Marx and Marxisms

This course is an introduction to the work of Karl Marx and to some of the ways his work has been taken up across a range of disciplines, interdisciplinary fields, and political projects. We will pay particular attention to his thinking about the relation between theory and praxis, and to his notions of capital, value, money, commodity, labour, ideology, alienation, internationalism and class struggle. In addition to reading Marx’s own writings, we will also read work in postcolonial studies, feminist theory, cultural anthropology, racial capitalism, Black Studies and philosophy that engages with Marx’s thinking. In addition to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors will likely include Louis Althusser, Charisse Burden-Stelly, Frantz Fanon, Silvia Federici, Antonio Gramsci, David Harvey, C.L.R. James, Ranjana Khanna, Rosa Luxemburg, Catherine MacKinnon, Adam Smith, and Gayatri Spivak. We will examine the implications of Marxist analyses for questions of political and structural change, critiques of capitalism and analyses of its relation to racialised and gendered dynamics of power. In addition to academic texts, course materials will draw on films, news publications, and contemporary examples of political-economic challenges. Students will be evaluated based on class participation, weekly reading responses, collaborative small group and individual projects.