Summer 2021: Adorno's Negative Dialectics

Platypus Virginia reading group

Sundays at 5:00 p.m. ET via Zoom (recurring link here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88341966622)

( • required / + recommended readings)

Required background reading:
• six readings by Chris Cutrone, "Revolution without Marx? Rousseau, Kant and Hegel" (2013); Review of Andrew Feenberg, The Philosophy of Praxis (2015); "Why still read Lukacs? The place of 'philosophical' questions in Marxism" (2014); "Ends of philosophy" (2018); "On philosophy and Marxism" (2020); and “The negative dialectic of Marxism” (2021)

Recommended supplemental reading:
+ Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics
+ Adorno, History and Freedom
+ Adorno, Introduction to Dialectics
+ Adorno, Ontology and Dialectics
+ Adorno, Metaphysics: Concepts and Problems

Primary sources:
• Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics (1966, trans. E.B. Ashton, 1973)
+ Alternate translation by Dennis Redmond (2001/2021) [2021 updated PDF]

Charts of terms:
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms
+ Kant's 3 Critiques [PNG] and philosophy [PNG] chart of terms
+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
+ Commodity form chart of terms
+ Reification chart of terms
+ Adorno's critique of actionism chart of terms

Week 1: June 6, 2021

• Gillian Rose, Review of Adorno's Negative Dialectics (1976)
• Theodor W. Adorno, "Why still philosophy?"
• Chris Cutrone, "Ends of philosophy" (2018); "On philosophy and Marxism" (2020); and “The negative dialectic of Marxism” (2021)

Week 2: June 13, 2021

• Adorno, Negative Dialectics, Prologue (Preface and Introduction)

Week 3: June 20, 2021

• Adorno, Negative Dialectics, Part One: Relation to Ontology: I. The Ontological Need

Week 4: June 27, 2021

• Adorno, Negative Dialectics, Part One: Relation to Ontology: II. Being and Existence

Week 5: July 4, 2021

• Adorno, Negative Dialectics, Part Two: Negative Dialectics: Concepts and Categories

Week 6: July 11, 2021

• Adorno, Negative Dialectics, Part Three: Models: I. Freedom

Week 7: July 18, 2021

• Adorno, Negative Dialectics, Part Three: Models: II. World Spirit and Natural History

Week 8: July 25, 2021

• Adorno, Negative Dialectics, Part Three: Models: III. Meditations on Metaphysics
+ Cutrone, "Ends of philosophy" (2018); "On philosophy and Marxism" (2020); and “The negative dialectic of Marxism” (2021)

Platypus Summer 2021: Adorno's Negative Dialectics - Platypus (platypus1917.org)

[. . .]

Platypus primary Marxist reading group Spring 2021

II. Introduction to revolutionary Marxism

Every Sunday

5:00pm to 7:00pm

Online via Zoom; recurring link (https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89913198002)

Find us on social media! Facebook (group), Facebook (page), and Twitter

Find us on Mason360!

Film screenings: spring 2021

• Fall of Eagles (1974) episodes: "The Last Tsar," "Absolute Beginners," "Dearest Nicky," "The Appointment," "The Secret War," and "End Game"

• 37 Days (2014) ([Episode 1] [Episode 2]) [Episode 3]

• Rosa Luxemburg (1986)

• Reds (1981)

• Lenin: The Train (1988)

• Doctor Zhivago (1965)

• Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States (2012) Episodes A (1900-20) and B (1920-40)

Winter–Spring 2021

II. Introduction to revolutionary Marxism

• required / + recommended reading

Week 12. Revolutionary Leadership | Jan. 17, 2021

• Rosa Luxemburg, “The Crisis of German Social Democracy” (1915)
• J. P. Nettl, “The German Social Democratic Party 1890–1914 as a Political Model” (1965)
• Cliff Slaughter, “What is Revolutionary Leadership?” (1960)

Week 13. Reform or Revolution? | Jan. 24, 2021

• Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution? (1900/08)
+ Eugene Debs, "Competition versus Cooperation" (1900)

Week 14. Lenin and the Vanguard Party | Jan. 31, 2021

• Spartacist League, Lenin and the Vanguard Party (1978)

+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate , Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)

+ Georg Lukacs, Lenin: A Study on the Unity of his Thought (1924)

Week 15. What is to be done? | Feb. 7, 2021

• V. I. Lenin, What is to be Done? (1902)

+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate , Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)

Week 16. Mass Strike and Social Democracy | Feb. 14, 2021

• Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906)
+ Luxemburg, "Blanquism and Social Democracy" (1906)

Week 17. Permanent Revolution | Feb. 21, 2021

• Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects (1906)

+ Trotsky, 1905 (1907)

+ Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)

Week 22. Dialectic of Reification | Mar. 28, 2021

• Lukács, “The Standpoint of the Proletariat” (Part III of “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,” 1923). Also available on Marxists.org

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

+ Commodity form chart of terms

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

+ Organic composition of capital chart of terms

+ Reification chart of terms

+ Lukács, “The phenomenon of reification” (Part I of “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,” History and Class Consciousness, 1923)

early April, 2021 [Platypus international convention] --- all are invited

Week 24. Lessons of October | Apr. 18, 2021

• Trotsky, The Lessons of October (1924)
• Trotsky, "Stalinism and Bolshevism" (1937)

Week 25. Trotskyism and the 4th International| Apr. 25, 2021

+ Trotsky, "To Build Communist Parties and an International Anew" (1933)
+ Trotsky, "If America Should Go Communist" (1934)

• Trotsky, The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (1938)

+ Trotsky, "Trade unions in the epoch of imperialist decay" (1940)
+ Trotsky, Letter to James Cannon (September 12, 1939)

+ Platypus Historians Group, "The Dead Left: Trotskyism" (2008)

Week 26. The Authoritarian State | May 2, 2021

• Friedrich Pollock, "State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations" (1941)

• Max Horkheimer, "The Authoritarian State" (1942)

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

Week 27. On the Concept of History | May 9, 2021

• two epigraphs, Louis Menand (on Marx and Engels, 2003) and Peter Preuss (on Nietzsche, 1980)

• Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940) [PDF]
• Benjamin, Paralipomena to "On the Concept of History" (1940)

+ Benjamin, "To the planetarium" (from One-Way Street, 1928)
+ Benjamin, "Fire alarm" (from One-Way Street, 1928)
[JPG] [PDF]
+ Benjamin, "Experience and poverty" (1933)
+ Benjamin, Theologico-political fragment (1921/39?)

+ Benjamin, Arcades Project Convolute N, "On the theory of knowledge, theory of progress" (see especially p. 471 [N8,1] on Horkheimer on unredeemablility of past suffering)

+ Charles Baudelaire, from Fusées [Rockets] (1867)
+ Bertolt Brecht, "To posterity" (1939)

+ Benjamin on history chart of terms

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

Week 28. Reflections on Marxism | May 16, 2021

• Theodor Adorno, “Reflections on Class Theory” (1942)
• Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses” (1944–47)

+ Adorno, four selections from Minima Moralia (1944–47) Dedication, "Bequest", "Warning: Not to be Misused", and "Finale"

+ Horkheimer and Adorno, "Discussion about Theory and Praxis" (a.k.a "Towards a New Manifesto?") (1956)

+ Capital in history timeline and chart of terms

+ Benjamin on history chart of terms

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

Week 29. Theory and Practice | May 23, 2021

• Adorno, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis” (1969)
• Adorno, “Resignation” (1969)

+ Adorno, “Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?” (a.k.a. “Is Marx Obsolete?”) (1968)

+ Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, correspondence on the German New Left (1969)

+ Adorno, Interview with Der Spiegel magazine (1969)

+ Esther Leslie, Introduction to the 1969 Adorno-Marcuse correspondence (1999)

+ Adorno, “On Subject and Object” (1969)

+ Adorno's critique of actionism chart of terms

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

[. . .]

Platypus introductory Marxist reading group - Fall 2020 and Winter 2021

Every Sunday

5:00pm to 7:00pm

Online via Zoom

Find us on Facebook! facebook.com/groups/PAS.GMU/

Find us on Twitter! @Platypus_GMU

Find us on Mason360! mason360.gmu.edu/pas/home/

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

• required / + recommended reading

Find a copy of the Marx and Engels readings from Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader (Norton 2nd ed., 1978)

Week A. Introduction: Capital in History | Aug. 2, 2020

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)

• four epigraphs on modern history and freedom by James Miller (on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2000), Louis Menand (on Marx and Engels, 2003), Karl Marx (on "becoming", from the Grundrisse, 1857–58), and Peter Preuss (on Nietzsche, 1980)

• Chris Cutrone, "Capital in History" (2008)

• Cutrone, "The Marxist Hypothesis" (2010)

• Cutrone, “Class Consciousness (from a Marxist Persective) Today”

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

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

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

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

+ Capital in history timeline and chart of terms

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

Week B. 1960s New Left I. Neo-Marxism | Aug. 9, 2020

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

• Moishe Postone, “Necessity, Labor, and Time” (1978)

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

+ Commodity form chart of terms

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

+ Organic composition of capital chart of terms

+ 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. 16, 2020

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)

• Juliet Mitchell, “Women: The Longest Revolution” (1966)

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

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

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

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

Week D. 1960s New Left III. Anti-black Racism in the U.S. | Aug. 23, 2020

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)

• Richard Fraser, “Two Lectures on the Black Question in America and Revolutionary Integrationism” (1953)

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

• Adolph Reed, “Black Particularity Reconsidered” (1979)

+ Eugene Debs, "The Negro in the Class Struggle" (1903)

+ Debs, "The Negro and His Nemesis" (1904)

+ Spartacist League, “Black and Red: Class Struggle Road to Negro Freedom” (1966)

+ Bayard Rustin, “The Failure of Black Separatism” (1970)

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

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

Week E. Frankfurt School precursors | Aug. 30, 2020

• Wilhelm Reich, “Ideology as Material Power” (1933/46)

• Siegfried Kracauer, “The Mass Ornament” (1927)

+ Kracauer, “Photography” (1927)

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

six weeks on radical bourgeois thought...

"The genius of Marx consists precisely in his having furnished answers to questions already raised by the foremost minds of mankind. His teachings emerged as the direct and immediate continuation of the teachings of the greatest representatives of philosophy, political economy, and socialism...[Marxism] is the legitimate successor to the best that man produced [in] German philosophy, English political economy, and French socialism." --- Vladimir Lenin, "Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism" (1913)

Week F. radical bourgeois philosophy I. Rousseau: Crossroads of Society | Sep. 6, 2020

"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)

• 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)

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

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

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

Week G. radical bourgeois philosophy II. Adam Smith: On the Wealth of Nations| Sep. 12, 2020

• 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 II. Adam Smith: On the Wealth of Nations| Sep. 20, 2020

• Adam Smith, selections from The Wealth of Nations

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

Week I. radical bourgeois philosophy IV. What is the Third Estate? | Sep. 27, 2020

• 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 | Oct. 3, 2020

• Immanuel Kant, "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View" (1784)

• Kant, "What is Enlightenment?" (1784)

• Benjamin Constant, "The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with That of the Moderns" (1819)

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

Week K. radical bourgeois philosophy VI. Hegel: Freedom in History | Oct. 11, 2020

• 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

Ten weeks on Marx's Marxism...

Week 1. What is the Left? I. Capital in History | Oct. 18, 2020

• Max Horkheimer, "The Little Man and the Philosophy of Freedom" (1926–31)

• Chris Cutrone, "Capital in History" (2008)

• Cutrone, "The Marxist Hypothesis" (2010)

• Cutrone, “Class Consciousness (from a Marxist Perspective) Today”

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

+ Capital in history timeline and chart of terms

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

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

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

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

Week 2. What is the Left? II. Utopia and Critique | Oct. 25, 2020

• 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

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

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

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

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

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

Week 3. What is Marxism? I. What is Socialism?| Nov. 1, 2020

• Marx, selections from Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844), pp. 70–101

• Marx, selection from The Poverty of Philosophy (1847)

• Marx and Friedrich Engels, selections from the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), pp. 469-500

+ Commodity form chart of terms

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

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

Week 4. What is Marxism? II. Revolution in 1848 | Nov. 8, 2020

• Marx, Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League (1850), pp. 501–511

• Marx, "My Unique Contributions" (letter to J. 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. 15, 2020

+ 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. 22, 2020

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

• Marx, selections from the Grundrisse (1857–61), pp. 222–226, 236–244, 247–250, 276–293 --- sections A, C, D, and H (w/their numbered subsections) and sections F and G

• Marx, Capital Vol. I, Ch. 1 Sec. 4 "The fetishism of commodities" (1867), pp. 319–329

+ Commodity form chart of terms

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

+ Organic composition of capital chart of terms

+ Marx on surplus value chart of terms

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