Sundays, 2:00PM EST

June 15 - August 17th, 2025

Location: ZOOM

Contact Laurie Rojas <laurie.rojas@gmail.com> if interested in joining.

• required / + recommended reading

Week 1. Art and politics after postmodernism | June 15th, 2025

“[Artists'] work is to sustain the critical moment of aesthetic experience. [Critics' work] is to recognize it.”
-- Susan Buck-Morss, response to Visual culture questionnaire (1996)

• Susan Buck-Morss, response to Visual culture questionnaire (1996)
• Robert Pippin, "On Critical Theory" (2004)
+ Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic torso of Apollo" (1908)
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms [PNG]
• Chris Cutrone, "The relevance of Critical Theory to art today" (2011) [PDF]
• Cutrone, "An incomplete project? Art and politics after postmodernism" (2010) [PDF]

Week 2. The meaning of art | June 22th, 2025

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms [PNG]
+ Kant's 3 Critiques [PNG] and philosophy [PNG] charts of terms
• Immanuel Kant, Preface and Introduction, Critique of Judgment (1790) [full book PDF]

Week 3. Art and humanity | June 29th, 2025

+ Schiller on aesthetic education (and Nietzsche on art) chart of terms [PNG]
• Friedrich Schiller, Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

Week 4. Modern aesthetics of art | July 6th, 2025

• G.W.F. Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics (Introduction): [PDF]
1 Prefatory Remarks
2 Limitation and Defence of Aesthetics
3 Refutation of Objections
4 Scientific Ways of Treating Beauty and Art
5 Concept of the Beauty of Art
6 Common Ideas of Art
(i) The Work of Art as a Product of Human Activity
(ii) The Work of Art, as being for Apprehension by Man’s Senses, is drawn from the Sensuous Sphere
(iii) The Aim of Art

Week 5. Modernity and modernism | July 6th, 2025

• Heinrich Heine, excerpts from Salon of 1831 (1831)
• Heine, excerpts from Salon of 1843 (1843)
+ Baudelaire on the modern / modernity / modernism chart of terms [PNG]
• Charles Baudelaire, excerpts from Paris Spleen (1867)
• Baudelaire, excerpts from Salon of 1846 (1846)
• Baudelaire, excerpts from The Painter of Modern Life (1863)

Week 6. Art as justification for life? | July 13th, 2025

• Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy (1872, including 1886 "Attempt at self-criticism")
+ Schiller on aesthetic education (and Nietzsche on art) chart of terms [PNG]

Week 7. Art and revolution | July 20th, 2025

“[A] protest against reality, either conscious or unconscious, active or passive, optimistic or pessimistic, always forms part of a really creative piece of work. Every new tendency in art has begun with rebellion.”
— Trotsky, “Art and politics in our epoch” (1938)

• Walter Benjamin, "On the mimetic faculty" (1934)
• Cutrone, "Trotsky, Benjamin, Adorno and Greenberg's critique of 'revolutionary art' " (2020) [PDF]
• Leon Trotsky, "Art and politics in our epoch" (1938)                                                                          + Cutrone, “The politics of the culture industry: art today” (2010)

Week 8. Greenberg | July 27th, 2025
• Clement Greenberg, "Avant-garde and kitsch" (1939)                                                                         • Greenberg, "Towards a Newer Laocoon" (1940)                                                                                            • Greenberg, “Modernist Painting” (1961)

Week 9. Revolutionary art? | August 3rd, 2025

• Walter Benjamin, "Experience and poverty" (1934)
• Benjamin, "The author as producer" (1934)
• Jürgen Habermas, "Modernity: an incomplete project" (1981)                                                                • Jean-François Lyotard, “Answering the Question: What Is Postmodernism?”               

Week 10. Art and capitalism | August 10th, 2025

• Benjamin, "The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" (1936)
• Theodor Adorno, letter to Benjamin (1936)                                                                                           • Sigfried Kracauer, “Mass Ornament” (1927)
+Adorno, "The social situation of music" (1932)
+ Adorno, "The fetish-character in music and the regression of listening" (1938)
+ Siegfried Kracauer, "Photography" (1927)
+ Benjamin, "Little history of photography" (1931)

Week 11. Art's necessity and impossibility | August 17th, 2025

• Adorno, "Those Twenties" (1962)
• Adorno, "Art's self-evidence lost" and "Society", Aesthetic Theory (1970)
• Stewart Martin, “Critique of relational aesthetics” (2007)
• Stewart Martin, “The absolute artwork meets the absolute commodity” (2007)

(• required readings / + supplemental readings)

Liberal and socialist reading on late liberalism and early socialism:

Louis Blanc, History of the Ten Years 1830-1840 (1842)

Benjamin Constant, Liberty of the Ancients and Moderns Compared (1819)

Émile Durkheim, Saint-Simon and Socialism (1895-96)

Friedrich Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England (Labour Movement) [1845]

Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (Utopian Socialism) [1880]*

G.W.F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1831) [HTML] [PDF pp. 14-128] [Audiobook]

Georgi Plekhanov, “Utopian Socialism in the Nineteenth Century” (1913)*

Plekhanov, The Initial Phases of the Theory of the Class Struggle — An Introduction to the Second Edition of the Russian translation of the Communist Manifesto (1898)

Background (secondary) reading on late liberalism and early socialism: 

Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (1962)

George Lichtheim, Origins of Socialism (1969)

Joseph Seymour (Spartacist), “Marxism and the Jacobin Socialist Tradition” (1976)

Edmund Wilson, To the Finland Station (1940) 

Week 1 6/7/25: Babeuf and Jacobin socialism

• Sylvain Maréchal, (1796) "Manifesto of the Equals" 

• Philippe Buonarroti, History of Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality (1828/36) selections: "Biographical Sketch of Buonarroti", "To the Reader", "Author's Preface", Part I pp. 5-36, 88-232

Supplemental:

+ French Republic Constitution of 1793

+ Buonarroti, History of Babeuf's Conspiracy for Equality (1828/1836), Part I pp. 1-87, Part II

+ Gracchus Babeuf, (1797) The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf before the High Court of Vendôme
+ Herbert Marcuse, "Thoughts on the defense of Babeuf" (1969)

+ Auguste Blanqui, (1832) “Speech before the Society of the Friends of the People”

+ Blanqui, (1849) "To the Mountain of 1793! To the Pure Socialists, its True Heirs!"

Week 2 6/14/25: Henri de Saint-Simon

• Henri Saint-Simon, Social Organisation, the Science of Man, and Other Writings (1803-25)

Week 3 6/21/25: Charles Fourier

• Charles Fourier, from The Utopian Vision of Fourier: Selected Texts selections: I. First Proclamations, II. Commerce, Industry and Work in Civilization, III. Philosophy, Morality and Sex in Civilization and V. The ideal Community
  + Fourier archive at marxists.org

Week 4 6/28/25: Robert Owen

• Robert Owen, A New View of Society and Other Writings (“A New View,” “Address to the Inhabitants,” “Observations on the Effects,” “To the British Manufacturer,” “Address to the Working Class,” and “Catechism”)
• Declaration of Mental Independence

Secondary reading:

+ William Benbow, Grand National Holiday (1832)

Week 5 7/5/25: Left Ricardian socialism and Chartism

• Thomas Hodgskin, Labour Defended Against the Claims of Capital (1825)
•  David Black, “The elusive ‘threads of historical progress’: The early Chartists and the young Marx and Engels” 
• Chartist writings, Selection (1833-55)

Supplemental:

+ Charles Wentworth Dilke, The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties
+ Bronterre O’Brien, Progress of Human Slavery (1849-50) (Chapter I, VII, and XV to end)
+ Thomas Carlyle, Chartism (Chapters 1 & 9)
+ Theodor Rothstein, From Chartism to Labourism (“The Chartist Movement” and “Appendix: 1848 in England”)

Week 6 7/12/25: Young Hegelian communism and Chartism

• August von Cjezkowski, Arnold Ruge, and Edgar Bauer (1841-44)
• Moses Hess, “Socialism and Communism,” “A Communist Credo,” and “Consequences of a Revolution of the Proletariat” (1843-47)

Week 7 7/19/25: Democracy and socialism

• Victor Considerant, The Principles of Socialism: Manifesto of 19th Century Democracy (1847) selections: Part One. The State of Society (complete); Part Two. The State of Opinion I. Study of the Great Divisions of Modern Democracy

Supplemental:

+ Louis Blanc, Organization of Labor [Selection TBD]

( • required / + recommended readings)

Recommended background reading:
+ J.P. Nettl, "The SPD 1890-1914 as political model" (1965)

Week 1 | June 8, 2024

• Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (1908/19)
[Priority readings: Letter to Daniel Halevy; Introduction; Chapters 2, 4, 5 (complete); final section of Chapter 6 (section IV); final section of Chapter 7 (section V); Appendix III: In Defense of Lenin]
+ Sorel, "The decomposition of Marxism" [pp. 211-254] (1908)

Week 2 | June 15, 2024

• Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political (1932) including + "The age of neutralizations and depoliticizations" (1929)
+ Schmitt, "Political theology" Chapter 3 of Political Theology (1922/34)
+ Schmitt, Chapters 3-6 of Dictatorship (1921)
+ Schmitt, "Dictatorship in Marxist thought" Chapter 3 of The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy (1923/26)
(+ Walter Benjamin, "Critique of violence" [updated translation from Selected Writings], 1921)

Week 3 | June 22, 2024

• James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution (1941)
[Priority readings: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8 pp. 99-109, Chapter 9 pp. 119-126, 135-138, Chapter 10 pp. 143-151, Chapter 11 pp. 160-171, Chapter 13]

Week 4 | June 29, 2024

• Burnham, The Machiavellians (1943)
[Priority readings: Part I Section 3, Parts II, III, VI, VII]

Week 5 | July 6, 2024

• Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (1963)
[Priority readings: Introduction, Chapters 1, 3, 4, 6]

Week 6 | July 13, 2024

• Arendt, On Violence (1969)
+ Arendt, The Human Condition (1958), Prologue, Part I. The Human Condition
+ Arendt, selections from Origins of Totalitarianism (1951/58): Prefaces to First and Second Enlarged Editions; Part Two: Imperialism Chapters 5 and 9; Part Three: Totalitarianism Chapters 10-14 (including Epilogue: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution)

Week 7 | July 20, 2024

• Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985)

Der Lesekreis soll einen Überblick über das vielbesprochene, aber selten wirklich gelesene Opus magnum von Marx, „das Kapital - Kritik der politischen Ökonomie“, bieten. Um ein Verständnis des Gesamtwerks zu gewinnen, werden Ausschnitte sowohl aus den Grundrissen, dem ersten, dem dritten und dem inoffiziellen vierten Band („Die Theorien über den Mehrwert“) diskutiert. Entgegen der Herangehensweise der sogenannten „Neuen Marx-Lektüre“ soll dabei das „Politische“ nicht vom „Ökonomischen“, das „Frühe“ nicht vom Späten“ und das „Logische“ nicht vom „Historischen“ getrennt werden. Ebenso wenig wollen wir Marx gegen seinen engsten Mitstreiter Friedrich Engels ausspielen. Welche Rolle also nimmt die Kritik der politischen Ökonomie in der Politik von Marx und dem Marxismus ein?

Die Texte werden im Voraus gelesen und dann zusammen diskutiert. Neueinsteiger sind herzlich willkommen und es werden keine Vorkenntnisse benötigt!

Zeit: Mittwochs, 19:00 - 22:00, 9. August - 27. September 2023

Ort: Hedwig Dohm Haus, Ziegelstr. 4, HU Berlin

Weitere Infos über Telegram und andere Kanäle

• vorausgesetzte Texte

+ zusätzlich, empfohlene Texte

Hintergrundlektüre:

+ Commodity form chart of terms
+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
+ Organic composition of capital chart of terms
+ Marx on surplus-value chart of terms

+ Karl Kautsky (1903): Karl Marx’ Ökonomische Lehren gemeinverständlich dargestellt und erläutert

+ Franz Mehring (1918): Karl Marx - Geschichte seines Lebens

+ David Riazanov (1927): Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: An Introduction to Their Lives and Work

Woche 1.:  Einführung | 9. August

• Karl Marx (1849): Lohnarbeit und Kapital

• Karl Marx, Die kommende Schlacht (aus Das Elend der Philosophie, 1847)

• Karl Marx, Klassenkampf und Produktionsweise (aus dem Brief an Weydemeyer, 1852)

• Wladimir Lenin (1914): Karl Marx. In: Lenin Werke Band 21, S.30-80 (Für die Diskussion vorausgesetzt wird nur das Kapitel „Die Ökonomische Lehre von Marx“)

Woche 2.: Die Grundrisse | 16. August

• Karl Marx (1857): Einleitung zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie

• Karl Marx, Auszüge aus den Grundrisse (1857–61)

Woche 3: Das Kapital (Band 1) Teil 1 | 23. August

• Marx: Das Kapital Band 1. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie: Vorwort zur ersten und Nachwort zur zweiten Auflage (1867/1873) von Das Kapital Bd. I (1867), Vor- und Nachwort zur französischen Ausgabe (1872), Erster Abschnitt Ware und Geld. Erstes Kapitel: Die Ware., Zweiter Abschnitt. Viertes Kapitel. Die Verwandlung von Geld in Kapital. Nur: Die allgemeine Formel des Kapitals

Woche 4: Das Kapital (Band 1) Teil 2 | 30. August

• Marx: Das Kapital Band 1. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie: Viertes Kapitel: Der Kauf und Verkauf der Arbeitskraft, Sechstes Kapitel: Konstantes Kapital und variables Kapital, Siebtes Kapitel: Die Rate des Mehrwerts, Achtes Kapitel: Der Arbeitstag

Woche 5: Das Kapital (Band 1) Teil 3 | 6. September

• Marx: Das Kapital Band 1. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie: Teil 4. Die Produktion des relativen Mehrwerts, Zehntes Kapitel: Begriff des relativen Mehrwerts, Elftes Kapitel: Kooperation, Zwölftes Kapitel: Teilung der Arbeit und Manufaktur (1-5), Dreizehntes Kapitel: Maschinerie und große Industrie (nur Teil 1 und Teil 3)

Woche 6: Das Kapital (Band 1) Teil 4 | 13. September

• Marx: Das Kapital Band 1. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie: Dreizehntes Kapitel, Teil 4: Die Fabrik, Teil 5: Der Kampf zwischen Arbeiter und Maschine, Teil 9: Fabrikgesetzgebung, Teil 10: Große Industrie und Agrikultur, Vierzehntes Kapitel: Die Produktion des absoluten und relativen Mehrwerts, Dreiundzwanzigstes Kapitel. Das allgemeine Gesetz der kapitalistischen Akkumulation Nur Teil 1, 3 und 4, Vierundzwanzigstes Kapitel. Die sogenannte ursprüngliche Akkumulation: 1. Das Geheimnis der ursprünglichen Akkumulation, 2. Expropriation des Landvolks von Grund und Boden, 6. Genesis des industriellen Kapitalisten, 7. Geschichtliche Tendenz der kapitalistischen Akkumulation

Woche 7: Das Kapital (Band 3) Teil 1 | 20. September

• Marx: Das Kapital Band 1. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie: Vierundzwanzigstes Kapitel. Die sogenannte ursprüngliche Akkumulation: 1. Das Geheimnis der ursprünglichen Akkumulation, 2. Expropriation des Landvolks von Grund und Boden, 6. Genesis des industriellen Kapitalisten, 7. Geschichtliche Tendenz der kapitalistischen Akkumulation

• Marx: Das Kapital Band 3. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie: Dritter Abschnitt. Gesetz des tendenziellen Falls der Profitrate, Dreizehntes Kapitel, Vierzehntes Kapitel, Fünfzehntes Kapitel

Woche 8: Das Kapital (Band 3) Teil 2 | 27. September

• Marx: Das Kapital Band 3. Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie: Siebenter Abschnitt. Die Revenuen und ihre Quellen. Die trinitarische Formel, 48., 49., 50. und 51. Kapitel 

• Marx: Die Theorien über den Mehrwert: Kapitel 17.: Abschnitt 8., 9., 10., 11. und 14

( • required / + recommended readings)

Recommended background preliminary readings:
+ Benjamin Constant, "The liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns" (1819)
+ J. P. Nettl, “The German Social Democratic Party 1890–1914 as a Political Model” (1965)

Recommended supplemental parallel readings:
+ Chris Cutrone, "The end of the Gilded Age" (2017) and "Gilded Age socialism -- historically past?" (2023)
+ Cutrone, "Lenin's liberalism" and "Lenin's politics" (2011)
+ Cutrone, "What is political party for Marxism?" (2014)
+ Cutrone, “Proletarian dictatorship and state capitalism” (2015)
+ Cutrone, “What was social democracy” (2016)
+ Cutrone, "Back to Herbert Spencer! Industrial vs. militant society" (2016) [audio]
+ Cutrone, "Horkheimer in 1943 on party and class" (2016)
+ Max Horkheimer, "On the sociology of class relations" (1943)
+ Cutrone, "Lenin today" (2020)
+ Cutrone, "The dictatorship of the proletariat and the death of the Left" (2021)
+ August Nimtz, Andrew Arato and Chris Cutrone, "Socialism, liberalism and Marxism" (January 6, 2021)

Week 1 | June 10, 2023

• August Nimtz, Marxism versus Liberalism (2019) 1. Introduction; and Chapters 2–3 on Marx and Engels versus Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill

Week 2 | June 17, 2023

• Nimtz, Marxism versus Liberalism (2019) Chapters 4–5 on Lenin versus Weber and Woodrow Wilson; and 6. Conclusion

Week 3 | June 24, 2023

• Robert Michels, Political Parties (1915) (especially Preface, Ch. 1-2, Part 1 and Parts 3 and 4)

Week 4 | July 1, 2023

• Max Weber, "Socialism" (1918); and "Politics as a vocation" and "Science as a vocation" (1919)
+ Weber, "Structures of power; Class, status, party; Bureaucracy"

Week 5 | July 8, 2023

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms
• Otto Kircheimer, "Changes in the structure of political compromise" (1941)
• Herbert Marcuse, "The struggle against liberalism in the totalitarian view of the state" (1934) in Negations
+ Franz Neumann, "The change in the function of law in modern society" (1937)
• Sigmund Neumann, “The party of democratic integration” (1956); and Kirchheimer, "The catch-all party" (1966)

Week 6 | July 15, 2023

• Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband, debate on capitalism and the state (1972)
+ Michael Harrington, "Marxism and Democracy" (1981)
• Mike Macnair, Revolutionary Strategy (2009)
+ Cutrone, "Lenin today" (2020)

Week 7 | July 22, 2023

• Benjamin Studebaker, The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut (2023)
+ Studebaker, “The Heart of Isonomia: Equality of Political Participation versus Equality of Political Capabilities: A Fundamental Dilemma at the Heart of Democratic Theory” (2023)