The undergraduates in the course have the option of writing two shorter papers or one longer paper at the end of the semester. For those choosing the two paper option, I have prepared some suggested topics, although they are free to write on a topic of their own choosing if they wish. I thought some of you might be interested in the topics I prepared for them. Here they are,
1. In the manuscript on Alienated Labour, Marx presents an
inspiring picture of the truly human character of unalienated labour by way of
contrast with the appallingly inhuman conditions of nineteenth century factory
work. No doubt that account captures
quite nicely how the folks at Apple headquarters in Cupertino feel about their
work. But humans cannot live on apps
alone, and even in the wonderful world after
the revolution someone is going to have to tend the machines and slaughter
the chickens and sew up the seams of new T-shirts and do all that other tedious
labor that does not seem quite to measure up to Marx's Romantic vision of unalienated
labor. How, if at all, might this
problem be dealt with in a socialist society and economy?
2. The development of capitalism has been
quite uneven, progressing in some countries rapidly and in other countries
quite slowly. What problems does that
fact pose for the sort of international working class movement Marx envisions
in the Manifesto?
3. Write a Marxian critique of the Occupy
Movement. Or, write a critique of Marx
from the perspective of the Occupy Movement.
Or, write critiques of both Marx and
the Occupy Movement from some other perspective. I don't care.
Just make it penetrating and interesting and original.
4. What is the difference, if any, between
mystification and good old garden-variety stupidity, ignorance, and
superstition?
5. Do some research on the concept of the fetish as it turns up in Cultural
Anthropology and write a paper on Marx's use of the term in the section of
Chapter One of CAPITAL entitled "The Fetishism of Commodities and the
Secret Thereof."
6. Choose some work of Philosophy or
Economics or Political Science or Anthropology with which you are really
familiar and do an analysis of the relationship between the linguistic
structure of the text and the structure of the reality the author is attempting
to capture. [Warning: this is super hard, and if I were in the
business of giving out brownie points, anyone taking this would get extra
brownie points just for trying. On the
other hand, it is real easy to crash and burn with this one.]
7. If you have taken a college or graduate
Economics course, analyze the difference between the sorts of questions asked
by the classical Political Economists and the questions asked by modern
neo-classical economists, with special attention to the ideological
significance of those differences.
8. And
now, the ever reliable and familiar "compare and contrast": Compare and contrast the language of the Manifesto with that of Chapter One of Capital.
With regard to the question about the fetish, you might want to direct the students to the anthropologist William Pietz's classic studies of the history of the concept. (It looks like they're finally going to be collected as a book, but it's not scheduled for publication until September). Pietz has an essay on the fetish in Marx in the volume that he edited with Emily Apter, Fetishism as Cultural Discourse.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks, John Rapko
ReplyDeleteYou describe many interesting topics, but I would probably choose to do two short papers as that would allow more dialectical interaction with the professor than one in the end. Since I like to compare what Marx thought he was doing in writing with more contemporary sources, I would want to compare what Richard Rorty argues in his contrast between the "ironist" and the "metaphysician" of final vocabularies in his book, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity with Marx's ideology-critique interpretation of fetishization in the traditional vocabularies used to distort economic reality by previous economists contrasted with his new communist-reality oriented vocabulary which clarifies the economic realities of his times, and is somehow de-mystified or sanitized of ideological contaminations.
ReplyDeleteRorty defines the ironist as 1) having "radical and continuing doubts about the vocabulary she currently uses," 2) realizes that "argument phrased in her current vocabulary can neither underwrite nor dissolve these doubts," and 3) "she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself" (Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, p 73).
In Rorty's sense, ironists are "never quite able to take themselves seriously because always aware that the terms in which they describe themselves are subject to change, thus always aware of the contingency and fragility of their final vocabularies, and thus of their selves" (p 73-4). This profile however does not seem to describe how Karl Marx spent years perfecting the philosophical and economic jargon or vocabulary (means of production, relations of production, etc.) of Capital, Volume 1 so that it would better represent economic reality and allow people to determine their fates better with a properly tuned language. Marx's followers in the communist parties of the world thought that spreading and maintaining this highly tweaked and nuanced vocabulary of Capital, Vol. 1 would raise the self-consciousness of working classes and put them in a better position to change the world with this new (magically?) politicized vocabulary developed with Marx's non-neutral or non-purity of heart hermeneutical methods (interpreting history from economic victims' perspectives).
Rorty continues: "The convert to Christianity or Marxism is made to feel that being redescribed amounts to an uncovering of his true self or his real interests. He comes to believe that his acceptance of that redescription seals an alliance with a power mightier than any of those which have oppressed him in the past. The metaphysician, in short, thinks that there is a connection between redescription and power, and that the right redescription can make us free. The ironist offers no similar assurance. She has to say that our chances of freedom depend on historical contingencies which are only occasionally influenced by our self-redescriptions" (p 90).
Marx's 19th century literary irony and self-consciousness may not have been as wise to the world as Rorty's pragmatism.
Perhaps just as there exist a micro and macro economics, Marxism ought to be grounded in microsciology as people such as Collins have done for Durkheim and Weber. It says something that he made no attempt gibing Marx with people like Goffman. Be that as it may
ReplyDeleteIt might be helpful- study the interaction rituals of alienation or false consciousness etc, compare violence in various contexts, varying on their relation to revolution and oppression.
It might be interesting, it might have been done
I'd be especially interested in your/others' thoughts on #4.
ReplyDeleteMy initial thought (which might have little to do with Marx!) is: Although mystification definitely seems to have an ethical significance that stupidity and the rest do not (think of the difference between self-deception, or self-serving rationalization, and the mere "brain fart"), there is, e.g. in Descartes, a strange and philosophically interesting notion that all intellectual error is rooted in some failure or corruption of will. It'd be cool IMO to explore the basis and history of that.
Well, I hope the papers are as interesting as these comments. We shall see.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteIf I had an exam with questions as interesting as these in my undergraduate days, I can't recall it. I had only one professor that I can recall, and that was in law school, whose first course led me to take everything she offered after that. It actually determined my later career. I suspect that you were one of those.
...someone is going to have to tend the machines and slaughter the chickens and sew up the seams of new T-shirts and do all that other tedious labor that does not seem quite to measure up to Marx's Romantic vision of unalienated labor.
ReplyDeleteSince hierarchy is a given, the question then becomes how we populate that hierarchy. This article mentions the contrast between a caste hierarchy and a merit-based hierarchy:
Equality of Opportunity
Equality of opportunity is a political ideal that is opposed to caste hierarchy but not to hierarchy per se. The background assumption is that a society contains a hierarchy of more and less desirable, superior and inferior positions. Or there may be several such hierarchies. In a caste society, the assignment of individuals to places in the social hierarchy is fixed by birth. The child acquires the social status of his or her parents at least if their union is socially sanctioned. Social mobility may be possible in a caste society, but the process whereby one is admitted to a different level of the hierarchy is open only to some individuals depending on their initial ascriptive social status. In contrast, when equality of opportunity prevails, the assignment of individuals to places in the social hierarchy is determined by some form of competitive process, and all members of society are eligible to compete on equal terms. Different conceptions of equality of opportunity construe this idea of competing on equal terms variously.
source: Equality of Opportunity - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
4 is a great question here in Chile after two weeks ago people voted 62% to reject a new constitution which increased social rights for common people, universal healthcare system, better pension system, the right to housing, etc.
ReplyDeletePost plebiscite a debate has arised on the left. If one says that common people voted to reject the new constitution out of stupidity and ignorance, you'll be accused of classism and snobbism. On the other hand, if you claim that they were mystified by fakenews and rightwing media coverage, you're also calling into doubt the wisdom of the masses and thus, can be accused of classism and elitism too.
Some have dreamed up theories of how the masses saw through the weaknesses of the draft proposal and that it was rejected because it was a sell-out, not as radical as the masses expected.
Who knows? What makes things look worse in this sense is that one of the few comunas (Chile is divided into comunas) that voted in favor of the constitution is Ñuñoa, which
is our equivalent of, say, Berkeley, California, alternative, educated, fairly well-to-do although not super-rich, a bit woke, etc.
Great topics professor! I always found the phrase 'compare and contrast' redundant. ;)
ReplyDeleteDebunk the labor theory of value. Kind of rudimentary, but it's an undergraduate paper. Fine, three arguments, debunking the labor theory of value.
ReplyDelete'do an analysis of the relationship between the linguistic structure of the text and the structure of the reality the author is attempting to capture. [Warning: this is super hard,..'
ReplyDeleteWage labor has long been compared to slavery. As a result, the term "wage slavery" is often utilized as a pejorative for wage labor. But as it turns out, similarly, advocates of slavery proceeded to argue persuasively that wage slavery was actually worse than chattel slavery. There are slavery apologists like George Fitzhugh, who attracted both fame and infamy when he published two sociological tracts for the South. Note his second book, Cannibals All! (1857). Sociology for the South is the first known English-language book to include the term "sociology" in its title. Fitzhugh differed from nearly all of his southern contemporaries by advocating a slavery that crossed racial boundaries. Apparently, Fitzhugh's beliefs were most heavily influenced by Thomas Carlyle. Anyways, he argued that the transition away from feudalism and the adoption of liberal values like freedom and equality had been detrimental to workers and to society as a whole. Thus: 'Liberty and equality are new things under the sun. The free states of antiquity abounded with slaves. ..' And: 'Every social structure must have its substratum. In free society this substratum, the weak, poor and ignorant, is borne down upon and oppressed with continually increasing weight by all above..Free laborers are little better than trespassers on this earth given by God to all mankind.'
I am amused that he sympathized with socialist critiques of liberal free market economies. But, argued that reverting to an older feudal or pre-feudal social model through the expansion of slavery was a more effective means to the end of addressing the destitution caused by capitalism, and that proposals by socialists were untested and went against human nature. Fitzhugh's contempt for wage labor and laissez-faire capitalism are themes which dominated his Failure of Free Society and Cannibals All! The results of free labor alienated the working class and therefore, produced movements for socialism, abolitionism, and feminism. Many of Fitzhugh's ideas were radical and I mean, by the standards of his Antebellum contemporaries!
Perhaps this is a bit much to take on, what draws me to it is the *consistent and sophisticated* aspect, though this is a spokesman of course of a cause that was overwhelmed in military disaster and of an order that was leveled by revolutionary action. Thus, the sensational, triumph of the system that this guy opposed, a triumph that followed hard upon the collapse of the order he championed. Here indeed, if we stick to 'temporary' triumph, then it's really an economy of laissez faire capitalism, an ethic of social Darwinism, and a rationalistic individualism of a highly competitive and atomized sort. Temporary, but sensational.
Fundamental to his critique of free society and his defense of slavery was an extreme form of the labor theory of value, which he had absorbed, he said, from the socialists.
ReplyDeleteWhile Fitzhugh's cause of slavery was defeated, laissez-faire capitalism and individualism did not really triumph in the South. What triumphed, for lack of a better word, after the interlude of Reconstruction, was the system of racial apartheid known as Jim Crow.
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