Chicago
Saturdays 1–4PM
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
112 S. Michigan Ave. room 920
Facebook invitation: http://www.facebook.com/events/339098822822962/
• required / + recommended reading
Film screening: May 2012
• Last Party 2000 (2001)
Week 1. May 26, 2012
Marx and democracy
• Dick Howard, selections from The Specter of Democracy (2002)
+ Howard, “Philosophy by other means?” (2001) (original version of Chapter 13 of The Specter of Democracy)
+ Benjamin Constant, “The liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns” (1819)
+ Karl Marx, On Bruno Bauer’s The Jewish Question (1844)
+ Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)
+ Chris Cutrone, “Lenin’s liberalism” and “Lenin’s politics” (2011)
Week 2. Jun. 2, 2012
Communist Party of Great Britain debates Platypus
• Selected articles from Weekly Worker, May 12 – August 11, 2011
+ Original pages of Weekly Worker
• Ben Lewis, “Chicago school” (letter in Weekly Worker 914, May 17, 2012)
• Chris Cutrone, letter in response to Ben Lewis (May 17, 2012)
+ Danny Hammill, “Debate, controversy and comradeship” (on the 2011 CPGB Communist University summer school, Weekly Worker 879, September 1, 2011, p. 11)
+ Spencer Leonard, “Adam Smith’s profoundest reader: Marx” (Weekly Worker 895, December 22, 2011, pp. 12–14)
June 16 – July 28
Trotsky and Trotskyism
Recommended preliminary readings:
+ Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)
+ Nicolas Krassó, “Trotsky’s Marxism” (1967)
• Platypus Historians Group, “The dead Left: Trotskyism” (2008)
• Richard Rubin, “The decline of the Left in the 20th century: 1933″ (2009)
• Ian Morrison, “Trotsky’s Marxism” (2011)
• Mike Macnair, Bryan Palmer, Richard Rubin, and Jason Wright, “The legacy of Trotskyism” (2011)
• Grover Furr, “Learning from the Communist Movement of the 20th century: A response to Richard Rubin”(2012)
+ Spartacist League, Lenin and the Vanguard Party (1978)
+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1978)
+ Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet: Trotsky biography (three volumes: 1954, 1959, 1963)
The Russian Revolution, which Lenin held up as the torch-light of emancipation for the world proletariat, is being run into national socialist channels. . . . “The Russian proletariat,” said Lenin, “cannot single-handed bring the socialist revolution to a victorious conclusion. But it can give the Russian revolution a mighty impetus such as would create most favorable conditions for a socialist revolution, and would, in a sense, start it. It can help to create more favorable circumstances for its most important, most trustworthy and most reliable collaborator, the European and American proletariat, to join the decisive battles” (“Farewell letter to the Swiss workers,” 1917).
Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Philadelphia
Video will be broadcast live and available as recordings at: http://www.livestream.com/platypusaffiliatedsociety
Saturdays 1–4PM CST
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
112 S. Michigan Ave. room 920
Chicago Platypus Facebook invitation: http://www.facebook.com/events/140497572752262/
Saturdays 2–5PM EST
The New School
6 E. 16th St. (between Union Square West and 5th Ave.) room 1001
• recommended / + supplemental reading
Recommended preliminary readings:
+ Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)
+ Nicolas Krassó, “Trotsky’s Marxism” (1967)
• Platypus Historians Group, “The dead Left: Trotskyism” (2008)
• Richard Rubin, “The decline of the Left in the 20th century: 1933″ (2009)
• Ian Morrison, “Trotsky’s Marxism” (2011)
• Mike Macnair, Bryan Palmer, Richard Rubin, and Jason Wright, “The legacy of Trotskyism” (2011)
• Grover Furr, “Learning from the Communist Movement of the 20th century: A response to Richard Rubin”(2012)
+ Spartacist League, Lenin and the Vanguard Party (1978)
+ Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1978)
+ Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet: Trotsky biography (three volumes: 1954, 1959, 1963)
Week 1. Jun. 16, 2012
1879–1905
lecture: video recording | audio recording
• Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)
• Leon Trotsky, Results and Prospects (1906)
Week 2. Jun. 23, 2012
1905–17
lecture: video recording [glitches after ~32:00] | audio recording [without glitches]
+ Trotsky, 1905 (1907)
Week 3. Jun. 30, 2012
1917–23
lecture: video recording | audio recording
• Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism (1920)
• Trotsky, The Lessons of October (1924) [PDF]
+ Trotsky, Literature and Revolution (1924)
+ Bret Schneider, “Trotsky’s theory of art” (2011)
Week 4. Jul. 7, 2012
1923–33
lecture: video recording | audio recording
+ Trotsky, Where is Britain Going? (1925)
+ Trotsky, Problems of the Chinese Revolution 1927–31 (1932)
+ Trotsky, writings on the rise of Hitler and the destruction of the German Left (1930–40), especially “To build communist parties and an international anew” (1933)
Week 5. Jul. 14, 2012
1933–40
lecture: video recording | audio recording
• Trotsky, “Stalinism and Bolshevism” (1937)
• 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, The Revolution Betrayed (1936)
+ Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism (1939/40), especially “Letter to James Cannon” (September 12, 1939)
+ Trotsky, “Art and politics on our epoch” (1938)
+ Mary McCarthy, “My Confession” (1954)
Week 6. Jul. 21, 2012
1940–53
lecture: video recording | audio recording
+ James Cannon, “The coming American revolution” (1946)
+ C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, et al., “Program of the minority tendency of the Workers Party/U.S.” (1946)
+ C.L.R. James, “Dialectical materialism and the fate of humanity” (1947)
+ Herbert Marcuse, “33 Theses” (1947)
+ Earl Browder and Max Shachtman with C. Wright Mills, “Is Russia a socialist community?” (1950)
+ Ernest Mandel, “The theory of ‘state capitalism’” (1951)
+ Michel Pablo, “On the duration and the nature of the period of transition from capitalism to socialism” (1951)
+ Pablo, “Where are we going?” (1953)
Week 7. Jul. 28, 2012
1953–63
lecture: video recording [ends ~4:00 prematurely] | audio recording [complete]
+ Cornelius Castoriadis, “The workers and organization” (1959)
• Cliff Slaughter, “What is revolutionary leadership?” (1960)
• Revolutionary Tendency of the Socialist Workers Party/U.S., “In defense of a revolutionary perspective”(1962)
+ Tony Cliff, “The coming Russian revolution” (final chapter of Russia: A Marxist Analysis, 1964)
+ Hal Draper, “The two souls of socialism” (1966)
+ Isaac Deutscher, “Marxism in our time” (1965)
+ Murray Bookchin, “Listen, Marxist!” (1969)
• Spartacist League, “Genesis of Pabloism” (1972)
2012–13
Primary Marxist reading group
I. What is the Left? — What is Marxism?
• required / + recommended reading
Week A. Aug. 4, 2012
• epigraphs on modern history and freedom by James Miller (on Jean-Jacques Rousseau), Louis Menand (on Edmund Wilson), Karl Marx, on “becoming” (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58), and Peter Preuss (on Nietzsche)
+ Rainer Maria Rilke, “Archaic Torso of Apollo” (1908)
+ Robert Pippin, “On Critical Theory” (2004)
• 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)
Week B. Aug. 11, 2012
• G.W.F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1831) [HTML] [PDF pp. 14-128]
Week C. Aug. 18, 2012
• Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Use and Abuse of History for Life (1874) [translator's introduction by Peter Preuss]
Week D. Aug. 25, 2012
• Nietzsche, selection from On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
• Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887)
Week E. Sep. 1, 2012 Labor Day weekend
• Martin Nicolaus, “The unknown Marx” (1968)
• Moishe Postone, “Necessity, labor, and time” (1978)
• Postone, “History and helplessness: Mass mobilization and contemporary forms of anticapitalism” (2006)
+ Postone, “Theorizing the contemporary world: Brenner, Arrighi, Harvey” (2006)
Week F. Sep. 8, 2012
• 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)
Week G. Sep. 15, 2012
• 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)
Week H. Sep. 22, 2012
• Wilhelm Reich, “Ideology as material power” (1933/46)
• Siegfried Kracauer, “The mass ornament” (1927)
+ Kracauer, “Photography” (1927)
Week 1. Sep. 29, 2012
• Chris Cutrone, “Capital in history” (2008)
• Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis” (2010)
Week 1
• 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 2
• 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 3
• Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left” (1958)
• Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843)
Week 4
+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
• Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis” (2010)
10 sessions of readings introducing the raison d’être of the Platypus project.
Week 1
• Cutrone, “Symptomology: Historical transformations in social-political context”
• Cutrone, “Capital in history: The need for a Marxian philosophy of history of the Left”
• Cutrone, “Class consciousness (from a Marxist persective) today”
+ Capital in history timeline and chart of terms
+ video of Communist University 2011 London presentation
+ Marx on "becoming" (from the Grundrisse)
+ Marx and Engels as philosophes of a Second Enlightenment
Week 2
• Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left”
• Adorno, “Imaginative excesses”
Week 3
• Blumberg, Cutrone, Khan, Leonard, and Rubin, Forum: The decline of the Left in the 20th century
Week 4
• Anderson, Cutrone, Kreitman, Postel, and Turl, Forum: Imperialism: What is it, why should we be against it?
• Albert, Cutrone, Duncombe, and Holmes, Forum: The 3 Rs: reform, revolution and “resistance:” The problematic forms of “anti-capitalism” today
Week 5
• Brennan, Davis, Hendricks, Mujica, and Rubin, Forum: What is a movement?
• Hendricks, Hughes, Mwaura, and Thindwa, Forum: Left behind: The working class in the crisis
Week 6
• Platypus Historians Group, Catastrophe, historical memory, and the Left: 60 years of Israel-Palestine
• Ibish, Kovel, and Rubin, Forum: Which way forward for Palestinian liberation?
• Goodman and Rubin, Forum: Marxism and Israel
Week 7
• Farrow, Gabrellas, Mucciaroni, and Wolf, Forum: Which way forward for sexual liberation?
• Nogales, Pereira Di Salvo, and Rojas, Forum: Politics of the contemporary student Left
• Brennan, Klatt, Petcov, and Weger, Forum: Ideology and the student Left
Week 8
• Bernstein, Cutrone, Goehr, and Horowitz, Forum: The relevance of Critical Theory to art today
• Cutrone, Feenberg, Westerman, and Brown, Platypus convention plenary: The politics of Critical Theory
Week 9
• Horkheimer and Adorno, “Discussion about Theory and Praxis” (AKA “Towards a New Manifesto?”) [Deutsch] (1956)
• Horkheimer, selections from Dämmerung
• Adorno, “Resignation”
• Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis”
• Cutrone, “The Left is dead! — Long live the Left!” Vicissitudes of historical consciousness and the possibilities for emancipatory social politics today
Week 10
• Cutrone, Morrison, and Rubin, Platypus convention plenary: The Platypus synthesis: History, theory, and practice
A series of 10 sessions introducing Platypus’s approach to the history of Marxism.
• required / + recommended [ / ++ supplemental ] readings
Essential background reading:
• Leszek Kolakowski, “The Concept of the Left”
Recommended preliminary/background readings:
+ 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
+ James Joll, The Second International 1889-1914 (1966)
+ Sebastian Haffner, Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918-19 (1968)
Week 1
• Chris Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis: a response to Alain Badiou’s ‘communist hypothesis’”
• Cutrone, “Capital in history: The need for a Marxian philosophy of history of the Left”
+ Cutrone, “The Left is dead! — Long live the Left!” Vicissitudes of historical consciousness and the possibilities for emancipatory social politics today
+ Kant, “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View” (1784)
+ Benjamin Constant, “The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns” (1819)
[ ++ Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754) ]
[ ++ Rousseau, selection from The Social Contract (1762) ]
Week 2
• Marx and Friedrich Engels, selections from the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), pp. 469-500
• 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
Week 3
• Screening: Margarethe von Trotta, dir., Rosa Luxemburg (1986 film)
• Rosa Luxemburg, “The Crisis of German Social Democracy” Part 1 (1915), and “Order Reigns in Berlin” (1919)
• J. P. Nettl, “The German Social Democratic Party 1890-1914 as a Political Model” (1965)
[ ++ James Joll, The Second International 1889-1914 (1966) ]
Week 4
• Cliff Slaughter, “What is Revolutionary Leadership?” (1960)
Week 5
• Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)
Week 6
• Spartacist League, Lenin and the Vanguard Party (1978)
Week 7
• Luxemburg, “The Russian Tragedy” (1918), “Order Reigns in Berlin” (1919)
[ ++ Sebastian Haffner, Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918-19 (1968) ]
Week 8
• Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)
Week 9
• Max Horkheimer, selections from Dämmerung
+ Theodor W. Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses” (1944–47)
Week 10
• Theodor W. Adorno, “Reflections on Class Theory” (1942)
+ Adorno and Horkheimer, “Towards a New Manifesto?” (1956)
• Adorno, “Resignation” (1969)
