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)
][• 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
[• György 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
](http://www.marx.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/tu.htm)[• Christopher L Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law and the Organized Labor Movements in America 1880-1960, 282-329](http://books.google.com/books?id=N7E8AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+state+and+the+unions&ei=oxXpSeOnIYToM5fA6LQB&client=firefox-a#PRA1-PA182,M1)
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