Georgetown Summer 2023 Reading Group: Marxism and Politics
Every Wednesday, 5:30–7:30 pm
New North 204, Georgetown University (37th and O St NW, Washington, DC 20057)
Everyone is welcome!
( • required / + recommended readings)
Recommended background preliminary readings:
+ Benjamin Constant, "The liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns" (1819)
+ J. P. Nettl, “The German Social Democratic Party 1890–1914 as a Political Model” (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, "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, "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 14, 2023
• August Nimtz, Marxism versus Liberalism (2019) 1. Introduction; and Chapters 2–3 on Marx and Engels versus Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill
Week 2 | June 21, 2023
• Nimtz, Marxism versus Liberalism (2019) Chapters 4–5 on Lenin versus Weber and Woodrow Wilson; and 6. Conclusion
Week 3 | June 28, 2023
• Robert Michels, Political Parties (1915)
Week 4 | July 5, 2023
• 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 12, 2023
• Otto Kircheimer, "Changes in the structure of political compromise" (1941)
• 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)
• Sigmund Neumann, “The party of democratic integration” (1956); and Kirchheimer, "The catch-all party" (1966)
Week 6 | July 19, 2023
• Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband, debate on capitalism and the state (1972)
+ Michael Harrington, "Marxism and Democracy" (1981)
• Mike Macnair, Revolutionary Strategy (2009)
Week 7 | July 26, 2023
• Benjamin Studebaker, The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut (2023)
