MARX AND MARXISMGV4G7

Lent Term 2012-2013

Summary:

The course is an advanced level course providing the opportunity to read canonical texts in the history of Marxism and engage with the more recent normative literature related to these texts. In the first half of the course we will cover some key issues in the study of Marxism such as the materialist conception of history, the idea of class and class struggle, the role of the state, the analysis of exploitation, the defence of revolution, the role of the party. In the second half we will cover historical developments of Marxism, consider how fundamental concepts examined in the first part are deployed in the course of Marxism’s historical development, assess and compare approaches to each other and examine their contribution to the further development of Marxist studies as well as their contemporary relevance. The course should be of interest to MSc students taking existing courses on liberalism and justice but also to students in Law, IR, Sociology, and International History. It will introduce to the thought of authors that are often referred to in a range of literatures and will provide the opportunity to read original texts and engage with scholarly controversies (both historical and normative) generated by these texts.

Learning outcomes:

At the end of the course students will be expected to be familiar with the key concepts in the study of Marx and Marxism, engage critically with them, relate debates and authors with one another, evaluate their arguments and establish links with other key thinkers in the history of political thought.

Teaching method:

The course consists of a combination of lectures and seminars, the lectures will be introduced by the teacher but conducted with the help of student interventions, and will aim at providing basic

orientation with the readings for each week. Each set of readings includes an introductory reading and required readings. The latter consist of primary literature and secondary literature exploring the primary texts. Seminars will be student-led and consist in more detailed critical engagement with particular questions raised in the readings, analysis of case studies, and debates in class. There will be one formative essay of roughly 2000 words and one marked essay of roughly 3000 words to be submitted at the end of the course. Written feedback will be provided within one or two weeks of submission.

General readings:

Primary

McLellan, D. (2000), Karl Marx: Selected Writings, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Introductory

Elster, Jon, An Introduction to Karl Marx (Cambridge: CUP, 1986).

Wolff, Jonathan, Why Read Marx Today? (Oxford: OUP 2002).

Historical

McLellan, David. Marxism after Marx. 4th ed. ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, ch. 3, 6 and 7.

Kolakowski, L. (1978), Main Currents of Marxism, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Other

Roemer, J. (ed.) (1986), Analytical Marxism, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Online

www.marxists.org – This is a very useful website which contains most of the primary texts mentioned in the reading list.

Timetable: Thursday: 9-10 (lectures), Thursday 11-12 (Seminar 2), Friday 9-10 (Seminar 1).

Office hours: Wednesday 11-1 (drop in or by appointment), CON 3.19.

PART I: FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS

Week 1: The materialist conception of history

INTRODUCTORY

Wolff, Jonathan, Why Read Marx Today? (Oxford: OUP 2002), ch. 2 and pp. 21-8, 109-113.

ESSENTIAL

From: McLellan, D. (2000), Karl Marx: Selected Writings, cit. above.

• German Ideology

• Letter to Annenkov

• Grundrisse

• Preface to a Critique of Political Economy.

Cohen, G.A., ‘Forces and Relations of Production’, in Analytical Marxism, cit. above, ch. 1.

Wright, Erik Olin and Levine, Andrew, 'Rationality and Class Struggle', New Left Review 123 (1980); reprinted in Alex Callinicos ed., Marxist Theory (CUP, 1989).

Week 2: Economics and exploitation

INTRODUCTORY

Elster, Jon, An Introduction to Karl Marx (Cambridge: CUP, 1986), chs. 4 and 5.

ESSENTIAL

From: McLellan, D. (2000), Karl Marx: Selected Writings, cited above.

• Capital vol. I

• Results

Cohen, Gerald A. "The Labor Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation." Philosophy & Public Affairs 8, no. 4 (1979): 338-60.

Roemer, John E. "Property Relations Vs. Surplus Value in Marxian Exploitation." Philosophy and Public Affairs 11, no. 4 (1982): 281-313.

Reiman, Jeffrey. "Exploitation, Force, and the Moral Assessment of Capitalism: Thoughts on Roemer and Cohen " Philosophy and Public Affairs 16, no. 1 (1987): 3-41.

Week 3: Marxism and justice

INTRODUCTORY

Wolff, Jonathan, Why Read Marx Today? (Oxford: OUP 2002), pp. 28-40, 66-82, 113-118

ESSENTIAL

From McLellan, D. (2000), Karl Marx: Selected Writings, cited above.

• The Communist Manifesto

• Wage-Labour and Capital

• Address to the Central Committee of the Communist League

• Critique of the Gotha Programme

Geras, Norman, ‘The Controversy about Marx and Justice’, in his Literature Of Revolution (1985), ch.1 or in New Left Review, 150 (1985).

Wood, Allen, Karl Marx (London Routledge, 2004), chs. 9 and 16.

Husami, Z., ‘Marx on Distributive Justice’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1978.

Week 4: Freedom, alienation and the role of ideology

INTRODUCTORY

Wood, Allen, Karl Marx (London Routledge, 2004), chs. 1 and 2.

ESSENTIAL

From McLellan, D. (2000), Karl Marx: Selected Writings, cited above.

• Towards a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction

• Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

• Grundrisse

• Theses on Feuerbach

Leopold, David, The Young Karl Marx: German Philosophy, Modern Politics, and Human Flourishing (CUP, 2007), ch. 4, esp. pp. 223ff.

Cohen, G.A., ‘The Dialectic of Labour in Marx’, in his History, Labour and Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), ch. 10; an earlier version appeared in Philosophy and Public Affairs 3, 3 (1974), pp. 235-61.

Rosen, Michael, On Voluntary Servitude (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), ch. 6.

Week 5: Marx’s theory of the state, social classes and role of the party

INTRODUCTORY

Elster, Jon, An Introduction to Karl Marx (Cambridge: CUP, 1986), chs. 7 and 8.

ESSENTIAL

From From McLellan, D. (2000), Karl Marx: Selected Writings, cited above.

• The Class Struggles in France• The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte• The Civil War in France• Articles for the Neue Reinische Zeitung• Circular letter

(NB. other primary texts covered in previous weeks will also be relevant to this session)

Miliband, Ralph, ‘Marx and the State’, Socialist Register 1965; reprinted in Tom Bottomore ed., Karl Marx (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979) and in Tom Bottomore ed., Modern Interpretations of Marx (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981).

Gilbert, Alan, 'Political Philosophy: Marx and Radical Democracy', in Terrell Carver ed., The Cambridge Companion to Marx (CUP, 1991).

PART II: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENTS

Week 6: The revisionist controversy and the rise of social democracy

INTRODUCTORY

Berman, Sheri. The Primacy of Politics : Social Democracy and the Making of Europe's Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, ch. 2.

ESSENTIAL

The Preconditions of Socialism (1899) The Preconditions of Socialism. Edited by H. Tudor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993 (selected passages).

Social Reform or Revolution? (1899) reprinted in various collections, e.g.: Tudor and Tudor eds., Marxism and Social Democracy (CUP, 1988), pp. 249-275; and in Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson eds., The Rosa Luxemburg Reader (Monthly Review Press, 2004).

Week 8: The contribution of Austro-Marxism

INTRODUCTORY

Kolakowski, L. (1978), Main Currents of Marxism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, book II, ch. 12.

ESSENTIAL

Bottomore T., Goode (eds.), Austro-Marxism: Texts, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978 (selected chapters TBC).

Van der Linden, H. Kantian Ethics and Socialism, Indiana: Hackett Publishing, Appendix: A historical note on Kantian ethical socialism.

Week 7: Revolutionary socialism

INTRODUCTORY

McLellan, David. Marxism after Marx. 4th ed. ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, ch. 3, 6 and 7.

ESSENTIAL

From From McLellan, D. (2000), Karl Marx: Selected Writings, cited above.

• Inaugural Address to the First International• Letter to Vera Zasulich• Preface to the Russian Edition of the Communist Manifesto

(NB: Other texts from Marx covered in previous weeks will also be relevant to this session).

From V. I. Lenin, Essential Works, ed. by H. Christman, New York, Bantam Books.

• What is to be done?

• The State and Revolution

From Rosa Luxemburg Reader (Monthly Review Press, 2004).

• The Mass Strike, the Political Party and the Trade Unions.

• The Russian Revolution.

• Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy [NB. published by subsequent editors under the title 'Leninism or Marxism?']

Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution & Results and Prospects, New York: Merit Publishers, 1969 (selected pages).

or

Three concepts of the Russian Revolution (1939) available at

http://www.internationalist.org/three.html

Blackburn, Robin ed., Revolution and Class Struggle (Fontana, 1977), esp. Ernest Mandel, 'The Leninist Theory of Organisation' and Lucio Colletti, 'Lenin’s State and Revolution' 249-263.

Week 10: Marxism and culture: the contribution of Antonio Gramsci

INTRODUCTORY:

Kolakowski, L. (1978), Main Currents of Marxism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, part Book III, ch. 6.

ESSENTIAL

From Gramsci, Antonio Selections From The Prison Notebooks, Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith eds. (Lawrence & Wishart, 19711).

• The Intellectuals• Notes on Italian History• The Modern Prince• State and Civil Society

Femia, Joseph, Gramsci’s Political Thought: Hegemony, Consciousness and the Revolutionary Process (Oxford, 1981), chs. 1, 3, 6-7.

Laclau E. and Mouffe C., Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, London: Verso, 2001 (selected chapters TBC).

Week 10: Marxism and globalization

INTRODUCTORY

Brewer, A. Marxist theories of imperialism: a critical survey, London: Routledge 1990, Introduction.

ESSENTIAL

Stedman Jones, G. Radicalism and the extra-European world: the case of Karl Marx in Victorian Visions of Global Order, ed. by D. Belll, Cambridge, CUP, 2007, ch. 9.

Selected passages from the following (TBC).

R. Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital – see Reader cited above.

Hilferding, Finance Capital

Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy.

V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

I, Wallerstein, The Modern World System

Baran, The Political Economy of Growth