Introducing Platypus | Bibliography (September, 2006)

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Bibliography

The bibliography/reading list encompasses several different registers in which our discussions have been thematized. These readings have been important in our discussions less for interest in the authors and their particular political biographies and more in the issues raised by the texts themselves. They are listed in chronological order of writing. For the order and themes in which the Platypus group has read and discussed these texts at our meetings, please refer to our web page for the reading group at:
http://platypus1917.home.comcast.net/~platypus1917/platypus_chicagoreadings2006.htm

The Present: Crisis on the Left

Moishe Postone, "History and Helplessness: Mass Mobilization and Contemporary Forms of Anticapitalism" (in Public Culture, 2006)

Spartacist League, "The Senile Dementia of Post-Marxism" [on Hardt and Negri's Empire and Multitude, and John Holloway's Change the World Without Taking Power] (in Spartacist, 2006)

Iraq invasion and occupation and the "Left"

Spartacist League, "The Left and the Occupation: U.S. Out of Iraq Now! For Class Struggle Against U.S. Capitalist Rulers!" (in Workers Vanguard, 2005)

Fred Halliday, "Who is Responsible? [interview with Danny Postel in Chicago, 2005]" (in Salmagundi, 2006)

Iraqi Communist Party, Letter to Fraternal and Friendly Parties About the Situation in Iraq and the Position of the Iraqi Communist Party (January, 2006)

Chris Cutrone and Spartacist League, "Exchange on Iraq Occupation" (in Workers Vanguard, 2006)

Hurricane Katrina and aftermath

Adolph Reed, "The Real Divide" (in The Progressive, 2005)

Marxist theory

Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (especially "Estranged Labour," "Private Property and Labour," "Private Property and Communism," and "The Meaning of Human Requirements," in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader [PDF])

Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1847-48, especially 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," in Marx-Engels Reader [PDF])

Karl Marx, The Grundrisse (1857-61, especially A. "Introduction: (1) Production: Independent Individuals, 18th Century Ideas, and (3) The Method of Political Economy," C. "The Dynamics of Capitalism," G. "Capitalism, Machinery and Automation," and H. "The End of Capitalism," in Marx-Engels Reader [PDF], and "(1) Value" in Martin Nicolaus, transl., Grundrisse [PDF])

Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) (in Marx-Engels Reader); and Karl Korsch, "Introduction to Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme" (1922, in Korsch, Marxism and Philosophy, ed. and trans. Fred Halliday, 1970)

Paul Lafargue, The Right to be Lazy (1883)

Georg Lukács, "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat" (in History and Class Consciousness, 1923)

Karl Korsch, "Marxism and Philosophy" (1923, in Marxism and Philosophy, 1970)

Theodor W. Adorno, "Reflections on Class Theory" (1942) (in Adorno, Can One Live after Auschwitz?, 2003)

Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

Richard Fraser, Two Lectures [on the "black question" and revolutionary integrationism in America] (1953)

Herbert Marcuse, "A Note on Dialectic" (preface to Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, 1960)

Cliff Slaughter, "What is Revolutionary Leadership?" (1960)

Louis Althusser, "Contradiction and Overdetermination" (1962) (in New Left Review, 1967, and in Oglesby, ed., The New Left Reader, 1969, 57-83), and "Marxism and Humanism" (1963/65) (in Althusser, For Marx, 1965)

Juliet Mitchell, "Women: the Longest Revolution" (in New Left Review, 1966; and debate with Quintin Hoare, New Left Review, 1967; revised version in Mitchell, Women's Estate, 1971)

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