is the Left?  Bourgeois Society

Ÿ Immanuel Kant, “Idea for universal history from cosmo-politan point of view” and “What is Enlightenment?” (1784)
Ÿ Benjamin Constant, “The liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns” (1819)

Week 3. Oct. 14, 2014 | Thanksgiving break

Week 4. Oct. 21, 2014 | What is the Left?  Failure of Marxism

Ÿ Max Horkheimer, selections from Dämmerung (1926–31)

Week 5. Oct. 28, 2014 | What is the Left?  Utopia and Critique

Ÿ Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left” (1968)
Ÿ Karl Marx, To make the world philosophical (1839–41)
Ÿ Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (1843)

Week 6. Nov. 4, 2014 | What is Marxism?  Socialism

Ÿ Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)
Ÿ Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

Week 7. Nov. 11, 2014 | What is Marxism?  Revolution in 1848 (off campus session)

Ÿ• Engels, The tactics of social democracy (Engels's 1895 introduction to Marx, The Class Struggles in France), pp. 556–573
• Marx, selections from The Class Struggles in France 1848–50 (1850), pp. 586–593
• Marx, selections from The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), pp. 594–617

Week 8. Nov. 18, 2014 | What is Marxism?  Bonapartism

+ Karl Korsch, "The Marxism of the First International" (1924)
• Marx, Inaugural address to the First International (1864), pp. 512–519
• Marx, selections from The Civil War in France (1871, including Engels's 1891 Introduction), pp. 618–652
+ Korsch, Introduction to Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1922)
• Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, pp. 525–541
• Marx, Programme of the Parti Ouvrier (1880)

 Week 9. Nov. 25, 2015 | What is Marxism?  Political Economy

+ Commodity form chart of terms
• Marx, selections from the Grundrisse (1857–61), pp. 222–226, 236–244, 247–250, 282–294
• Marx, Capital Vol. I, Ch. 1 Sec. 4 "The fetishism of commodities" (1867), pp. 319–329

Week 10. Dec. 2, 2015 | What is Marxism?  Reification

• Georg Lukács, “The phenomenon of reification” (Part I of “Reification and the consciousness of the proletariat,” History and Class Consciousness, 1923)
+ Commodity form chart of terms

Winter Break

Week 11. Jan. 6, 2015 | What is Marxism?  Class Consciousness

Ÿ • Lukács, Original Preface (1922), “What is Orthodox Marxism?” (1919), “Class Consciousness” (1920), History and Class Consciousness (1923)
+ Marx, Preface to the First German Edition and Afterword to the Second German Edition(1873) of Capital (1867), pp. 294–298, 299–302

Week 12. Jan. 13, 2015 | What is Marxism?  Ends of Philosophy

• Korsch, “Marxism and philosophy” (1923)
+ Marx, To make the world philosophical (from Marx's dissertation, 1839–41), pp. 9–11
+ Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843), pp. 12–15
+ Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach" (1845), pp. 143–145