Platypus London: Goldsmiths College: Intro Reading Group, Autumn 2014

Mondays 7pm, Room TBC – check facebook for details: https://www.facebook.com/groups/londonplatypus

Week 1 (29 Sep 2014)

• Cutrone, “Symptomology: Historical transformations in social-political context”
• Cutrone, “Capital in history: The need for a Marxian philosophy of history of the Left”

Week 2 (6 Oct 2014)

• Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left”
• Adorno, “Imaginative excesses”

Week 3 (13 Oct 2014)

• Blumberg, Cutrone, Khan, Leonard, and Rubin, Forum: The decline of the Left in the 20th century

Week 4 (20 Oct 2014)

• Anderson, Cutrone, Kreitman, Postel, and Turl, Forum: Imperialism: What is it, why should we be against it?
• Albert, Cutrone, Duncombe, and Holmes, Forum: The 3 Rs: reform, revolution and “resistance:” The problematic forms of “anti-capitalism” today

Week 5 (27 Oct 2014)

• Brennan, Davis, Hendricks, Mujica, and Rubin, Forum: What is a movement?
• Hendricks, Hughes, Mwaura, and Thindwa, Forum: Left behind: The working class in the crisis

[3 Nov 2014 – No meeting – Goldsmiths’ reading week]

Week 6 (10 Nov 2014)

• Platypus Historians Group, Catastrophe, historical memory, and the Left: 60 years of Israel-Palestine
• Ibish, Kovel, and Rubin, Forum: Which way forward for Palestinian liberation?
• Goodman and Rubin, Forum: Marxism and Israel

Week 7 (17 Nov 2014)

• Farrow, Gabrellas, Mucciaroni, and Wolf, Forum: Which way forward for sexual liberation?
• Nogales, Pereira Di Salvo, and Rojas, Forum: Politics of the contemporary student Left
• Brennan, Klatt, Petcov, and Weger, Forum: Ideology and the student Left

Week 8 (24 Nov 2014)

• Bernstein, Cutrone, Goehr, and Horowitz, Forum: The relevance of Critical Theory to art today
• Cutrone, Feenberg, Westerman, and Brown, Platypus convention plenary: The politics of Critical Theory

Week 9 (1 Dec 2014)

• Horkheimer and Adorno, “Discussion about Theory and Praxis” (AKA “Towards a New Manifesto?”)[Deutsch] (1956)
• Horkheimer, selections from Dämmerung
• Adorno, “Resignation”
• Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis”
• Cutrone, “The Left is dead! — Long live the Left!” Vicissitudes of historical consciousness and the possibilities for emancipatory social politics today

Week 10 (8 Dec 2014)

• Cutrone, Morrison, and Rubin, Platypus convention plenary: The Platypus synthesis: History, theory, and practice

What is the Left? What is Marxism?
Platypus primary Marxist reading group

Room 318 Student Union Building, Dalhousie University
Tuesdays 6–8PM
contact: dalhousie@platypus1917.org

• required / + recommended reading

Week A. Sep. 9, 2014 | 1960s New Left: Neo-Marxism

Ÿ Martin Nicolaus, “The unknown Marx” (1968)
Ÿ Moishe Postone, “Necessity, labor, and time” (1978)

Week B. Sep. 16, 2014 | 1960s New Left: Gender and Sexuality

Ÿ Juliet Mitchell, “Women: The longest revolution” (1966)
Ÿ Clara Zetkin and Lenin, “The woman question” (1920)
Ÿ Theodor W. Adorno, “Sexual taboos and law today” (1963)
Ÿ John D’Emilio, “Capitalism and gay identity” (1983)

Week C. Sep. 23, 2014 | Frankfurt School Precursors

Ÿ Wilhelm Reich, “Ideology as material power” (1933/46)
Ÿ Siegfried Kracauer, “The mass ornament” and “Photography” (1927)

Week 1. Sep. 30, 2014 | What is the Left?  Capital in History

Ÿ Chris Cutrone, “Capital in history” (2008)
Ÿ Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis” (2010)

Week 2. Oct. 7, 2014 | What is the Left?  Bourgeois Society

Ÿ Immanuel Kant, “Idea for universal history from cosmo-politan point of view” and “What is Enlightenment?” (1784)
Ÿ Benjamin Constant, “The liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns” (1819)

Week 3. Oct. 14, 2014 | Thanksgiving break

Week 4. Oct. 21, 2014 | What is the Left?  Failure of Marxism

Ÿ Max Horkheimer, selections from Dämmerung (1926–31)

Week 5. Oct. 28, 2014 | What is the Left?  Utopia and Critique

Ÿ Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left” (1968)
Ÿ Karl Marx, To make the world philosophical (1839–41)
Ÿ Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (1843)

Week 6. Nov. 4, 2014 | What is Marxism?  Socialism

Ÿ Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)
Ÿ Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

Week 7. Nov. 11, 2014 | What is Marxism?  Revolution in 1848 (off campus session)

Ÿ• 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 8. Nov. 18, 2014 | What is Marxism?  Bonapartism

+ 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 9. Nov. 25, 2015 | What is Marxism?  Political Economy

+ Commodity form chart of terms
• Marx, selections from the Grundrisse (1857–61), pp. 222–226, 236–244, 247–250, 282–294
• Marx, Capital Vol. I, Ch. 1 Sec. 4 "The fetishism of commodities" (1867), pp. 319–329

Week 10. Dec. 2, 2015 | What is Marxism?  Reification

• 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

Winter Break

Week 11. Jan. 6, 2015 | What is Marxism?  Class Consciousness

Ÿ • Lukács, Original Preface (1922), “What is Orthodox Marxism?” (1919), “Class Consciousness” (1920), History and Class Consciousness (1923)
+ Marx, Preface to the First German Edition and Afterword to the Second German Edition(1873) of Capital (1867), pp. 294–298, 299–302

Week 12. Jan. 13, 2015 | What is Marxism?  Ends of Philosophy

• Korsch, “Marxism and philosophy” (1923)
+ 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

Introducing Platypus:

Marxism and the History of the Left

Alternate Fridays, 11 AM at Northwest Café, Harvard Northwest Labs.

Week 1 — September 26, 2014. 

• Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left” (1968)
• Karl Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843)