London Platypus Reading Group, Autumn/Winter 2015
I. What is the Left? -- What is Marxism?
Mondays 7pm, Goldsmiths College, Room 226, Richard Hoggart Building
check here and facebook.com/londonplatypus for further details.
all readings are available online: platypus1917.org/pedagogy
• required / + recommended reading
Marx and Engels readings pp. from Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader (Norton 2nd ed., 1978)
Week A. Radical bourgeois philosophy I. Rousseau: Crossroads of society | Aug. 3, 2015
Whoever dares undertake to establish a people’s institutions must feel himself capable of changing, as it were, human nature, of transforming each individual, who by himself is a complete and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole, from which, in a sense, the individual receives his life and his being, of substituting a limited and mental existence for the physical and independent existence. He has to take from man his own powers, and give him in exchange alien powers which he cannot employ without the help of other men.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract (1762)
• epigraphs on modern history and freedom by James Miller (on Jean-Jacques Rousseau), Louis Menand (on Edmund Wilson), Karl Marx, on "becoming" (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58), and Peter Preuss (on Nietzsche)
+ Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (1908); + Robert Pippin, "On Critical Theory" (2004)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754) PDFs of preferred translation (5 parts): [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
• Rousseau, selection from On the Social Contract (1762)
Week B. Radical bourgeois philosophy II. Hegel: Freedom in history | Aug. 10, 2015
• G.W.F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1831) [HTML] [PDF pp. 14-128]
Week C. Radical bourgeois philosophy III. Nietzsche (1): Life in history | Aug. 17, 2015
• Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life (1874) [translator's introduction by Peter Preuss]
+ Nietzsche on history chart of terms
Week D. Radical bourgeois philosophy IV. Nietzsche (2): Asceticism of moderns | Aug. 24, 2015
+ Human, All Too Human: Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil (1999)
• Nietzsche, selection from On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
• Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic (1887)
Week E. 1960s New Left I. Neo-Marxism | Aug. 31, 2015
• Martin Nicolaus, “The unknown Marx” (1968)
+ Commodity form chart of terms
• Moishe Postone, “Necessity, labor, and time” (1978);
+ Postone, “History and helplessness: Mass mobilization and contemporary forms of anticapitalism” (2006);
+ Postone, “Theorizing the contemporary world: Brenner, Arrighi, Harvey” (2006)
Week F. 1960s New Left II. Gender and sexuality | Sep. 7, 2015
• Juliet Mitchell, “Women: The longest revolution” (1966)
• Clara Zetkin and Vladimir Lenin, “An interview on the woman question” (1920)
• Theodor W. Adorno, “Sexual taboos and the law today” (1963)
• John D’Emilio, “Capitalism and gay identity” (1983)
Week G. 1960s New Left III. Anti-black racism in the U.S. | Sep. 14, 2015
• Richard Fraser, “Two lectures on the black question in America and revolutionary integrationism” (1953)
• James Robertson and Shirley Stoute, “For black Trotskyism” (1963)
+ Spartacist League, “Black and red: Class struggle road to Negro freedom” (1966);
+ Bayard Rustin, “The failure of black separatism” (1970)
• Adolph Reed, “Black particularity reconsidered” (1979); + Reed, “Paths to Critical Theory” (1984)
Week H. Frankfurt School precursors | Sep. 21, 2015
• Wilhelm Reich, “Ideology as material power” (1933/46)
• Siegfried Kracauer, “The mass ornament” (1927)
+ Kracauer, “Photography” (1927)
Week 1. What is the Left? I. Capital in history | Sep. 28, 2014
• epigraphs on modern history and freedom by Louis Menand (on Marx and Engels) and Karl Marx, on "becoming" (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58)
• Chris Cutrone, "Capital in history" (2008)
+ Capital in history timeline and chart of terms
+ video of Communist University 2011 London presentation
• Cutrone, "The Marxist hypothesis" (2010)
Week 2. What is the Left? II. Bourgeois society | Oct. 5, 2015
• Immanuel Kant, "Idea for a universal history from a cosmopolitan point of view" and"What is Enlightenment?" (1784)
• Benjamin Constant, "The liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns" (1819)
+ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the origin of inequality (1754); + Rousseau, selection from On the social contract (1762)
Week 3. What is the Left? III. Failure of Marxism | Oct. 12, 2015
• Max Horkheimer, selections from Dämmerung (1926–31)
• Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses” (1944–47)
Week 4. What is the Left? IV. Utopia and critique | Oct. 19, 2015
• Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left” (1968)
• 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
Week 5. What is Marxism? I. Socialism | Oct. 26, 2015
• Marx, selections from Economic and philosophic manuscripts (1844), pp. 70–101
+ Commodity form chart of terms
• Marx and Friedrich Engels, selections from the Manifesto of the Communist Party(1848), pp. 469-500
• Marx, Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League (1850), pp. 501–511
Week 6. What is Marxism? II. Revolution in 1848 | Nov. 2, 2015
• Marx, The coming upheaval (from The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847) and Class struggle and mode of production (letter to Weydemeyer, 1852), pp. 218-220
• 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 7. [Break - Platypus European Conference, Frankfurt 6-8 Nov ] | Nov. 9, 2015
Week 8. What is Marxism? III. Bonapartism | Nov. 16, 2015
• 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
• Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, pp. 525–541; + Korsch, Introduction to Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1922); + Karl Korsch, "The Marxism of the First International" (1924)
• Marx, Programme of the Parti Ouvrier (1880)
Week 9. What is Marxism? IV. Critique of political economy | Nov. 23, 2015
+ Commodity form chart of terms
• Marx, selections from the Grundrisse (1857–61), pp. 222–226, 236–244, 247–250, 276–293 ME Reader pp. 276-281
• Marx, Capital Vol. I, Ch. 1 Sec. 4 "The fetishism of commodities" (1867), pp. 319–329
Week 10. What is Marxism? V. Reification | Nov. 30, 2015
• 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
Week 11. What is Marxism? VI. Class consciousness | Dec. 7, 2015
• 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
[End of term]
Spring term:
II. Introduction to revolutionary Marxism:
Readings include Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin and more.
