Chicago North Side Reading Group Winter - Spring 2009

North Side Reading Group | Loyola University

Week 1. What is the Left? | Jan. 25, 2009

"The concept of the Left remains unclear to this day." (Kolakowski 1968)

• Leszek Kolakowski, "The Concept of the Left" (1968)
[in Carl Oglesby, ed., New Left Reader (1969), 144-158]

Week 2. Marxism as theory and practice: the 1920s-30s "Old" Left | Feb. 1, 2009

"In socialism, freedom is to become a reality. But because the present system is called 'free' and considered liberal, it is not terribly clear what this might mean. . . . Not only [the Little Man's] lack of freedom but that of [his betters] as well spells his doom. His interest lies in the Marxist clarification of the concept of freedom. . . .
The socialist order of society is not prevented by world history; it is historically possible. But it will not be realized by a logic that is immanent to history but by men trained in theory and determined to make things better. Otherwise, it will not be realized at all." (Horkheimer 1926-31)

• Max Horkheimer, selections from Dämmerung (Notes 1926-31)
• Theodor W. Adorno, part X. "Imaginative excesses" from "Messages in a Bottle" (orphaned from Minima Moralia 1944-47)
• Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood, and Christian Parenti, " 'Action Will Be Taken': Left Anti-Intellectualism and its Discontents" (2002)
• Esther Leslie, Introduction to the 1969 Adorno-Marcuse correspondence (1999)
• Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, correspondence on the German New Left (1969)

Week 3. February 8, 2009

• Richard Fraser, Two Lectures on the Black Question in America and Revolutionary Integrationism (1953)
• James Robertson and Shirley Stoute, "For Black Trotskyism" (1963)
• Bayard Rustin, "The Failure of Black Separatism" (1970)

Week 4. Feb. 15, 2009

• Juliet Mitchell, "Women: the Longest Revolution" (1966)
[revised version from Women's Estate (1971)] • John D'Emilio, "Capitalism and Gay Identity" (1983)

Week 5. Feb. 22, 2009

• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, selections from the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1847-48, Prefaces to various language editions, I. "Bourgeois and Proletarians," II. "Proletarians and Communists," and IV. "Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties" [PDF])
[in Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, 469-491, and 499-500] • Karl Marx, selections from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 ("Estranged Labour," "Private Property and Labour," "Private Property and Communism," and "The Meaning of Human Requirements" [PDF])
[in Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, 70-101]

Week 6. Mar. 1, 2009

"The most important Marxian political manifesto remains to be written." (Nicolaus 1968)

• Martin Nicolaus, "The Unknown Marx" (1968)
[also in Carl Oglesby, ed., The New Left Reader (1969), 84-110] • Moishe Postone, "Rethinking Marx (in a post-Marxist world)" (1995)

Week 7. Mar. 15, 2009

• Georg Lukács, "The Phenomenon of Reification" (Part I of "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat," 1923) [PDF]
[in History and Class Consciousness, 83-110]

Week 8. Mar. 29, 2009

"Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto;
Ogni viltà convien che qui sia morta
[Here all mistrust must be abandoned;
And here must perish every craven thought]"
(Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia 1308-21 quoted by Marx 1859)

• Karl Korsch, Introduction to Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme (1922)
• Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)
[also in Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, 525-541] • Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
[also in Robert Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, 3-6]

Week 9. Apr. 19th, 2009

• Leon Trotsky: Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay
• Christopher L Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law and the Organized Labor Movements in America 1880-1960, 282-329