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| Platypus Spring 2017: Weekly Coffee Breaks & Reading Group | | | | | Coffee breaks at Think Coffee, 248 Mercer St (by NYU) are on Tuesdays at 6pm. All are welcome for an informal discussion on politics and the Left. In anticipation of International Women's Day and the rally at Washington Sq., we will discuss the task of women's emancipation. To motivate our discussion, we include here a transcript from our panel in Frankfurt, Germany, "Women: The Longest Revolution?" from 2015.
To find us at Think, look for the table with a stack of the Platypus Review. Please feel free to e-mail if you cannot see us.
contact: pcn...@nyu.edu | | | Panelists: Cornelia Möser, Lucy Parker, Ursula Jensen, Joy McReady Panel Description: On November 7, 2015, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel discussion at its 2nd European Conference in Frankfurt entitled “Women: The Longest Revolution?” The panelists were Cornelia Möser, who earned her PhD in gender studies and political science and is a researcher for the CNRS at the CRESPPA-GTM in Paris; Lucy Parker, a member of Platypus based in London; Joy McReady, a journalist and revolutionary social activist who writes a monthly column on women’s liberation for Workers’ Power, the British section of the League for the Fifth International; and Ursula Jensen, a founding member of the International Bolshevik Tendency and a longterm member of the works council within the IG Metall. | |  | | Look for the Platypus banner at the Washington Sq. rally this Wednesday! | | Introduction to Revolutionary Marxism
Spring 2017 Reading Group | | MONDAYS, 8–10pm at New York University
ROOM 265, Global Center (Thompson st. & Washington Sq. S.) | | | Reading Series: Introduction to revolutionary Marxism
Through reading key texts from the high period of the history of Marxism in the 2nd International and its crisis in the early 20th century, the problem of consciousness of this history and its potential political implications in the present are addressed. Readings include Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, the philosophical reflections on Marxism by Lukacs and Korsch, and their ramifications in the Frankfurt School Critical Theory of Walter Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Adorno.
contact: taylo...@gmail.com | | | | | • required/ recommended reading +
March 20 Imperialism
• 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)
March 27 spring break
April 3 Failure of the revolution • 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)
April 7-9 Platypus International Convention
Chicago, Illinois
April 17 Retreat after revolution • Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder (1920)
+ Lenin, "Notes of a Publicist" (1922)
April 24 Dialectic of reification • 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
May 1 Lessons of October • Trotsky, The Lessons of October (1924) [PDF] + Trotsky, "Stalinism and Bolshevism"(1937)
May 8 Trotskyism + 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)
May 15 The authoritarian state • Friedrich Pollock, "State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations" (1941) (note 32 on USSR)
• Max Horkheimer, "The Authoritarian State" (1942)
May 22 On the concept of history • 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)
May 29 Reflections on Marxism
• 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)
June 5 Theory and practice + 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) | | | | Articles in the Platypus Review will typically range in length from 750–4,500 words, but longer pieces will also be considered. Please send article submissions and inquiries about the project to: review...@platypus1917.org. All submissions should conform to the Chicago Manual of Style | | | | The Platypus Affiliated Society, established in December 2006, organizes reading groups, public fora, research and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the “Old” (1920s-30s), “New” (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today. | | | Copyright © 2017 Platypus, All rights reserved.
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