Our monthly Coffee Breaks are a great way to meet Platypus members and fellow travelers, and to get to know the Platypus project. It’s an opportunity to discuss issues raised in the latest issue of the Platypus Review, consider the state of the Left, and just hang out with people who have similar political interests.

Monthly 2014 Coffee Breaks

March 4th | 5:00 pm
Coburg Coffee 6085 Coburg Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Contact: Quentin Cyr | halifax@platypus1917.org

Platypus primary Marxist reading group (the continuation of What is the Left? What is Marxism?)

Room 318 Student Union Building, Dalhousie University
Tuesdays 6–8:30PM
contact: dalhousie@platypus1917.org

 Week 13. Revolutionary leadership | Jan. 27

• Rosa Luxemburg, Junius pamphlet Part 1 (1915)
• J. P. Nettl, “The German Social Democratic Party 1890–1914 as a Political Model” (1965)
• Cliff Slaughter, “What is Revolutionary Leadership?” (1960)

Week 14. Reform or revolution? | Feb. 3

• Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution? (1900/08)

Week 15. Lenin and the vanguard party | Feb. 10

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

Week 16. What is to be done? | Feb. 17

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

Week 17. Mass strike and social democracy | Feb. 24

• Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions (1906)

Week 18. Permanent revolution | Mar. 3

• Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects (1906)

Week 19. State and revolution | Mar. 10

• Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)

Week 20. Imperialism | Mar. 17

• Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916)

Week 21. Failure of the revolution | Mar. 24

• Luxemburg, “What does the Spartacus League Want?” (1918)
•  Luxemburg, “On the Spartacus Programme” (1918)

Week 22. Retreat after revolution | Mar. 31

• Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)

Weeks 23–25. Apr. 7–Apr. 21 (exam break)

Week 26. Dialectic of reification | Apr. 28

• Lukács, “The Standpoint of the Proletariat” (1923)

Week 27. Lessons of October | May 5

• Trotsky, The Lessons of October (1924)

Week 28. Trotskyism | May 12

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

Week 29. The authoritarian state | May 19

• Friedrich Pollock, “State Capitalism” (1941)
• Max Horkheimer, “The Authoritarian State” (1942)

Week 30. On the concept of history | May 26

• Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” (AKA “Theses on the Philosophy of History”) (1940)

Week 31. Reflections on Marxism | Jun. 2

• Theodor Adorno, “Reflections on Class Theory” (1942)
• Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses” (1944–47)
• Horkheimer and Adorno, “Discussion about Theory and Praxis” (AKA “Towards a New Manifesto?”) (1956)

Week 32. Theory and practice | Jun. 9

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

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

Our monthly Coffee Breaks are a great way to meet Platypus members and fellow travelers, and to get to know the Platypus project. It’s an opportunity to discuss issues raised in the latest issue of the Platypus Review, consider the state of the Left, and just hang out with people who have similar political interests.

Monthly 2014 Coffee Breaks

March 4th | 5:00 pm
Coburg Coffee 6085 Coburg Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Contact: Quentin Cyr | halifax@platypus1917.org