Platypus Goldsmiths primary Marxist reading group Autumn 2019 – Winter 2020
What is the Left? – What is Marxism?
Every Tuesday | 7pm | Above the Refectory, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths University
Week 1 (part 1) What is the Left? Capital in History | Oct. 8, 2019
• Max Horkheimer, “The little man and the philosophy of freedom” (pp.
50–52 from selections from Dämmerung,1926–31)
• Louis Menand, on Marx and Engels as philosophes of
a Second Enlightenment
• Karl Marx, on “becoming” (from
the Grundrisse, 1857–58)
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation)
chart of terms
Week 1 (part 2) What is the Left? Capital in History | Oct. 15, 2019
• Chris Cutrone, “Capital in history” (2008)
+ Capital in history timeline and chart of terms
+ video
of Communist University 2011 London presentation
+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
• Cutrone, “Class consciousness (from a Marxist perspective)
today” (2012)
Week 2 (part 1) What is the Left? Utopia and Critique | Oct. 22, 2019
• Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left” (1968)
• Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843)
Week 2 (part 2) What is the Left? The Marxist Hypothesis | Oct. 29, 2019
+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
• Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis” (2010)
Week 3. What is Marxism? I. Socialism | Nov. 5, 2019
• Marx, selections from Economic and philosophic manuscripts (1844), pp. 70–101
+ Commodity form chart of terms
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms
+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
• Marx and Friedrich Engels, selections from the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), pp. 469-500
• Marx, Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League (1850), pp. 501–511
Week 4. What is Marxism? II. Revolution in 1848 | Nov. 12, 2019
• Marx, The coming upheaval (from The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847) and Class struggle and mode of production (letter to Weydemeyer, 1852), pp. 218-220
• Engels, The tactics of social democracy (Engels's 1895 introduction to Marx, The Class Struggles in France), pp. 556–573
• Marx, selections from The Class Struggles in France 1848–50 (1850), pp. 586–593
• Marx, selections from The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), pp. 594–617
Week 5. What is Marxism? III. Bonapartism | Nov. 19, 2019
+ Karl Korsch, "The Marxism of the First International" (1924)
• Marx, Inaugural address to the First International (1864), pp. 512–519
• Marx, selections from The Civil War in France (1871, including Engels's 1891 Introduction), pp. 618–652
+ Korsch, Introduction to Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1922)
• Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, pp. 525–541
• Marx, Programme of the Parti Ouvrier (1880)
Week 6. What is Marxism? IV. Critique of political economy | Nov. 26, 2019
The
fetish character of the commodity is not a fact of consciousness; rather it is
dialectical, in the eminent sense that it produces consciousness. . . .
[P]erfection of the commodity character in a Hegelian self-consciousness
inaugurates the explosion of its phantasmagoria.
— Theodor W. Adorno, letter to Walter Benjamin, August 2, 1935
+ Commodity form chart of terms
+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
+ Organic composition of capital chart of terms
• Marx, selections from the Grundrisse (1857–61), pp. 222–226, 236–244, 247–250, 276–293 ME Reader pp. 276-281
• Marx, Capital Vol. I, Ch. 1 Sec. 4 "The fetishism of commodities" (1867), pp. 319–329
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms
Week 7. What is Marxism? V. Reification | Dec. 03, 2019
• Georg Lukács, “The
phenomenon of reification” (Part I of “Reification and the
consciousness of the proletariat,” History and Class Consciousness, 1923)
+ Commodity
form chart of terms
+ Reification
chart of terms
+ Capitalist
contradiction chart of terms
+ Organic composition of capital chart of terms
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms
Week 8. What is Marxism? VI. Class consciousness | Dec. 10, 2019
• Lukács, “Class
Consciousness” (1920), Original
Preface (1922), “What
is Orthodox Marxism?” (1919), History and Class
Consciousness (1923)
+ Capitalist
contradiction chart of terms
+ Reification
chart of terms
+ Being
and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart
of terms
+ Marx, Preface to the
First German Edition and Afterword to the
Second German Edition (1873) of Capital (1867), pp.
294–298, 299–302
Week 9. What is Marxism? VII. Ends of philosophy | Dec. 17, 2019
• Korsch, “Marxism and philosophy” (1923)
+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms
+ Marx, To make the world philosophical (from Marx's dissertation, 1839–41), pp. 9–11
+ Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843), pp. 12–15
+ Marx, "Theses on Feuerbach" (1845), pp. 143–145
Winter break readings
+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)
+ Sebastian Haffner, Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918–19 (1968)
+ Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History (1940), Part II. Ch. (1–4,) 5–10, 12–16; Part III. Ch. 1–6
+ Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)
+ James Joll, The Second International 1889–1914 (1966)
