Before talking about Luxemburg, let me say a few words about her adversary in the text we are reading: Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein is best known for Evolutionary Socialism, a cleverly titled translation of his much less cleverly titled German book Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie (The Preconditions of Socialism and the Task of Social Democracy, 1899). This is the book against which Luxemburg inveighs, and against which Lenin will also inveigh in What Is to Be Done?
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Monday, September 6, 2010
Lecture 1 (2 September, 2010)
Radical political thought is hard to define. First of all, “radical” has at least two distinct connotations, as applied to political ideologies or parties. In one sense, any political thought that is far from the mainstream might be called radical. Anything that is too weird to be taken seriously on election day is radical, or, equivalently, “fringe.”
This meaning of the word is a relatively recent innovation, though; it is first attested in 1921. The older political meaning of the term is for the party of radical reform, that is, reforming government or society at its roots (from the Latin radix). That is, the older sense is definitely applicable to the political Left, the parties that seek to change the very basis of the given or inherited social and political system. The possibility of a radical Right is recent. Why would this be so?
Reading Schedule with (some) Links
September 2 Introduction
Labour Day/Fête du Travail, September 6
September 7 Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution?, I & III (pp. 1-6)
September 9 Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution?, VII & X (pp. 6-12)
Supplement: excerpts from Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (Ch. 27, 29, and 32)
September 14 Lenin, What Is to Be Done?, I-II (pp. 1-11)
September 16 Lenin, What Is to Be Done?, III (pp. 11-17)
Supplement: Lenin, “The Historical Meaning of the Inner-Party Struggle in Russia
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