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You are here: The Platypus Affiliated Society/Marx-Engels Reader syllabus 2021

Marx-Engels Reader syllabus 2021

Marx-Engels Reader Platypus reading group

Time: Saturdays 2:30PM US EST 

April 10 - May 29, 2021

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/194881882245655

Required reading:

Robert Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader (2nd Edition, 1978)

Recommended background reading:

Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of his Life (1918)

David Riazanov, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: An Introduction to Their Lives and Work (1927)

(Selections from Engels’s prefaces, etc. to be added as recommended readings)

(*recommended)

Week One | April 10, 2021 — 1839-44

7-125 (“On the Jewish Question,” “Contribution to the Critique,” and “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts” etc.)

577-85 â€śWorking-Class Manchester”

*Mehring chapters 1-3

Week Two | April 17, 2021 — 1844-48

126-219 (“Critical Marginal Notes,” “Theses on Feuerbach,” “German Ideology,” “Wage Labor and Capital,” etc.)

469-500 â€śCommunist Manifesto”

*Mehring chapters 4-5

Week Three | April 24, 2021 — 1850-56

“Address to the CL” (501-11), Class Struggles in France and Eighteenth Brumaire (586-617), “On Imperialism in India” (653-664), and “Speech at the Anniversary of the PP” (577-78),

*Mehring chapters 6-8

Week Four | May 1, 2021 — 1857-64

 â€śMarx on the History of his Opinions” (3-6), “Grundrisse” (221-93), “Inaugural Address to the IWMA” (512-19)

*Mehring chapters 9-11

Weeks Five and Six | May 8 and 15, 2021 — Capital

294-468 (and additional selections from the Grundrisse)

*Mehring Chapter 12; *Kautsky, “The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx” (1887/1903)

Week Seven | May 22, 2021 — The Paris Commune and the Aftermath of the International

“The Civil War in France”

520-555 (Critique of Gotha etc.), 665-680 (etc.)

*Mehring chapters 13-15

Week Eight | May 29, 2021 — Engels after Marx and Marxism

681-768 (selections from SocialismAnti-DĂĽhring, and Origins of Family, PP, and the State etc.)

556-76 â€śThe Tactics of Social Democracy”

Kautsky, “The Historic Accomplishment of Karl Marx” (1908); and *“Friedrich Engels: His Life, His Work, His Writings” (1899)