On 10 October, 2019, the Platypus Affiliated Society at Goldsmiths University hosted a panel on 'Sex and the Left'.
Panelists:
- Jeanie Crystal (Artist)
- Peter Tatchell (British Human Rights Campaigner, best known for his work with LGBT movements)
- Rachel Holmes (Historian and author of Eleanor Marx: A Life, published by Bloomsbury Publishing)
- Zack Murrell-Dowson (Researcher into Trans Liberation)
What do we mean by a liberated sexuality? What are the bounds of sexual freedom available to us in capitalism? How do we imagine sexual liberation in socialism? Leftists have variously articulated phenomena such as same-sex marriage, sex work, abortion, gender fluidity and homosexuality as symptoms of economic austerity and/or of class privilege. How does economic life shape our imaginations of sexual freedom?
Why has the state historically intervened in private sexual life under capitalism, and under what circumstances, if any, should the Left support calls for state intervention in sexual life? Both historically and in the present, the Left has sought to lead the struggle for sexual rights within capitalism-- for same-sex marriage, abortion rights, the decriminalization of homosexuality and of sex work, etc.-- in society and/or by legislating via state power. How has the Left failed or succeeded to relate its civil-social and political efforts in the struggle for sexual liberation?
What is the Left? – What is Marxism?
Every Tuesday | 7pm | Above the Refectory, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths University
Week 1 (part 1) What is the Left? Capital in History | Oct. 8, 2019
• Max Horkheimer, “The little man and the philosophy of freedom” (pp.
50–52 from selections from Dämmerung,1926–31)
• Louis Menand, on Marx and Engels as philosophes of
a Second Enlightenment
• Karl Marx, on “becoming” (from
the Grundrisse, 1857–58)
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation)
chart of terms
Week 1 (part 2) What is the Left? Capital in History | Oct. 15, 2019
• 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, “Class consciousness (from a Marxist perspective)
today” (2012)
Week 2 (part 1) What is the Left? Utopia and Critique | Oct. 22, 2019
• Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left” (1968)
• Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843)
Week 2 (part 2) What is the Left? The Marxist Hypothesis | Oct. 29, 2019
+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
• Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis” (2010)
Week 3. What is Marxism? I. Socialism | Nov. 5, 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. 12, 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. 19, 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. 26, 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 | Dec. 03, 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. What is Marxism? VI. Class consciousness | Dec. 10, 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 9. What is Marxism? VII. Ends of philosophy | Dec. 17, 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
On 2 September 2019, Stanley Sharpey and Efraim Carlebach interviewed David McLellan in Canterbury for The Platypus Review. David McLellan (born 1940) is an English scholar of Karl Marx and Marxism. McLellan is currently visiting Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmiths' College, University of London.
Teach-in on Ireland and the Left by Padraig Macguire, held April 20, 2019 at Goldsmiths, University of London. This is the third in a series of three recordings.
