Marxist work week

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Group photo, standing from left to right: Hede Massing, Friedrich Pollock, Eduard Ludwig Alexander, Konstantin Zetkin, Georg Lukács, Julian Gumperz, Richard Sorge, Karl Alexander (child), Felix Weil, unknown; Sitting: Karl August Wittfogel, Rose Wittfogel, unknown, Christiane Sorge, Karl Korsch, Hedda Korsch, Käthe Weil, Margarete Lissauer, Bela Fogarasi, Gertrud Alexander

The Marxist Work Week , also known as the First Marxist Work Week , was a conference that took place from May 20, 1923 over Whitsun for eight days in Geraberg near Arnstadt in Thuringia . The venue was a train station hotel run by the communist Friedrich Henne. Among the participants were well-known Marxists and communists.

prehistory

The working week was the first theory seminar of the Institute for Social Research, previously founded by decree of the Prussian Ministry of Education on February 3, 1923 at the University of Frankfurt . The invitations and the coordination were carried out by Richard Sorge . The idea for this conference is mainly attributable to Karl Korsch . Korsch took part with his wife Hedda Korsch , Richard Sorge with Christiane Sorge.

Participants and topics

Further participants were Felix Weil , who financially supported the event as a patron, his wife Käthe Weil, Karl August Wittfogel and his wife Rose, née. Schlesinger, Friedrich Pollock , Eduard Ludwig Alexander , with wife Gertrud Alexander and child, Konstantin Zetkin , and Georg Lukács . Julian Gumperz and his future wife Hede Massing , Margarete Lissauer and her future husband, the Hungarian philosopher Béla Fogarasi , Karl Schmückle and the Japanese Marxist Fukumoto Kazuo (1894–1983) were other participants.

In terms of content, three topics were planned for the working week. Eduard Ludwig Alexander was supposed to introduce the first part “About the types of treatment for the current crisis problem”. This was followed by “On the question of methods”, taken over by Korsch and Lukács together. Third followed a block entitled “Organizational Questions of Marxist Research”, which Fogarasi introduced.

The majority of those present remained connected to the Institute for Social Research in one way or another even after the meeting.

literature

  • Susanne Alexander: Marxist working week 1923 . In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement. Vol. 27, No. 1, 1985, pp. 53-54.
  • Michael Buckmiller : The Marxist working week 1923 and the founding of the Institute for Social Research , in: Gunzelin Schmid Noerr , Willem van Reijen (ed.): Grand Hotel Abgrund. A photobiography of critical theory , Junius Verlag, Hamburg 1988, pp. 141–173.

Footnotes

  1. Jörg Später: First comes the investment, then the theory. The capital of the criticism of capitalism: Jeanette Erazo Heufelder's economic history of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research focuses on the patron Felix Weil . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of March 7, 2017, p. 10.