Summer 2023: Marxism and Politics
( β’ required / + recommended readings)
Recommended background preliminary readings:
+ Benjamin Constant, "The liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns" (1819)
+ J. P. Nettl, βThe German Social Democratic Party 1890β1914 as a Political Modelβ (1965)
Recommended supplemental parallel readings:
+ Chris Cutrone, "The end of the Gilded Age" (2017) and "Gilded Age socialism -- historically past?" (2023)
+ Cutrone, "Lenin's liberalism" and "Lenin's politics" (2011)
+ Cutrone, "What is political party for Marxism?" (2014)
+ Cutrone, βProletarian dictatorship and state capitalismβ (2015)
+ Cutrone, βWhat was social democracyβ (2016)
+ Cutrone, "Back to Herbert Spencer! Industrial vs. militant society" (2016) [audio]
+ Cutrone, "Horkheimer in 1943 on party and class" (2016)
+ Max Horkheimer, "On the sociology of class relations" (1943)
+ Cutrone, "Lenin today" (2020)
+ Cutrone, "The dictatorship of the proletariat and the death of the Left" (2021)
+ August Nimtz, Andrew Arato and Chris Cutrone, "Socialism, liberalism and Marxism" (January 6, 2021)
Week 1 | June 10, 2023
β’ August Nimtz, Marxism versus Liberalism (2019) 1. Introduction; and Chapters 2β3 on Marx and Engels versus Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill
Week 2 | June 17, 2023
β’ Nimtz, Marxism versus Liberalism (2019) Chapters 4β5 on Lenin versus Weber and Woodrow Wilson; and 6. Conclusion
Week 3 | June 24, 2023
β’ Robert Michels, Political Parties (1915) (especially Preface, Ch. 1-2, Part 1 and Parts 3 and 4)
Week 4 | July 1, 2023
β’ Max Weber, "Socialism" (1918); and "Politics as a vocation" and "Science as a vocation" (1919)
+ Weber, "Structures of power; Class, status, party; Bureaucracy"
Week 5 | July 8, 2023
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms
β’ Otto Kircheimer, "Changes in the structure of political compromise" (1941)
β’ Herbert Marcuse, "The struggle against liberalism in the totalitarian view of the state" (1934) in Negations
+ Franz Neumann, "The change in the function of law in modern society" (1937)
β’ Sigmund Neumann, βThe party of democratic integrationβ (1956); and Kirchheimer, "The catch-all party" (1966)
Week 6 | July 15, 2023
β’ Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband, debate on capitalism and the state (1972)
+ Michael Harrington, "Marxism and Democracy" (1981)
β’ Mike Macnair, Revolutionary Strategy (2009)
+ Cutrone, "Lenin today" (2020)
Week 7 | July 22, 2023
β’ Benjamin Studebaker, The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut (2023)
+ Studebaker, βThe Heart of Isonomia: Equality of Political Participation versus Equality of Political Capabilities: A Fundamental Dilemma at the Heart of Democratic Theoryβ (2023)