Wednesdays 6:30PM at:

Saxby’s Coffee @ Temple University

1902 Liacouras Walk, Philadelphia, PA  19122

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What is the ‘Left’? / What is ‘Marxism’?

Platypus is a project for the self-criticism, self-education, and, ultimately, the practical reconstitution of a Marxian Left. At present the Marxist Left appears as a historical ruin. The received wisdom of today dictates that past, failed attempts at emancipation stand not as moments full of potential yet to be redeemed, but rather as “what was” — utopianism that was bound to end in tragedy. As critical inheritors of a vanquished tradition, Platypus contends that — after the failure of the 1960s New Left, and the dismantlement of the welfare state and the destruction of the Soviet Union in the 1980s-90s — the present disorientation of the Left means we can hardly claim to know the tasks and goals of social emancipation better than the “utopians” of the past did.

In the face of the catastrophic past and present, the first task for the reconstitution of a Left as an emancipatory force is to recognize the reasons for the historical failure of human emancipation and to clarify the necessity of a Left for the present and future. — If the Left is to change the world, it must first transform itself!

The improbable — but not impossible — reconstitution of an emancipatory Left is an urgent task; we believe that the future of humanity depends on it. While the devastating forces unleashed by modern society — capitalism — remain, the unfulfilled promise of social emancipation still calls for redemption. To abdicate this or to obscure the gravity of past defeats and failures by looking to “resistance” from “outside” the dynamics of modern society is to affirm its present and guarantee its future destructive reality.

What has the Left been, and what can it yet become?

Schedule

September 21

• Cutrone, “Symptomology: Historical transformations in social-political context”
• Cutrone, “Capital in history: The need for a Marxian philosophy of history of the Left”

September 28

• Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left”
• Adorno, “Imaginative excesses”

October 5

• Blumberg, Cutrone, Khan, Leonard, and Rubin, Forum: The decline of the Left in the 20th century

October 12

• 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

October 19

• 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

October 26

• 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

November 2

• 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, Petcoff, and Weger, Forum: Ideology and the student Left

November 9

• 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

November 16

• 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

November 30

• Cutrone, Morrison, and Rubin, Platypus convention plenary: The Platypus synthesis: History, theory, and practice

Platypus Marxist reading group

June 26 – August 21

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Sundays 1–4PM at:

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Radical Bourgeois Philosophy: Kant-Hegel-Nietzsche

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We will address the greater context for Marx and Marxism through the issue of bourgeois radicalism in philosophy in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Discussion will emerge by working through the development from Kant and Hegel to Nietzsche, but also by reference to the Rousseauian aftermath, and the emergence of the modern society of capital, as registered by liberals such as Adam Smith and Benjamin Constant.

The principle of freedom and its corollary, “perfectibility,” . . . suggest that the possibilities for being human are both multiple and, literally, endless. . . . Contemporaries like Kant well understood the novelty and radical implications of Rousseau’s new principle of freedom [and] appreciated his unusual stress on history as the site where the true nature of our species is simultaneously realized and perverted, revealed and distorted. A new way of thinking about the human condition had appeared. . . . As Hegel put it, “The principle of freedom dawned on the world in Rousseau, and gave infinite strength to man, who thus apprehended himself as infinite.

– James Miller (author of The Passion of Michel Foucault, 2000), Introduction to Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Hackett, 1992)

Schedule

Recommended background reading

Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution 1789–1848 [PDF]

June 26

July 3 (date tentative due to holiday)

July 10

July 17

July 24

July 31

August 7

August 14

Coda: August 21

May–June, 2011

Wednesdays, 7:00-10:00pm at Saxby’s Coffee / Temple Main Campus (1902 Liacouras Walk)

Join Platypus for a short a 3-week mini-series on Marxism and Philosophy. What do the ambitious theoretical works of Georg Lukács and Karl Korsch, written amidst the crisis of war and revolution in the early twentieth century, contain for the present moment? Can these attempts at historical self-consciousness inform our understanding of the crisis of the Left today?

These readings will inform our upcoming summer reading group on the legacy of bourgeois philosophy. Please join us! Contact philly@platypus1917.org for more info.

• required / + recommended reading

Week 1. May 25, 2011

• Georg Lukács, “The Phenomenon of Reification” (Part I of “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat,” In History and Class Consciousness [1923])

Week 2. Jun. 1, 2011

• Lukács, “Preface” (1922) , “What is Orthodox Marxism?” (1919) & “Class Consciousness” (1920), In History and Class Consciousness, (1923)

Week 3. Jun. 8, 2011

• Karl Korsch, “Marxism and Philosophy” (1923)
+ Karl Marx, To Make the World Philosophical (from Marx’s dissertation, 1839–41) & “For the Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing (1843), In The Marx-Engels Reader, Robert Tucker (Ed.)
+ Korsch, “The Marxism of the First International” (1924)

Spring 2011: Wednesdays, 7:00-8:30PM

Saxby’s Coffee, Temple Main Campus, 1900-02 Liacouras Walk

Join Platypus for a reading and discussion group on the history of the Left at the time of the Second International. In looking to the discourse and politics of Marxism after Marx, through the Second International radicals, what can we learn about the possibilities of shaping a meaningful politics for the present? Are they relevant at all?

• required / + recommended readings

Essential background reading:

• Leszek Kolakowski, “The Concept of the Left”

Recommended historical 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 (Mar. 23)

• Chris Cutrone, “The Marxist hypothesis: a response to Alain Badiou’s ‘communist hypothesis’”
+ 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 (Mar. 30)

• 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)
+ James Joll, The Second International 1889-1914 (1966)

Week 3 (Apr. 6)

• Cliff Slaughter, “What is Revolutionary Leadership?” (1960)
• Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate / A&Z, Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution / Lenin for Beginners (1977)

Week 4 (Apr. 13)

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

Week 5 (Apr. 20)

• Tariq Ali and Phil Evans, Introducing Trotsky and Marxism / Trotsky for Beginners (1980)
• Luxemburg, “The Russian Tragedy” (1918), “Order Reigns in Berlin” (1919)
+ Sebastian Haffner, Failure of a Revolution: Germany 1918-19 (1968)

Week 6 (Apr. 27)

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

Week 7 (May 4)

• Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “Towards a New Manifesto?” (1956)
• Adorno, “Resignation” (1969)

Wednesday, March 16th, 7:00pm

Howard Gittis Student Center, Room 202

In the 21st century, it seems that the Left abandoned Marxism as a path to freedom. But Marx critically intervened in his own moment and emboldened Leftists to challenge society; is the Left not tasked with this today? Has the Left resolved the problems posed by Marx, and thus moved on? Does Marxism even matter?

Come discuss your thoughts with Platypus at the Communist Manifesto Teach-in, featuring a presentation by Laura Schmidt. Hosted by the Temple chapter of the Platypus Affiliated Society.

February, 2011

Wednesdays, 7:00pm at Saxby’s Coffee – Temple University (1900-02 Liacouras Walk)

• required / + recommended reading

Week 1. Feb. 9, 2011

• Karl Marx, Introduction to the Grundrisse, “Production” & “The Method of Political Economy” (pp. 221-226, 236-244)

Week 2. Feb. 16, 2011

• Marx, Chapter 1 of Capital (Vol. 1), “Commodities” (pp. 294-312, 319-329)

Week 3. Feb. 23, 2011

• Marx, Notebook III of the Grundrisse, “The Dynamics of Capitalism” (pp. 247-250); Chapters 13-15 of Capital (Vol. 1), “Cooperation,” “Division of Labour and Manufacture,” & “Machinery and Modern Industry” (pp. 284-388, 389-417)

Week 4. Mar. 2, 2011

• Marx, Chapters 25-27 and 31-33 of Capital (Vol. 1), “The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation” & “So-called Primitive Accumulation” (pp. 422-238); Notebook IV of the Grundrisse, “Capitalism, Machinery and Automation” (pp. 278-292)

+ V.I. Lenin, “Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch with an Exposition of Marxism”

Readings by Marx in Robert C. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978 [2nd ed.])

Speakers: Richard Rubin (Platypus), Elliot Ratzman (Jewish Studies, Temple University)
Sponsors: Platypus Affiliated Society, Temple Democratic Socialists

//contact philly@platypus1917.org for more info