Jill Gordon
Department of Philosophy
[email protected]
PL 314 Karl Marx and Marxist Philosophical Thought
Syllabus and Course Schedule, Spring 2019
Texts:
(1) Marx: Selected Writings, edited by Lawrence Simon, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company
(2) Marxism 1844-1990: Origins, Betrayal Rebirth, by Roger S. Gottlieb, New York: Routledge.
(3) Several readings on the course Moodle site and some on the website, Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Purpose and Goals of the Class: Karl Marx’s thoughts and writings have had an enormous impact on the lives of a huge proportion of the world’s population. And yet, Americans know little about what he actually thought and why it is important. Americans tend to have a cartoonish image of “communism” based on political ideology and propaganda. So, the first goal of the course is (1) to familiarize students with the primary sources, an array of Marx’s writings, as well as work he composed with his co-author, Frederick Engels. Because of its enormous power, Marx’s thought spread, first, all over Europe among workers desiring fairer working conditions and more democracy in our work lives. Additionally, Marx’s work exerted a strong influence over thinkers in the early 20th century looking at the role of culture and cultural production. We will therefore also (2) become familiar with several philosophers who use Marx’s ideas to launch critiques of culture and cultural production, consumption and consumer behavior, race inequality, gender inequality, and emotional and affective types of labor. Our activities in the course will vary, and combined, they aim to develop students’ abilities to (3) read difficult texts carefully and critically; (4) articulate their understanding orally; (5) work together to present dense material clearly and precisely; (6) analyze texts in writing; (7) do philosophical research on secondary material outside of assigned readings; and (8) carry out philosophical work that is original in its analysis and synthesis of ideas in a final paper.
Daily Classroom Activities: The readings for this course will be challenging. My expectation is that your preparation for each class meeting will entail slow, methodical reading (and rereading), constructive note taking, formulating questions along the way about things that are unclear, and, ideally, filling in the gaps in your own historical understanding (see below). See the “Survival Kit” on daily preparation and class participation. For the most part, we will proceed through question and answer, so students should come prepared each day to discuss the basic ideas presented in readings as well as philosophical questions motivated by the readings. On some days I will lecture, though rarely, if at all, for the entire class period.
Some readings in this course will be clarified and better understood the greater one’s familiarity with history. I therefore encourage all students in the course to take the responsibility for understanding some of the historical and cultural background of each reading, especially during the second part of the course. I would urge all students to take the time to search out basic historical knowledge of the people and events around which the theory springs. While Wikipedia has its virtues as a rough and ready resource, I have higher expectations for those committed to scholarly pursuits. A rich source of information about Marx and Marxist philosophy, including full text versions of hundreds of writings and some biographical information, is available on the web site for the Marxists Internet Archive: www.marxists.org. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy or the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy may be helpful to you, as well. In general, reference librarians can steer you toward more reputable electronic sources.
Assignments: TBD [See my email to the class about our collective deliberations on what types of assignments best facilitate your learning and growth. I will complete this part of the syllabus after our conversation in class.]
Learning Differences: If you would like accommodations for any learning differences, I will need official notification from the Dean of Students Office. It is best if you take care of this early in the semester rather than close to our first exam or paper. I can then make the accommodations most conducive to your doing your best work for this class. Please feel free to discuss with me the particulars of your situation to the degree you are comfortable doing so; it is helpful for me to be as knowledgeable as possible in order to make the best decisions regarding the structure of assignments.
Academic Honesty and Integrity: Honesty, integrity, and personal responsibility are cornerstones of a Colby education and provide the foundation for scholarly inquiry, intellectual discourse, and an open and welcoming campus community. You are expected to demonstrate academic honesty in all aspects of this course. Academic dishonesty includes, but is not limited to: violating clearly stated rules for taking an exam or completing homework; plagiarism (including material from sources without a citation, paraphrase without attribution, and lack of quotation marks around any borrowed words); claiming another’s work or a modification of another’s work as one’s own; buying or attempting to buy papers or projects for a course; fabricating information or citations; knowingly assisting others in acts of academic dishonesty; misrepresentations to faculty within the context of a course; and submitting the same work, including an essay that you wrote, in more than one course without the permission of the instructors.
Academic dishonesty is a serious offense. Sanctions for academic dishonesty are assigned by an academic review board and may include failure on the assignment, failure in the course, or suspension or expulsion from the College. For more on recognizing and avoiding plagiarism, see the library guide: libguides.colby.edu/avoidingplagiarism I typically seek out suspected instances of academic dishonesty and pursue all available avenues for discipline. I will discuss this issue in class on several occasions, and I am happy to meet with you privately to discuss it further.
Class Readings & Schedule
Feb 12 Introduction to the course. Hegelian background. Marx & Engels. Read:
(a) Handout, “Marx: Getting Started,” on Moodle site
(b) Gottlieb, first half of Chapter 1, pp. 3-22
(c) Marx, excerpts from “The German Ideology,” (co-authored with Engels) pp. 102-104; 107-112; 129-132 and 153-156
(d) Wood, Chapter 2, “The Human Essence,” pp. 16-30, on Moodle site
Feb 19 Marx. Read:
(a) Wood, Chapter 3, “Human Production,” pp. 31-43, on Moodle site
(b) Marx, “Excerpt-Notes of 1844,” pp. 40-53
(c) Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, pp. 54-79.
Feb 26 Marx & Engels. Read:
(a) Marx, The Communist Manifesto, pp. 157-186
(b) “Preface to the Critique of Political Economy,” just the very long paragraph that begins at the bottom of p. 210 and ends at the top of p. 212
Mar 5 Marx. Read:
(a) Lenin, excerpt from State and Revolution, on Moodle site
(b) Gottlieb, second half of Chapter 1, pp. 22–38.
(c) Marx, Capital, pp. 214-255 and pp. 294-300.
Monday, March 11th Film Screening: Modern Times, 7:00 p.m. in philosophy seminar room. The film is on reserve, and you are welcome to view it on your own time before tomorrow’s discussion of it.
Mar 12 Student Led Discussion of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times
Mar19 In Marx’s (European) Wake. Read:
(a) Gottlieb, Chapter 5, pp. 109-129.
(b) Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Production.”
(c) Gramsci, excerpts from Prison Notebooks, available on line here, pp. 131-147
Mar 26 SPRING BREAK
Apr2 In Marx’s (European) Wake. Read:
(a) Horkhiemer & Adorno, “Enlightenment as Mass Deception”
(b) Marcuse, excerpts from One Dimensional Man, all of the first section, “One-Dimensional Society,” pp. 3-123, and available on Moodle site
Apr 9 In Marx’s (European) Wake. Read:
(a) Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.”
(b) Hall, “Encoding/Decoding,” pp. 90-103, on Moodle site
(c) Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the Popular,” pp. 455-66, on Moodle site
(d) Hall, “The Whites of their Eyes,” pp. 81-84, on Moodle site.
Monday, April 15th Film Screening: Do the Right Thing, 7:00 p.m. in seminar room. You are welcome to view the film on your own time before tomorrow’s class.
Apr 16 Discussion of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Guest: Margaret McFadden, Provost
Apr 23 Marxism & the “Negro” in the Early and Mid- 20th Century: Read
(a) E. Franklin Frazier, “La Bourgeoisie Noire,”
(b) W.E.B. DuBois, “Marxism and the Negro Problem,” and
(c) Ralph J. Bunch, “Marxism and the Negro Question,”
Apr 30 Materialism, Feminism, and Neoliberalism and Labor: Read
(a) Jason Read, “A Genealogy of Homo-Economicus: Neoliberalism and the Production of Subjectivity,” on Moodle site.
(b) Kathi Weeks, excerpt from The Problem with Work on Moodle site.
(c) Arlie Hochschild, excerpt from The Managed Heart on emotional labor
(d) Angela Davis, “The Approaching Obsolescence of Housework: A Working-Class Perspective,” on Moodle site.
Monday, May 6th Film Screening, Sorry to Bother You, 7:00 p.m. in seminar room. You are welcome to view the film on your own time before tomorrow’s discussion.
May 7 Student led discussion of Sorry to Bother You. Feel free to look at Jason Read’s blog entry about this film.