"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."

Location and time:

7pm, Thursday 4th June

Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre,

Goldsmiths College, New Cross, SE14 6NW

Confirmed speakers:

• Simon Griffiths, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Goldsmiths

• Nancy Taaffe, Socialist Party of England and Wales; and TUSC (Trade Union Socialist Coalition)

• Luke Gregory-Jones, BA Politics Student, and Student Occupier, Goldsmiths

• Michael Theodosiadis, Phd candidate, Politics, Goldsmiths; writer and editor for respublica.gr

• Jack Conrad, Communist Party of Great Britain (Weekly Worker newspaper); and Lefty Unity

PANEL DESCRIPTION:

In spite of many different political currents and tendencies, perhaps the most significant question informing the "Left" today is the issue of "political party.” Various "Left unity" initiatives have been taking place in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis and subsequent downturn, following Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring, alongside continuing "post-political" tendencies inherited from the 1980s-90s (perspectives such as expressed by Hardt and Negri's Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth, John Holloway's Change the World without Taking Power, the Invisible Committee's The Coming Insurrection, the California student protestors' Communique from an Absent Future), the formation of SYRIZA in Greece, and the new party Podemos in Spain (who reject the organized "Marxist Left" as well as the established labor unions as part of the existing "political caste"). In Germany, Die Linke appears poised to break into high political office. At the same time, there has been a growing crisis of the largest "orthodox Marxist" ("Trotskyist") political organizations in the Anglophone and Western European countries, which has been characterized as the "crisis of ('actually existing') Leninism" in the developed capitalist countries. New publications have emerged such as Jacobin magazine, N+1 and Endnotes journals, as a new "millennial Marxism." And there has emerged a related discussion of the legacy of Marxism in principles ofpolitical organization going back to the Second International 1889-1914 ("neo-Kautskyism"), for instance in Lars Lih's revisionist history of Lenin and Bolshevism and the Communist Party of Great Britain's member Mike Macnair's book Revolutionary Strategy (2008), the latter occasioned by the formations of the Respect Party in the U.K. and the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste in France. Today, perhaps the most significant question facing the "Left" internationally is goes all the way back to Marx’s dispute with the anarchists in the First International: What would it mean for the Left to take "political action" today?

However, the issue of “political party” seems to generate more problems for the Left than it solves. Formalized political organization would appear indispensable for a long term perspectives beyond the ebb and flow of movements. Yet the role of a party in sustaining activity and discontents over time -- of building towards a revolution -- has had, at best an ambivalent legacy, leading as much to rationalizing politically ineffective strategies or giving cover for various forms of opportunism (e.g. reformism, careerism, etc.). Today the idea of political parties as a means for the Left -- through which the necessity for social transformation could be developed within society -- as opposed to an end in itself, is difficult to envision both theoretically and practically. Yet the existing default --politics without parties -- seems unable to do more than give sanction to the vicissitudes through which capitalism changes, but invariably persists. Worse still, without parties of its own, the Left is forced to either passively or actively support or at least place hopes in other parties. There appears no escaping the question of Political Party for the Left.

Questions for the panelists:

1) How do you think that addressing the question of political party today potentially helps or rather might undercut the Left?

2) How do you view the problem of political organization in relation to the various currents on the Left that have emerged in the last three years since #Occupy? What should be the long term vision of Left relative to the issue of political organization?

3) In what sense is a party different from a political organization? What is its peculiarity?

4) Political parties, movements and the state have been around for a long time. Is the way they have related in the past different from how they relate now? Do you consider any or all of them as permanent or transitory? More specifically is the need for a party fixed under capitalism, including its most fundamental characteristics? Or are these characteristics open to reconsideration?

5) How do political parties/organization relate to society as a whole? How ought they for the Left? How can the Left transcend the specific interests of political constituencies (e.g. the workers, minorites, the poor, the marginalized) with an eye to transforming society as a whole? Should it? How can a political party/organization of the Left be representative and revolutionary at the same time?

6) How has the need for the Left to take political power reasserted itself today? What are the most important historical precedents for this? How has this problem changed at present from the past?

7) The current trend towards political organization (e.g. SYRIZA, Podemos) has largely found the Left opposing traditional social democratic and communist parties. What is the significance of this trend? Is it a temporary, transitory phenomenon or does it mark a permanent change? Do you regard it as an advance or a regression with respect to the Left's approach to politics?

As a consolidation of some of the themes explored last term, we will spend the first two weeks addressing the history of politics of gender, sexuality and race from a Marxist perspective.

Following this, we will be starting a new series of readings on the history of the revolutionary Marxism of the 2nd International, and their followers.

I. What is the "Left?" -- What is "Marxism?"

Gender, sexuality and Left | Jan. 12, 2015

• Juliet Mitchell, “Women: The longest revolution” (1966)
• Clara Zetkin and Vladimir Lenin, “An interview on the woman question” (1920)
• Theodor W. Adorno, “Sexual taboos and the law today” (1963)
• John D’Emilio, “Capitalism and gay identity” (1983)

Anti-black racism in the U.S. | Jan. 19, 2015

• Richard Fraser, “Two lectures on the black question in America and revolutionary integrationism” (1953)
• James Robertson and Shirley Stoute, “For black Trotskyism” (1963)

+ Spartacist League, “Black and red: Class struggle road to Negro freedom” (1966)

+ Bayard Rustin, “The failure of black separatism” (1970)

• Adolph Reed, “Black particularity reconsidered” (1979)

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

II. Introduction to revolutionary Marxism

Revolutionary leadership | Jan. 26, 2015

• Rosa Luxemburg, “The Crisis of German Social Democracy” 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)

Reform or revolution? | Feb. 2, 2015

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

Lenin and the vanguard party | Feb. 9, 2015

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

What is to be done? | Feb. 16, 2015

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

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

Mass strike and social democracy | Feb. 23, 2015

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

+ Luxemburg, "Blanquism and Social Democracy" (1906)

Permanent revolution | Mar. 2, 2015

• Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects (1906)

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

State and revolution | Mar. 9, 2015

• Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)

Imperialism | Mar. 16, 2015

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

+ Lenin, Socialism and War Ch. 1 The principles of socialism and the War of 1914–15(1915)

Failure of the revolution | Mar. 30, 2015

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

+ Luxemburg, "German Bolshevism" (AKA "The Socialisation of Society") (1918)

+ Luxemburg, “The Russian Tragedy” (1918)

+ Luxemburg, “Order Reigns in Berlin” (1919)

+ Sebastian Haffner, Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918–19 (1968)

[Easter Holidays]

Platypus International convention Apr. 10-12, 2015

Retreat after revolution | Apr. 20, 2015

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

+ Lenin, "Notes of a Publicist" (1922)

Dialectic of reification | Apr. 27 , 2015

• Lukács, “The Standpoint of the Proletariat” (Part III of “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,” 1923). Available in three sections from marxists.org:section 1 section 2 section 3

Lessons of October | May 4, 2015

• Trotsky, The Lessons of October (1924) [PDF]

+ Trotsky, "Stalinism and Bolshevism" (1937)

Trotskyism | May 11, 2015

+ Trotsky, "To build communist parties and an international anew" (1933)

• 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)

The authoritarian state | May 18, 2015

• Friedrich Pollock, "State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations" (1941) (note 32 on USSR)
• Max Horkheimer, "The Authoritarian State" (1942)

On the concept of history | May 25, 2015

• epigraphs by Louis Menand (on Edmund Wilson) and Peter Preuss (on Nietzsche) on the modern concept of history

+ Charles Baudelaire, from Fusées [Rockets] (1867)

+ Bertolt Brecht, "To posterity" (1939)

+ Walter Benjamin, "To the planetarium" (from One-Way Street, 1928)

+ Benjamin, "Experience and poverty" (1933)

+ Benjamin, Theologico-political fragment (1921/39?)

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

Reflections on Marxism | Jun. 1, 2015

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

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

+ Horkheimer and Adorno, "Discussion about Theory and Praxis" (AKA "Towards a New Manifesto?") [Deutsch] (1956)

Theory and practice | Jun. 8, 2015

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

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

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

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

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