Teach-in on Trump led by Platypus members Gabriel Gaster and Pam Nogales in New York on October 28, 2016.

Trump is opposed by virtually the entire mainstream political establishment, Republican and Democrat, and by the entire mainstream news media, conservative and liberal alike. Democrats and Republicans oppose Trump from the right, defending the status quo against an uncertain future. While leftists denounce Trump for his “racism” and “sexism” they fall below the threshold of a political critique. We should do better.

Everything Trump calls for exists already. There is already surveillance and increased scrutiny of Muslim immigrants in the “War on Terror.” There is already a war against ISIS. There is already a wall on the border with Mexico; there are already mass deportations of “illegal” immigrants. There are already proposals that will be implemented anyway for a super-exploited guest-worker immigration program. International trade is heavily regulated with many protections favoring U.S. companies already in place. So why does the idea of Trump incite such hysteria on the Left? How do we make sense of this phenomenon? What would it mean to oppose Trump politically, from the Left?

North Side Reading Group | Loyola University

Week 1. What is the Left? | Jan. 25, 2009

"The concept of the Left remains unclear to this day." (Kolakowski 1968)

• Leszek Kolakowski, "The Concept of the Left" (1968)
[in Carl Oglesby, ed., New Left Reader (1969), 144-158]

Week 2. Marxism as theory and practice: the 1920s-30s "Old" Left | Feb. 1, 2009

"In socialism, freedom is to become a reality. But because the present system is called 'free' and considered liberal, it is not terribly clear what this might mean. . . . Not only [the Little Man's] lack of freedom but that of [his betters] as well spells his doom. His interest lies in the Marxist clarification of the concept of freedom. . . .
The socialist order of society is not prevented by world history; it is historically possible. But it will not be realized by a logic that is immanent to history but by men trained in theory and determined to make things better. Otherwise, it will not be realized at all." (Horkheimer 1926-31)

• Max Horkheimer, selections from Dämmerung (Notes 1926-31)
• Theodor W. Adorno, part X. "Imaginative excesses" from "Messages in a Bottle" (orphaned from Minima Moralia 1944-47)
• Liza Featherstone, Doug Henwood, and Christian Parenti, " 'Action Will Be Taken': Left Anti-Intellectualism and its Discontents" (2002)
• Esther Leslie, Introduction to the 1969 Adorno-Marcuse correspondence (1999)
• Theodor W. Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, correspondence on the German New Left (1969)

Week 3. February 8, 2009

• Richard Fraser, Two Lectures on the Black Question in America and Revolutionary Integrationism (1953)
• James Robertson and Shirley Stoute, "For Black Trotskyism" (1963)
• Bayard Rustin, "The Failure of Black Separatism" (1970)

Week 4. Feb. 15, 2009

• Juliet Mitchell, "Women: the Longest Revolution" (1966)
[revised version from Women's Estate (1971)]
• John D'Emilio, "Capitalism and Gay Identity" (1983)

Week 5. Feb. 22, 2009

• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, selections from the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1847-48, Prefaces to various language editions, I. "Bourgeois and Proletarians," II. "Proletarians and Communists," and IV. "Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties" [PDF])
[in Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, 469-491, and 499-500]
• Karl Marx, selections from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 ("Estranged Labour," "Private Property and Labour," "Private Property and Communism," and "The Meaning of Human Requirements" [PDF])
[in Robert C. Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, 70-101]

Week 6. Mar. 1, 2009

"The most important Marxian political manifesto remains to be written." (Nicolaus 1968)

• Martin Nicolaus, "The Unknown Marx" (1968)
[also in Carl Oglesby, ed., The New Left Reader (1969), 84-110]
• Moishe Postone, "Rethinking Marx (in a post-Marxist world)" (1995)

Week 7. Mar. 15, 2009

• Georg Lukács, "The Phenomenon of Reification" (Part I of "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat," 1923) [PDF]
[in History and Class Consciousness, 83-110]

Week 8. Mar. 29, 2009

"Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto;
Ogni viltà convien che qui sia morta
[Here all mistrust must be abandoned;
And here must perish every craven thought]"
(Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia 1308-21 quoted by Marx 1859)

• Karl Korsch, Introduction to Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme (1922)
• Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)
[also in Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, 525-541]
• Karl Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
[also in Robert Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, 3-6]

Week 9. Apr. 19th, 2009

• Leon Trotsky: Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay
• Christopher L Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law and the Organized Labor Movements in America 1880-1960, 282-329