TEXAS Chapters
of The Platypus Affiliated Society
For Discussions & updates
of The Platypus Affiliated Society
Weeks titled according to Platypus Fall 2026 Syllabus
• indicates required reading / + indications optional
Find .pdf versions of texts HERE
AUSTIN
Location: PCL 4.110
Time: Fridays at 5 PM
SAN ANTONIO
Location: Summer Moon Coffee (St. Mary's)
Time: Tuesdays at 6 PM
HOUSTON
Location: M.D. Anderson Library
Time: Sundays at 2PM (Only 1st and 3rd Sundays of the week in-person; 2nd and 4th on Google Meet)
+ Karl Korsch, "The Marxism of the First International" (1924)
• Marx, Inaugural address to the First International (1864), pp. 512–519
• Marx, selections from The Civil War in France (1871, including Engels's 1891 Introduction + Postscript), pp. 618–652
+ Korsch, Introduction to Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1922)
• Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, pp. 525–541
• Marx, Programme of the Parti Ouvrier (1880)
The fetish character of the commodity is not a fact of consciousness; rather it is dialectical, in the eminent sense that it produces consciousness. . . . [P]erfection of the commodity character in a Hegelian self-consciousness inaugurates the explosion of its phantasmagoria.
— Theodor W. Adorno, letter to Walter Benjamin, August 2, 1935
+ Karl Marx, on "becoming" (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58)
+ Commodity form chart of terms
+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms
+ Organic composition of capital chart of terms
+ Marx on surplus-value chart of terms
• Marx, selections from the Grundrisse (1857–61), pp. 222–226, 236–244, 247–250, 276–293
• Marx, Capital Vol. I, Ch. 1 Sec. 4 "The fetishism of commodities" (1867), pp. 319–329
+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms
Austin: Thursdays at 6 PM in the Food Court of the Student Union
Houston: Saturday, 4 PM at Doshi House