On this episode, we tackle cancel culture and the legacy of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Rose Freeman, London member of Platypus, joins us to discuss the feud between beauty influencers, James Charles and Tati Westbrook, and what it might tells us about the exhaustion of cancel culture. In the second segment, Marco Torres, Chicago Platypus member, and Pamela Nogales interview Alejandro Velasco, the author of Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela, and contributor to the New York Times, In These Times and Jacobin Radio, on the passing of Chavismo and the future of Venezuela. Finally, Pam Nogales sits down with the journalist and sociologist Marc Saint-Upéry, to make sense of the left's response to Venezuela and the Maduro regime.

- Rose Freeman, "The Black Panther Party, Malcolm X, and the question of revolutionary politics today: An interview with Kathleen Cleaver" (PR 113, February 2019)
platypus1917.org/2019/02/03/the-b…athleen-cleaver/

- Marco Torres, "The dead Left: Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution" (PR 25, July 2010)
platypus1917.org/2010/07/09/the-d…rian-revolution/

- Alejandro Velasco, "A Call for Clear Heads on Venezuela: How To Criticize Maduro While Opposing U.S. Regime Change" (In These Times, March 2019)
inthesetimes.com/article/21789/ve…-chavismo-guaido

- Marc Saint-Upéry, "La izquierda y los espejismos de la crisis venezolana" (2019)
periodicoellibertario.blogspot.com/2019/03…la.html

- James Charles response to Tati Westbrook
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFvtCUzfyL4&t=1896s

Hosted by Pamela Nogales & Rose

Summer and Fall/Autumn 2019 – Winter 2020

I. What is the Left? – What is Marxism?

• required / + recommended reading

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

Week A. Introduction: Capital in history | Jul. 27, 2019

• Max Horkheimer, "The little man and the philosophy of freedom" (1926–31)

• epigraphs on modern history and freedom by Louis Menand (on Marx and Engels), Karl Marx, on "becoming" (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58), and Peter Preuss (on history)

+ 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

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

• Cutrone, "The Marxist hypothesis" (2010)

• Cutrone, “Class consciousness (from a Marxist persective) today” (2012)

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

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

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

Week B. 1960s New Left I. Neo-Marxism | Aug. 3, 2019

• Martin Nicolaus, “The unknown Marx” (1968)

+ Commodity form chart of terms

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms 

+ Organic composition of capital chart of terms

• Theodor W. Adorno, “Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?” (AKA “Is Marx Obsolete?”) (1968)

• Moishe Postone, “Necessity, labor, and time” (1978)

+ Postone, “Interview: Marx after Marxism” (2008)

+ Postone, “History and helplessness: Mass mobilization and contemporary forms of anticapitalism” (2006)

+ Postone, “Theorizing the contemporary world: Brenner, Arrighi, Harvey” (2006)

Week C. 1960s New Left II: Gender and sexuality | Aug. 10, 2019

The situation of women is different from that of any other social group. This is because they are not one of a number of isolable units, but half a totality: the human species. Women are essential and irreplaceable; they cannot therefore be exploited in the same way as other social groups can. They are fundamental to the human condition, yet in their economic, social and political roles, they are marginal. It is precisely this combination — fundamental and marginal at one and the same time — that has been fatal to them.

— Juliet Mitchell, "Women: The longest revolution" (1966)

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms 

• Juliet Mitchell, “Women: The longest revolution” (1966)

• Clara Zetkin and Vladimir Lenin, “An interview on the woman question” (1920)

• Theodor W. Adorno, “Sexual taboos and the law today” (1963)

• John D’Emilio, “Capitalism and gay identity” (1983)

Week D. 1960s New Left III. Anti-black racism in the U.S. | Aug. 17, 2019

As a social party we receive the Negro and all other races upon absolutely equal terms. We are the party of the working class, the whole working class, and we will not suffer ourselves to be divided by any specious appeal to race prejudice; and if we should be coaxed or driven from the straight road we will be lost in the wilderness and ought to perish there, for we shall no longer be a Socialist party.

— Eugene Debs, "The Negro in the class struggle" (1903)

+ Eugene Debs, "The Negro in the class struggle" (1903) 

+ Debs, "The Negro and his nemesis" (1904)

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms 

• Richard Fraser, “Two lectures on the black question in America and revolutionary integrationism” (1953)

• James Robertson and Shirley Stoute, “For black Trotskyism” (1963)

+ Spartacist League, “Black and red: Class struggle road to Negro freedom” (1966)

+ Bayard Rustin, “The failure of black separatism” (1970)

• Adolph Reed, “Black particularity reconsidered” (1979)

+ Reed, “Paths to Critical Theory” (1984)

Week E. Frankfurt School precursors | Aug. 24, 2019

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms 

• Wilhelm Reich, “Ideology as material power” (1933/46)

• Siegfried Kracauer, “The mass ornament” (1927)

+ Kracauer, “Photography” (1927)

Week F. Radical bourgeois philosophy I. Rousseau: Crossroads of society | Aug. 31, 2019

To be radical is to go to the root of the matter. For man, however, the root is man himself.
— Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843)

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 Marx and Engels), Karl Marx, on "becoming" (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58), and Peter Preuss (on history)

+ 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) PDFs of preferred translation (5 parts): [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

• Rousseau, selection from On the Social Contract (1762)

Week G. Radical bourgeois philosophy II. Adam Smith: On the wealth of nations (part 1) | Sep. 7, 2019

• 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.5 Of the Real and Nominal Price of Commodities
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 H. Radical bourgeois philosophy III. Adam Smith: On the wealth of nations (part 2) | Sep. 14, 2019

• Smith, selections from The Wealth of Nations

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

Week I. Radical bourgeois philosophy IV. What is the Third Estate? | Sep. 21, 2019

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

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

Week J. Radical bourgeois philosophy V. Kant and Constant: Bourgeois society | Sep. 28, 2019

• 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 K. Radical bourgeois philosophy VI. Hegel: Freedom in history | Oct. 5, 2019

• 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

Week 1. What is the Left? I. Capital in history | Oct. 12, 2019

• Max Horkheimer, "The little man and the philosophy of freedom" (1926–31)

• epigraphs on modern history and freedom by Louis Menand (on Marx and Engels), Karl Marx, on "becoming" (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58), and Peter Preuss (on history)

+ 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

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms 

• Cutrone, "The Marxist hypothesis" (2010)

• Cutrone, “Class consciousness (from a Marxist persective) today” (2012)

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

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

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

Week 2. What is the Left? II. Utopia and critique | Oct. 19, 2019

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

• Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses” (1944–47)

• Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left” (1968)

• Herbert Marcuse, "Note on dialectic" (1960)

• 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

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms 

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

Week 3. What is Marxism? I. Socialism | Oct. 26, 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, The coming upheaval (from The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847)

Week 4. What is Marxism? II. Revolution in 1848 | Nov. 2, 2019

• Marx, Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League (1850), pp. 501–511 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. 9, 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. 16, 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 | Nov. 23, 2019 / Jan. 4, 2020

• 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

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)
+ Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)
+ James Joll, The Second International 1889–1914 (1966)
+ 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

Week 8. Nov. 30, 2019 U.S. Thanksgiving break

Week 9. What is Marxism? VI. Class consciousness | Dec. 7, 2019 / Jan. 11, 2020

• 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
+ Herbert Marcuse, "Note on dialectic" (1960)
+ Marx, Preface to the First German Edition and Afterword to the Second German Edition (1873) of Capital (1867), pp. 294–298, 299–302

Week 10. What is Marxism? VII. Ends of philosophy | Dec. 14, 2019 / Jan. 18, 2020

• Korsch, “Marxism and philosophy” (1923)

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms 

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

+ Herbert Marcuse, "Note on dialectic" (1960)
+ 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–Spring 2020

II. Introduction to revolutionary Marxism