Marx-Engels Reader syllabus 2021
Marx-Engels Reader Platypus reading group
Time: Saturdays 2:30PM US EST
April 10 - May 29, 2021
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/194881882245655
Required reading:
Robert Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader (2nd Edition, 1978)
Recommended background reading:
Franz Mehring, Karl Marx: The Story of his Life (1918)
David Riazanov, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: An Introduction to Their Lives and Work (1927)
(Selections from Engels’s prefaces, etc. to be added as recommended readings)
(*recommended)
Week One | April 10, 2021 — 1839-44
7-125 (“On the Jewish Question,” “Contribution to the Critique,” and “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts” etc.)
577-85 “Working-Class Manchester”
*Mehring chapters 1-3
Week Two | April 17, 2021 — 1844-48
126-219 (“Critical Marginal Notes,” “Theses on Feuerbach,” “German Ideology,” “Wage Labor and Capital,” etc.)
469-500 “Communist Manifesto”
*Mehring chapters 4-5
Week Three | April 24, 2021 — 1850-56
“Address to the CL” (501-11), Class Struggles in France and Eighteenth Brumaire (586-617), “On Imperialism in India” (653-664), and “Speech at the Anniversary of the PP” (577-78),
*Mehring chapters 6-8
Week Four | May 1, 2021 — 1857-64
“Marx on the History of his Opinions” (3-6), “Grundrisse” (221-93), “Inaugural Address to the IWMA” (512-19)
*Mehring chapters 9-11
Weeks Five and Six | May 8 and 15, 2021 — Capital
294-468 (and additional selections from the Grundrisse)
*Mehring Chapter 12; *Kautsky, “The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx” (1887/1903)
Week Seven | May 22, 2021 — The Paris Commune and the Aftermath of the International
“The Civil War in France”
520-555 (Critique of Gotha etc.), 665-680 (etc.)
*Mehring chapters 13-15
Week Eight | May 29, 2021 — Engels after Marx and Marxism
681-768 (selections from Socialism, Anti-DĂĽhring, and Origins of Family, PP, and the State etc.)
556-76 “The Tactics of Social Democracy”
Kautsky, “The Historic Accomplishment of Karl Marx” (1908); and *“Friedrich Engels: His Life, His Work, His Writings” (1899)
