![](https://platypus1917.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Lenin.jpg)
Chicago
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Wednesdays 6pm
116 S. Michigan Ave., Room 202
Berkeley
Berkeley City College Room 033
Mondays 6:00PM
Last seven weeks beginning June 19th
• required / + recommended reading
Lenin readings available in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Lenin Anthology (Norton, 1977), except (*) on marxists.org
Recommended background readings
+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)
+ John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World (1919)
Week 1 | June 14
• Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy in the Democratic Revolution (1905)
• Lenin, On the Two Lines in the Revolution (1915) *
Week 2 | June 21
• Lenin, Lecture on the 1905 Revolution (1917)
• Lenin, Letters from Afar (1917) *
• Lenin, April Theses (1917)
Week 3 | June 28
• Lenin, The Dual Power (1917)
• Lenin, The Enemies of the People (1917)
• Lenin, The Beginning of Bonapartism (1917)
Week 4 | July 5
• Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)
Week 5 | July 12
• Lenin, Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power? (1917)
• Lenin, Marxism and Insurrection (1917)
• Lenin, Advice of an Onlooker (1917)
Week 6 | July 19
• Lenin, To the Citizens of Russia! (1917)
• Lenin, Theses on the Constituent Assembly (1917)
• Lenin, The Chief Task of Our Day (1918)
• Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government (1918)
Week 7 | July 26
• Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918)
A workshop on the Against Equality collective by Yasmin Nair, at the 9th annual Platypus International Convention. Moderated by Nunzia Faes.
Yasmin Nair: Writer, Activist, Academic Editor at Large for Current Affairs, Freelance writer and reviewer for: Baffler, Verso, Vox, Current Affairs, Alternet, In These Times, Daily Dot, Monthly Review, Electronic Intifada, Windy City Times, and others.
A pre-convention panel put on Thursday, April 6, 2017 at UIC, from 6-8 pm. Moderated by Gregor Baszak.
Speakers
Catherine Liu (University of California, Irvine)
Pam Nogales (PhD. Candidate of American History, NYU; Platypus)
Danny Jacobs (PhD. Candidate of Economics, University of Houston; Platypus)
Dan Rudin (PhD. Candidate of Journalism and Media Studies, UCSC; Platypus)
Reid Kotlas (Socialist Party USA; Platypus)
Description
Leftists today lament the strength of neoliberal hegemony. The use of “hegemony” underlines the ideological dimension of the neoliberal order; it suggests that mass ideological legitimacy — and not the triumph of pure force or of back-door machinations — has made neoliberalism politically possible. What were the ideological shifts in political and social consciousness that provided the grounds for neoliberal hegemony? What role did the Left play in this historical transformation of mass consciousness?
Freedom, the rallying cry of socialism, has now served for decades as the stated ideology of the upward redistribution of wealth. These past decades have seen stagnating wages and a widening income disparity—although women, LGBT people, people of color, and others who once faced legally enforced, identity-based social exclusion now appear to be more “free” than they were during the pre-neoliberal period of high Fordism. These two aspects of neoliberalism, its identitarian inclusiveness and its anti-working class agenda, appear to go hand-in-hand. Despite the dubious, partial success of the politics of the New Left, we are probably as far as ever from the goal of global socialism.
In light of this history, how can we imagine a future for the Left, especially in the Age of Trump? How could the Left move beyond organizing the expression of frustrated expectations within neoliberalism — beyond organizing the left wing of neoliberalism itself — to generate the kind of theory and practice required to politically overcome capitalism? And are we already in the process of overcoming neoliberalism in the wake of Trump’s recent political mandate for change? Has the Left become the agent of the status quo, seeking to preserve neoliberalism from uncertain changes that the Trump phenomenon implies?
Held at the University of Illinois, Chicago, on April 7, 2017 as part of the 9th annual Platypus international conference. The discussion was moderated by Reid Kotlas.
Panelists:
Catherine Liu (University of California, Irvine; Author of American Idyll: Academic Antielitism as Cultural Critique)
Chris Cutrone (School of the Art Institute; Platypus)
Gregory Lucero (Socialist Party USA; Revolutionary Chicago)
Panel Description:
The long anticipated outcome of the 2016 US Presidential Election—the coronation of Hillary Clinton—was dramatically derailed by the twin “populist” insurgencies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Many on the Left hoped the Sanders campaign would either transform the Democratic Party, replacing the neoliberalism of the Clintons with a commitment to social democracy, or form a new left-wing party. Yet Sanders supported Clinton in the end, and the Democrats relied upon their McGovernite coalition of minorities, women, and organized labor constituencies in the general election.
Trump, on the other hand, was a challenge to the Republican status quo, breaking with Reagan coalition orthodoxies while appealing to working class voters who had supported Obama and might have supported Sanders. While Sanders appealed to the broad discontent with established political leadership and the social decline over which it presided, only Trump managed to capture the potential this presented.
Far from opposing capitalism, Sanders sought a retreat from neoliberalism into New Deal-style reforms, while Trump campaigned on a vision of capitalism beyond both Roosevelt and Reagan, proposing to lead the capitalist class for the benefit of the workers. Trump treats capitalism as a political question which, while posed at the level of the state, can only be resolved in and through civil society. Capitalism, for Trump, can solve its own problems, so long as the workers are politically represented. Trump demonstrates that capitalism remains a palpable political problem, while failing to point beyond it. The 20th century began with the crisis of Marxism, whose political task of overcoming capitalism was subsequently never realized. Is Marxism necessary, and able, to show the way forward?
Questions for the panelists:
- What can the Left do to advance the struggle for socialism under such circumstances?
- Does the re-emergence of politics, along with decline of both “parties of the ruling class” present an opening for Marxism in the “Age of Trump” to pursue anew a course towards party politics?
- Why has Trump incited such hysteria on the Left? How do we make sense of this phenomenon?
- What would it mean to oppose Trump from the Left?
A teach-in on Trumpism by Chris Cutrone held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago on April 6, 2017.
It's generally agreed upon that the Republican Party is being fundamentally transformed under the leadership of president Donald Trump. But toward what? And how will the Left be affected by these changes? This teach-in will attempt to answer some of these fundamental questions.