Fall 2025 Calendar

Whoever dares undertake to establish a people’s institutions must feel himself capable of changing, as it were, human nature, of transforming each individual, who by himself is a complete and solitary whole, into a part of a larger whole, from which, in a sense, the individual receives his life and his being, of substituting a limited and mental existence for the physical and independent existence. He has to take from man his own powers, and give him in exchange alien powers which he cannot employ without the help of other men.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract (1762)

• Max Horkheimer, "The little man and the philosophy of freedom" (1926–31)

• epigraphs on modern history and freedom by James Miller (on Jean-Jacques Rousseau), Louis Menand (on Marx and Engels), Karl Marx, on "becoming" (from the Grundrisse, 1857–58), and Peter Preuss (on history)

+ Rainer Maria Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (1908)

+ Robert Pippin, "On Critical Theory" (2004)

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) chart of terms

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754) PDFs of preferred translation (5 parts): [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

+ Capital in history timeline and chart of terms

• Rousseau, selection from On the Social Contract (1762) [on freedom and alienation]

Week G: Radical Bourgeois Philosophy II. Adam Smith: On the Wealth of Nations (Part 1)

Tuesday 9/23: Reading Group at Mub304, 6-8pm

Thursday 9/25: Open Discussion at Union Court, 6-8pm

• Adam Smith, selections from The Wealth of Nations

Volume I [PDF]
Vol. 1: pp. 1-4, 7-43, 53-110, 399-446
Introduction and Plan of the Work
Book I: Of the Causes of Improvement…
I.1. Of the Division of Labor
I.2. Of the Principle which gives Occasion to the Division of Labour
I.3. That the Division of Labour is Limited by the Extent of the Market
I.4. Of the Origin and Use of Money
I.5 Of the Real and Nominal Price of Commodities
I.6. Of the Component Parts of the Price of Commodities
I.7. Of the Natural and Market Price of Commodities
I.8. Of the Wages of Labour
I.9. Of the Profits of Stock
Book III: Of the different Progress of Opulence in different Nations
III.1. Of the Natural Progress of Opulence
III.2. Of the Discouragement of Agriculture in the Ancient State of Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire
III.3. Of the Rise and Progress of Cities and Towns, after the Fall of the Roman Empire
III.4. How the Commerce of the Towns Contributed to the Improvement of the Country

Week H: Radical Bourgeois Philosophy III. Adam Smith: On the Wealth of Nations (Part 2)

Tuesday 9/30: Reading Group at Mub304, 6-8pm

Thursday 10/2: Open Discussion at Union Court, 6-8pm

• Smith, selections from The Wealth of Nations

Volume II [PDF]
Vol. 2: pp. 66-158, 282-309, 338-340

IV.7, Of Colonies

V.1. Of the Expences of the Sovereign or Commonwealth Article 2d and 3d and Part IV

Week I: Radical Bourgeois Philosophy IV. What is the Third Estate?

Tuesday 10/7: Reading Group at Mub304, 6-8pm

Thursday 10/9: Open Discussion at Union Court, 6-8pm

• Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, What is the Third Estate? (1789) [full text]

+ Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1732)

Week J: Radical Bourgeois Philosophy V. Kant and Constant: Bourgeois Society

Tuesday 10/14: Reading Group at Mub304, 6-8pm

Thursday 10/16: Open Discussion at Union Court, 6-8pm

• Immanuel Kant, "Idea for a universal history from a cosmopolitan point of view" and "What is Enlightenment?" (1784)

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) chart of terms

+ Kant's 3 Critiques [PNG] and philosophy [PNG] charts of terms

• Benjamin Constant, "The liberty of the ancients compared with that of the moderns" (1819)

+ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the origin of inequality (1754)

+ Rousseau, selection from On the social contract (1762)

Week 2: What is the Left? II. Utopia and Critique

Tuesday 10/21: Reading Group at Mub304, 6-8pm

Thursday 10/23: Open Discussion at Union Court, 6-8pm

• 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

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms

Week 3: What is Marxism? I. Socialism

Tuesday 10/28: Reading Group at Mub304, 6-8pm

Thursday 10/30: Open Discussion at Union Court, 6-8pm

• Marx, selections from Economic and philosophic manuscripts (1844), pp. 70–101

+ Commodity form chart of terms

+ Being and becoming (freedom in transformation) / immanent dialectical critique chart of terms

+ Capitalist contradiction chart of terms

+ Engels, "Principles of communism" (1847) / "Draft of a communist confession of faith: Credo" (1847)

• Marx and Friedrich Engels, selections from the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), pp. 469–500

• Marx, The coming upheaval (from The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847), pp. 218–19

Week 4: What is Marxism? II. Revolution in 1848

Tuesday 11/4: Reading Group at Mub304, 6-8pm

Thursday 11/6: Open Discussion at Union Court, 6-8pm

• Marx, Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League (1850), pp. 501–511 and Class struggle and mode of production (letter to Weydemeyer, 1852), pp. 218–220

• Engels, The tactics of social democracy (Engels's 1895 introduction to Marx, The Class Struggles in France), pp. 556–573

• Marx, selections from The Class Struggles in France 1848–50 (1850), pp. 586–593

• Marx, selections from The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), pp. 594–617, including 1869 Preface

Week 5: What is Marxism? III. Bonapartism

Tuesday 11/11: Reading Group at Mub304, 6-8pm

Thursday 11/13: Open Discussion at Union Court, 6-8pm

+ 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)

Week 6: What is Marxism? IV. Critique of Political Economy

Tuesday 11/18: Reading Group at Mub304, 6-8pm

Thursday 11/20: Open Discussion at Union Court, 6-8pm

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

Week 7: What is Marxism? V. Reification

Tuesday 11/25: Reading Group at Mub304, 6-8pm

Thursday 11/27: No Thursday event this week. Happy Thanksgiving!