Meeting Mondays, 6pm

Goldsmiths College, Richard Hoggart Building, Room 257

• required / + recommended reading

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

Recommended background readings

+ Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History (1940), Part II. Ch. 12–16 (from "Marx and Engels go back to writing history" to "Karl Marx dies at his desk")
+ James Joll, The Second International 1889–1914 (1966)

Week 1: 20th June

+ Karl Korsch, "The Marxism of the First International" (1924)
• Karl Marx, Inaugural address to the First International (1864), pp. 512–519
• Ferdinand Lassalle, Open letter to the German workers’ movement (1863)
• Mikhail Bakunin, A Critique of the German Social-Democratic Program (1870)
• Bakunin, Marxism, Freedom and the State (1872)

Week 2: 27th June

+ 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)
• Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle (1892)

Week 3: 4th July

• Kautsky,The Social Revolution (1902)

Week 4: 11th July

• Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, especially Chapters 3, 11 and 12 (1906)
• Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism (1909)

Week 5: 18th July

• Kautsky, The Road to Power (1909)

New York
Wednesdays at 6:30pm beginning June 15
School of Visual Arts
380 2nd Ave, Room 804B

Chicago
School of the Art Institute, Chicago
Mondays 6pm
112 S Michigan Ave, Room 919

Houston
Sundays at 3:00 pm (ongoing)
University of Houston
MD Anderson Library (meet in the lobby)

London
Mondays at 6pm
Goldsmiths College, Richard Hoggart Building, Room 257

• required / + recommended reading

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

Recommended background readings

+ Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History (1940), Part II. Ch. 12–16 (from "Marx and Engels go back to writing history" to "Karl Marx dies at his desk")
+ James Joll, The Second International 1889–1914 (1966)

Week 1

+ Karl Korsch, "The Marxism of the First International" (1924)
• Karl Marx, Inaugural address to the First International (1864), pp. 512–519
• Ferdinand Lassalle, Open letter to the German workers’ movement (1863)
• Mikhail Bakunin, A Critique of the German Social-Democratic Program (1870)
• Bakunin, Marxism, Freedom and the State (1872)

Week 2

+ 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)
• Karl Kautsky, The Class Struggle (1892)

Week 3

• Kautsky,The Social Revolution (1902)

Week 4

• Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, especially Chapters 3, 11 and 12 (1906)
• Kropotkin, Anarchist Communism (1909)

Week 5

• Kautsky, The Road to Power (1909)

Wednesday March 23, 7pm RHB 220: The Fall (Peter Whitehead)

Wednesday April 13, 7pm RHB 139: La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard)

Wednesday May 4, 7pm RHB 308: Germany in Autumn (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
The Platypus Affiliated Society of London goes to the cinema!

Join us as we consider the politics of student movements in 1968, through films by Peter Whitehead, Jean-Luc Godard and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

This Wednesday, March 23, we will begin with the film “The Fall” by Peter Whitehead, a controversial figure in the British cinema. In an attempt to document the political actions held at Columbia University (NY), Whitehead presents via his camera the rebellious spirit of this period.

The film screenings come straight after our weekly coffee break discussions, and will be followed by a discussion on the film relating to the suggested readings below
Suggested readings prior to the screening:

Theodor Adorno, “Resignation” (1969)

Platypus Panel: The Decline of the Left in the 20th Century (2009)

Chris Cutrone, 'The Vicissitudes of Historical Consciousness and possibilities for emancipatory social politics today" (2007)

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

Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, Correspondence on the German New Left (1969)

II. Introduction to revolutionary Marxism

"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."