Join us for the beginning of our main syllabus: What is Marxism? What is the Left? We'll go through the theory of the Left, read Marx himself, as well as the texts of Revolutionary Marxist's like Lenin and Luxemburg. Any and all are welcome with no prior experience or history of the Left required, we are an EDUCATIONAL project!
Week 2. What is the Left? II. Utopia and critique
• Max Horkheimer, selections from Dämmerung (1926–31)
• Adorno, “Imaginative Excesses” (1944–47)
• Leszek Kolakowski, “The concept of the Left” (1958)
• Herbert Marcuse, "Note on dialectic" (1960)
• Marx, To make the world philosophical (from Marx's dissertation, 1839–41), pp. 9–11
• Marx, For the ruthless criticism of everything existing (letter to Arnold Ruge, September 1843), pp. 12–15
They are all short essays or aphorisms so not much to read for this week. We'll gather in Foster Court room 215 at 6pm, hear some presentations on the texts by two students and then go into a discussion with breaks in between.
To find the PDFs and the broader syllabus see: https://platypus1917.org/2025/07/09/platypus-primary-marxist-reading-group-summer-and-fall-2025-winter-2026/
See you all there!