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You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/Platypus Yale Fall 2018 - Winter 2019 Reading Group

Platypus Yale Fall 2018 - Winter 2019 Reading Group

Fall/Autumn 2018 – Winter 2019

What is the Left? – What is Marxism?

Wednesdays,

6:30 – 9:00pm, L34D,

Bass Library

Yale University

  • required/ + recommended readingNeww

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 | September 5, 2018

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)

+ Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (1908)

+ Robert Pippin, "On Critical Theory" (2004)

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) chart of terms

Week B. Radical bourgeois philosophy II. Adam Smith: On the wealth of nations (part 1) | September 12, 2018

Volume I [PDF] Introduction and Plan of the Work
Book I: Of the Causes of Improvement…
I.1. Of the Division of Labor
I.2. Of the Principle which gives Occasion to the Division of Labour
I.3. That the Division of Labour is Limited by the Extent of the Market
I.4. Of the Origin and Use of Money
I.6. Of the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities
I.7. Of the Natural and Market Price of Commodities
I.8. Of the Wages of Labour
I.9. Of the Profits of Stock
Book III: Of the different Progress of Opulence in different Nations
III.1.
Of the Natural Progress of Opulence
III.2. Of the Discouragement of Agriculture in the Ancient State of Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire
III.3. Of the Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns, after the Fall of the Roman Empire
III.4. How the Commerce of the Towns Contributed to the Improvement of the Country

Week C. Radical bourgeois philosophy III. Adam Smith: On the wealth of nations (part 2) | September 19, 2018

Volume II [PDF]
IV.7. Of Colonies
Book V: Of the Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth
V.1. Of the Expences of the Sovereign or Commonwealth

Week D. Radical bourgeois philosophy IV. What is the Third Estate? | September 26, 2018

+ Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1732)

Week E. Radical bourgeois philosophy V. Kant and Constant: Bourgeois society | October 3, 2018

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) chart of terms

+ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the origin of inequality (1754)

+ Rousseau, selection from On the social contract (1762)

Week F. Radical bourgeois philosophy VI. Hegel: Freedom in history | October 10, 2018

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) chart of terms

October Recess, October 16 – 22, 2018, reading group will not meet

Week G. What is the Left? I. Capital in history | Oct. 24, 2018

+ Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (1908)

+ Robert Pippin, "On Critical Theory" (2004)

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) chart of terms

+ Capital in history timeline and chart of terms

+ video of Communist University 2011 London presentation

+ G.M. Tamas, "Telling the truth about class" [HTML] (2007)

Week H. What is the Left? II. Utopia and critique | October 31, 2018

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms

Week I. What is Marxism? I. Socialism | November 7, 2018

+ Commodity form chart of terms

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms

Week J. What is Marxism? II. Revolution in 1848 | November 14, 2018