May ’68 in France and the hidden war within the Left

Mitchell Abidor

IN MAY AND JUNE 1968, somewhere around ten million workers were on strike in France. They occupied their factories and marched in the streets, singing the “Internationale” and calling for an end to the ten years of Gaullist rule. Students, too, were on strike, occupying their schools and marching in the streets, singing the “Internationale” and calling for an end to the ten years of Gaullist rule.

[. . .]

How the counter-culture shaped the culture of unfreedom

Neil Davenport

“THE WORD 'CONSERVATIVE' IS USED by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naïve, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.” Writing for the Independent back in 1990, former Conservative cabinet minister, Norman Tebbitt, demonstrated how the 1960s counter-culture still enraged traditionalists. Hard to believe today, but for conservatives the impact of the 1960s was as problematic as trade unions and flying pickets.

[. . .]

The death agony of meritocracy

Jack Devine

FORTY-FIVE MILLION AMERICANS collectively owe upward of $1.4 trillion in student loan debt. Yet there is no need to worry. The magic of the free market has a solution for all of your problems. On July 10, 2018, "Paid Off" premiered on TruTV, a new game show that offers contestants a chance to escape a lifetime of debt peonage. “We're capitalists. That's just the way it is.”

[. . .]

Platypus Yale Fall 2018 - Winter 2019 Reading Group

Fall/Autumn 2018 – Winter 2019

What is the Left? – What is Marxism?

Wednesdays,

6:30 – 9:00pm, L34D,

Bass Library

Yale University

required/ + recommended readingNeww

Marx and Engels readings pp. from Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader (Norton 2nd ed., 1978)

Week A. Radical bourgeois philosophy I. Rousseau: Crossroads of society | September 5, 2018

Whoever dares undertake to establish a people’s institutions must feel himself capable of changing, as it were, human nature, of transforming each individual, who by himself is a complete and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole, from which, in a sense, the individual receives his life and his being, of substituting a limited and mental existence for the physical and independent existence. He has to take from man his own powers, and give him in exchange alien powers which he cannot employ without the help of other men.

-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract (1762)

Max Horkheimer, "The little man and the philosophy of freedom"(1926–31)
epigraphs on modern history and freedom by James Miller(on Jean-Jacques Rousseau), Louis Menand(on Edmund Wilson), Karl Marx, on "becoming" (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58), and Peter Preuss (on Nietzsche)

+ Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (1908)

+ Robert Pippin, "On Critical Theory" (2004)

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) chart of terms

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality(1754) PDFsof preferred translation (5 parts): [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Rousseau, selection from On the Social Contract (1762)

Week B. Radical bourgeois philosophy II. Adam Smith: On the wealth of nations (part 1) | September 12, 2018

Adam Smith, selections from The Wealth of Nations

Volume I [PDF] Introduction and Plan of the Work
Book I: Of the Causes of Improvement…
I.1. Of the Division of Labor
I.2. Of the Principle which gives Occasion to the Division of Labour
I.3. That the Division of Labour is Limited by the Extent of the Market
I.4. Of the Origin and Use of Money
I.6. Of the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities
I.7. Of the Natural and Market Price of Commodities
I.8. Of the Wages of Labour
I.9. Of the Profits of Stock
Book III: Of the different Progress of Opulence in different Nations
III.1. Of the Natural Progress of Opulence
III.2. Of the Discouragement of Agriculture in the Ancient State of Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire
III.3. Of the Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns, after the Fall of the Roman Empire
III.4. How the Commerce of the Towns Contributed to the Improvement of the Country

Week C. Radical bourgeois philosophy III. Adam Smith: On the wealth of nations (part 2) | September 19, 2018

Smith, selections from The Wealth of Nations

Volume II [PDF]
IV.7. Of Colonies
Book V: Of the Revenue of the Sovereign or Commonwealth
V.1. Of the Expences of the Sovereign or Commonwealth

Week D. Radical bourgeois philosophy IV. What is the Third Estate? | September 26, 2018

Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate?(1789)

+ Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1732)

Week E. Radical bourgeois philosophy V. Kant and Constant: Bourgeois society | October 3, 2018

Immanuel Kant, "Idea for a universal history from a cosmopolitan point of view"and "What is Enlightenment?"(1784)

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) chart of terms

Benjamin Constant, "The liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns"(1819)

+ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the origin of inequality (1754)

+ Rousseau, selection from On the social contract (1762)

Week F. Radical bourgeois philosophy VI. Hegel: Freedom in history | October 10, 2018

G.W.F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History(1831) [HTML] [PDF pp. 14-128] [Audiobook]

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) chart of terms

October Recess, October 16 – 22, 2018, reading group will not meet

Week G. What is the Left? I. Capital in history | Oct. 24, 2018

Max Horkheimer, "The little man and the philosophy of freedom"(1926–31)
epigraphs on modern history and freedom by James Miller(on Jean-Jacques Rousseau), Louis Menand(on Edmund Wilson), Karl Marx, on "becoming" (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58), and Peter Preuss (on Nietzsche)

+ Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (1908)

+ Robert Pippin, "On Critical Theory" (2004)

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) chart of terms

Chris Cutrone, "Capital in history"(2008)

+ Capital in history timeline and chart of terms

+ video of Communist University 2011 London presentation

Cutrone, "The Marxist hypothesis"(2010)
Cutrone, “Class consciousness (from a Marxist persective) today”

+ G.M. Tamas, "Telling the truth about class" [HTML] (2007)

Week H. What is the Left? II. Utopia and critique | October 31, 2018

Max Horkheimer, selections from Dämmerung(1926–31)
Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses”(1944–47)
Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left”(1968)
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

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms

Week I. What is Marxism? I. Socialism | November 7, 2018

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

Marx and Friedrich Engels, selectionsfrom 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 J. What is Marxism? II. Revolution in 1848 | November 14, 2018

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

[. . .]

Ends of philosophy

Chris Cutrone

MARXISM CONSIDERED PHILOSOPHY as “bourgeois ideology.” This meant, first and foremost, radical bourgeois philosophy, the modern philosophy of bourgeois emancipation, the thought of the revolt of the Third Estate. But pre-bourgeois philosophy, traditional philosophy, was also addressed as bourgeois ideology, as ideology. But ideology is a modern phenomenon. There’s little point in calling either Aristotle or Augustine “ideology.” It is when philosophy is invoked in bourgeois society that it becomes ideological. (Religion, too!)

[. . .]

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