An introductory workshop by member Ethan Linehan on the development of freedom in human history from the Platypus perspective.
In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels famously observed that a "spectre was haunting Europe: the spectre of Communism". 170 years later, it is Marxism itself that haunts us, while capitalism remains.
What does it mean that Marx and Marxism still appeal, while political movements for socialism are weak or non-existent? What were Marxism's original points concerning radical possibilities for freedom that might still speak to the present?
Does Marxism even matter?
When?
Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 10 AM – 12 PM UTC+02
Where?
DomenInge Lehmanns Gade, 8000 Aarhus, Denmark
What?
Come join us for a coffee, good company, and a relaxed discussion about sexual liberation and the left. Sex and gender appear to be at the forefront of leftist activism, as well as of the conservative backlash against it. But what should the Left hope to achieve? Is sexual liberation a struggle whose time has come? Or are we 100 years too late? The readings below will provide a context for our discussion, providing different perspectives on the history of the Left's engagement with sex and gender and what that history means for us today. But don't worry: you do not need to do the readings to come join us!
- Which way forward for sexual liberation?
https://platypus1917.org/2011/02/01/which-way-forward-for-sexual-liberation/ - Transgender liberation? A movement whose time has passed
https://platypus1917.org/2018/11/02/transgender-liberation-a-movement-whose-time-has-passed/ - The case for a Marxist intersectionality: Class reductionism, chauvinism, and a critique of David Faes on transgender liberation
https://platypus1917.org/2019/05/01/the-case-for-a-marxist-intersectionality-class-reductionism-chauvinism-and-a-critique-of-david-faes-on-transgender-liberation/
Sundays @ 6:00 p.m.
University of Texas
Student Activity Center 3.116
Come into the reading group at any time, no prior knowledge assumed. All are welcome.
Fall/Autumn – Winter 2019
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. 1960s New Left I: Gender and sexuality | Sep. 15, 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 B. 1960s New Left II. Anti-black racism in the U.S. | Sep. 22, 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 C. Radical bourgeois philosophy I. Kant and Constant: Bourgeois society | Sep. 29, 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 D. Radical bourgeois philosophy II. Hegel: Freedom in history | Oct. 6, 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. 13, 2019
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
• 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”
+ G.M. Tamas, "Telling the truth about class" [HTML] (2007)
Week 2. What is the Left? II. Utopia and critique | Oct. 20, 2019
• 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
+ 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. 27, 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. 3, 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. 10, 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. 17, 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. 24, 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. Thanksgiving break weekend | Dec. 1, 2019
Week 9. What is Marxism? VI. Class consciousness | Dec. 8, 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 10. What is Marxism? VII. Ends of philosophy | Dec. 15, 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)
Winter–Spring 2020
II. Introduction to revolutionary Marxism
When?
Saturday, September 14, 2019 at 10 AM – 12 PM UTC+02
Where?
Café @ Botanisk Have
What?
Some intellectuals have argued that liberal values such as freedom of speech or universality are under threat from the left, for instance through no-platforming, call out culture, and cancelling. These values had already been thoroughly criticized in the 1980s and 1990s by radical intellectuals who argued that claims to universality always disguised positionality or that no speech is free of power. As for Marxism, it is often presented by both its advocates and its detractors as anti-liberal and anti-bourgeois values. Are liberal values under threat? Do we have something to learn from Enlightenment thinkers like Locke, Rousseau, Kant or Adam Smith?
- Liberalism and Marx: An interview with Domenico Losurdo (https://platypus1917.org/2012/05/01/liberalism-and-marx-domenico-losurdo/)
-An exposé of classic liberalism? A reply to Domenico Losurdo (https://platypus1917.org/2012/09/01/an-expose-of-classic-liberalism-a-reply-to-domenico-losurdo/)
- Back to Enlightenment values: An interview with Brendan O’Neill (https://platypus1917.org/2018/02/03/back-enlightenment-values-interview-brendan-oneill/)
- Adam Smith, Revolutionary (https://platypus1917.org/2013/11/01/adam-smith-revolutionary/)
On September 27, 2019, at the University of Houston, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a teach-in led by Platypus member Michael Woodson on capital in history.
What is the development of freedom in human history from the Platypus perspective?
In the mid-19th century, Marx and Engels famously observed that a "specter was haunting Europe: the specter of Communism". 170 years later, it is Marxism itself that haunts us, while capitalism remains.
What does it mean that Marx and Marxism still appeal, while political movements for socialism are weak or non-existent? What were Marxism's original points concerning radical possibilities for freedom that might still speak to the present?
Is Marxism still relevant?
