SOCY 691: Political Economy
Capitalism in the 21st Century
SOCY 691-901 (31758)
Advanced Topics: Political Economy
Tuesday 4pm to 6:40pm
Sociology Conference Room (203)
Course website: http://rampages.us/goldstein
Instructor:
Jesse Goldstein
Email: jgoldstein2@vcu.edu
Office: 205, 2nd Floor Founders Hall
Office Hours: Wednesday 3pm to 5pm (or by appointment)
Course Overview
While we are all acquainted with capitalism in numerous ways throughout our
everyday lives, its not always that clear what exactly this means, what
“capitalism” is, and how deeply affected we are by this social logic. The goal of
this advanced seminar course is to explore the many ways in which capitalism
patterns political, cultural and economic social relationships.
What the course covers
Unfortunately, one semester is not nearly enough time to cover such an
expansive topic. Our goal will be threefold: first to cover some of the basics of the
historical materialist analysis of capitalism – and to gain appreciation for
historical materialism as a method of analysis. This will involve reading a
combination of classic texts and more recent commentaries, in order to build a
historically situated, theoretically rigorous understanding of what capitalism is.
Second, we will review the history of capitalism, with specific focus on the
factors that contributed to the global financial crisis and on the historically
unique period of ‘neoliberalism’ that has prevailed over the past 40 years. Third,
we will explore a selection of more recent texts that are at the forefront of critical
social scientific investigations of capitalism. I want you to leave this class with an
appreciation of the conversations and debates that scholars are currently
grappling with, and to see how historical materialism (as method) along with a
nuanced understanding of how capitalism works, can provide the basis for
powerful interventions into the political, economic and cultural issues of the day.
Goals for the course
My goal for this course, as with every course I teach, is to create a convivial,
engaged learning environment with my fellow learners (you). I want to provide
a space for us all to grow as a community of learners, and for each of you to
individually grow as scholars, advocates and educators. You should leave this
course with a rich understanding of the complex social, economic and political
dimensions of capitalism, as well as a better understanding of how, as
sociologists, we are well situated to offer a critical – and constructive – analysis.
Readings
There are a few books I will be asking you to acquire on your own. Other
readings will be available via the course website. The books you should purchase
or otherwise acquire are:
Miranda Joseph – Debt to Society (Minnesota, 2014)
David Harvey – 17 Contradictions and the Crisis of Capitalism (Oxford, 2014)
Jacobin Magazine #17 – Ours to Master (you can purchase it at
www.jacobinmag.com/storeissues/)
C. Wright Mills – White Collar (Oxford, 1951)
David McNally – Global Slump (PM, 2011)
Karl Marx – Capital, Vol 1 (Penguin Classics, 1990)*
Sylvia Federici – Caliban and the Witch (Autonomedia, 2004)
Books we will be reading large parts of (I will make PDF available) but if you’re
interested you should consider purchasing.
Ellen Wood – The Origins of Capitalism, a longer view (Verso, 2002)
Robert Heilbroner – The Nature and Logic of Capitalism (Norton, 1985)
Henri Lefebvre – Rhythmanalysis (Bloomsbury, 2013)
David Graeber – The Utopia of Rules (Melville House, 2015)
Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiappello – The New Spirit of Capitalism (Verso, 2011)
Karl Marx – Capital, Vol 3 (Penguin)
Some of these books are more expensive. Others are available cheap and used. If
you can afford it and are into this subject, then buy them by all means. But if you
don’t want to spend the money, I would recommend organizing amongst
yourselves to borrow my copy or a classmate’s copy and make a PDF of it that
can be shared.
Assignments and Grades
There are 3 assignment clusters in this class – you will receive a letter grade for
each of them, and your final grade is determined accordingly:
A = AAA, AAB
B = BBA, ABC, BBB
C = BBC, ACC
F = BCC, CCC
Cluster 1: Participation
In-class participation – 30%
Punctuality and Attendance – 10%
Response Papers – 40%
Film Review – 20%
Reading Response Papers
Each week, I’d like you to write a short response to the readings for that week.
This response should never be more than one page, single-spaced. It is possible
that I will ask for something specific in the response papers, and if so I will tell
you what that is the week prior. Otherwise this is an open-ended assignment,
meant to help you engage with the readings and be more prepared for a
productive class discussion. Response papers can focus on a subset of the week’s
readings, on a particular question, concern, disagreement or analysis, or even
relating something in the readings to something else you are thinking about.
Response papers should be handed in at the beginning of class (hard copy) or
emailed to me by 9am the morning of class, with “SOCY691 RESPONSE” as the
subject heading. There are 15 weeks of class. I expect at least 6 response papers
from each of you.
In-class participation
This is a very subjective measure of your contribution to our weekly classes. Are
you coming to class having thought through the week’s reading? Are you adding
constructive questions and insights to our discussion? Are you treating your
fellow classmates (and me!) with respect? While I know that some people are less
interested in speaking up during a small seminar, and other people are very
comfortable jumping right in – in this class we are going to aim for balance. That
means stepping up and stepping back – some people may need to bite their
tongue and wait for others to gather their thoughts. Other people may have to
really push themselves to take a personal risk and find a way to enter into the
conversation. But most importantly, you all need to come to class prepared –
having done the reading. Also please keep this in mind: while tangents are
always fun and exciting – I am assigning specific materials for us all to read so
we have a shared basis for our discussions.
Film Review
I want you to watch a movie that provides a critical analysis of capitalism on
your own, at some point during the semester (I will provide a lengthy list of
suggestions, and I want to make sure none of you choose the same movie). Then,
I want you to post a very short film synopsis and review on our online journal
site. You will offer a brief explanation of what the movie is about, and then
explain what issues it specifically tackles. Think of this as a resource guide for
teachers and students – you want to provide enough information that someone
who is thinking about assigning movies in a class like mine can quickly get a
sense of whether or not this movie is a good fit. Your blog post will need to be
submitted to the editorial board for review, but you will only be expected to
make revisions on your own if there are major problems (otherwise the editorial
board will just ask you to approve the edits that they make). Each review post
needs to include:
-a link to the movie’s IMDB entry
-a brief plot summary
-some ideas of the topics/themes related to capitalism that it covers
-embedded video (from youtube or equivalent) with scenes and/or movie
trailer
-at least one still image (movie poster maybe?) that can be used as the
main image for links to the post
NOTE: Editorial board members also need to complete this assignment
Punctuality and Attendance
This aspect of the grade will be determined by your attendance and your
punctuality on assignments.
Cluster 2: Literature Review and Analysis
Initial draft bibliography – 30%
Summary and Analysis essay with final bibliography – 50%
Class discussion and facilitation – 20%
This set of assignments will ask you to take on the role of a researcher by
conducting an extensive literature review on one focused topic. Early in the
semester we will mutually agree on a topic – I will provide some suggestions,
and you can either pick one of them or propose your own – but ultimately your
topic needs to be approved by me before you begin.
Initial draft bibliography:
The first step of the assignment will be to produce an initial bibliography. This
document must be professionally formatted – using a consistent citation style –
well organized and relatively in depth. I expect a majority of the material to be
recently (last 15 years) published, as the goal for this assignment is to understand
where the cutting edge of academic debate currently resides. We will spend
some time in class discussing research tactics – in order to succeed you will need
to go beyond simply plugging in a few keywords into academic databases.
Summary and Analysis essay with final bibliography
You will produce a final bibliography (responding to feedback and suggestions
given on your draft) accompanied by a 2000-3000 research brief/literature
review. In this document you will present a well organized narrative that
explains the contours of debate. What are the key issues? The primary points of
agreement and disagreement amongst authors? Main foci of analysis?
Theoretical perspectives? In order to succeed in this assignment, you are going to
have to strategically read, skim and browse the material that you have collected.
This may require you to request materials from inter-library loan – and if so, it is
your responsibility to plan ahead (ILL can take a week or two). You will not be
able to read everything – but you will have to read enough of some things so that
you have a sense of what’s going on. As with the first draft, this document must
be meticulously formatted – with a properly organized bibliography as well as in
line citations – every entry in the bibliography should appear in an inline citation
at least once).
Class discussion and facilitation
Each of you will be doing research on a topic that directly relates to our class.
Your research will be scheduled to be discussed during a specific course session
– which you will know at the beginning of the term. Three days prior to this
session your Research Brief will be due. You will distribute it to the class so that
everyone can read it over prior to our meeting. During this course session you
will not be expected to give a formal presentation – but you should be prepared
to share what you’ve learned and to move the class discussion in constructive
ways. I essentially expect you to be an extra-active participant for this session of
the class.
Cluster 3: Online Journal
Successful pitch – 10%
Deadlines met – 10%
Final submission (or editorial work) – 50%
Peer Reviews – 30%
For this third project, we will create an online journal – a semi-academic, semipopular site for critical analysis and commentary. Two or three students will
serve, along with me, as the editorial board. Everyone else will be expected to
publish one essay (1000 to 2500 words) in our journal.
Pitch:
The first step will be pitching a story idea to the editorial board. Your pitch does
not have to be long, but just enough to give the board a sense of what you’re
thinking of writing. These essays will need to be focused on a specific object of
analysis and critique. That could mean challenging and dissecting something
that another person has written, or examining a specific current event from a
critical perspective. All essays will have to be connected to the subject matter of
our course – not just in content, but most importantly in our mode of analysis.
Initial Submission and Peer Review:
After your pitch is accepted, you will then need to write an initial draft. Once
submitted to the editorial board, we will then send this draft out to two of your
fellow classmates for peer review. That means that each of you will be expected
to peer review two essays along with writing your own. We will look at peer
review reports from an academic context so you can see what they look like, and
talk about ways to make the reviews constructive. As part of your review – you
will decide whether the essay needs to be ‘revised and resubmitted’ ‘accepted
with minor revisions’ or ‘accepted’.
The editorial collective will build a rampages site to host our online journal,
coordinate some basic social media outreach and promotion, and basically will
make sure that we only put out the highest quality work. This means that not
everyone’s essays will necessarily get published during the semester. If at the
end of the semester you have only made it through the ‘revise and resubmit’ or
‘accept with minor revisions’ stages – you will be graded on this work, but it will
not be published until it is finished.
Grades
You can get an A, B, C, or F in each of the three assignment clusters. As I
mentioned above, your final grade will be determined based on these three
grades:
A = AAA, AAB
B = BBA, ABC, BBB
C = BBC, ACC
F = BCC, CCC
Here is a clearer idea of how I am distinguishing between A, B, C and F level
work:
F: To fail the assignment you have to be blatantly disrespectful, of me and of
your fellow classmates. This would mean some combination of the following: not
completing a majority of the assignment, not showing up to class, not
participating in discussions in a constructive manner, creating a hostile
environment in class that makes others feel uncomfortable or unable to safely
express their points of view. I am not anticipating giving any F’s – please don’t
disappoint.
C: If you get a C it will mean some combination of the following: you have
missed a portion of the assignment, you missed more than two classes, you did
not seem to comprehend the readings or the discussions about the readings, you
were unable to produce work that demonstrated any sophisticated engagement
with the material, you were unable to constructively contribute to course
discussions (which may also mean that you created a hostile environment that
makes others feel uncomfortable or unable to safely express their points of view).
In terms of the Online Journal assignment – if your piece only makes it to the
‘revise and resubmit’ stage – there is a good chance you will get a C for that
assignment.
B: This is the average grade that you should expect for this course. If you do all
of the assignments, regularly attend class, regularly contribute to discussions in
class, and if you do all this while demonstrating a somewhat nuanced, somewhat
engaged, somewhat critical understanding of the material that we are covering,
than you will get at least a B. This may sound a bit fuzzy – but keep this in mind.
You have all completed your undergraduate education and then chosen to
continue on with an MA degree – to me this means that you are all at least as
smart, competent and interested as my best undergraduate students and I will
therefore expect contributions that are at least as impressive as my best
undergraduates. In other words, if you do A-level undergraduate work, you’ll
probably end up with a solid B.
A: To get an A in this course you need to be critically engaged in all (or at least
most) aspects of the course. That means regular attendance and active – yet
constructive- class participation (in other words – you don’t dominate the
conversation, but you also don’t check out completely). It means I see you taking
risks with your work – trying out new ideas, pushing me and your classmates to
think and see in new ways. It means that I see you comprehending our readings,
challenging them, drawing connections and implications from them, and
articulating your analysis to the rest of us – through discussion and assignments.
It means I see you developing your own critical analysis of the material we are
addressing – not simply parroting me or another standard position that is seen to
be safe or appropriate. In other words (to take one example) you can’t just say
things like “capitalism is totally ruining our lives” you have to make it clear that
you understand what a statement like that actually means, that you can dig
deeper, below the surface of generic claims and tease out the nuance in
arguments and ideas – this is what will make you a top-rate scholar, and this is
what will get you an A in this course.
Attendance
I will take it for granted that you all want to be in this program, and in this class,
and that you will therefore attend class regularly. One absence over the course of
the semester is acceptable. Two absences will jeopardize your ability to get an A.
Three absences will jeopardize your ability to get a B. More than three absences
will likely result in an email from me to see what’s going on and whether you
would prefer to withdraw from the course.
Course Schedule
Below is the tentative framework for readings and assignments. I say tentative
because I reserve the right to make adjustments to this schedule. If it seems like
the class is interested in one tangent more than another, if readings are too easy
or too difficult (or too long) I will do my best to make the necessary
modifications.
WEEK 1: Tuesday August 25
Introduction to the class
In Class Movie: TBD
WEEK 2: Tuesday September 1
Heilbroner – Ch2, Ch3, Ch5
Marx (Capital Vol1): Ch10 (341-4; 349-59; 364-8; 375-7; 380-3); Ch1 (pts1, 2, 4);
Ch6; Ch7 (291-2); Ch12
WEEK 3: Tuesday September 8
Harvey – Intro and Part 1 (pp1-90)
Lefebvre – Intro through Ch6 (pp3-56)
WEEK 4: Tuesday September 15h
Marx (Capital Vol1) – Ch26-28
Wood – Ch4-7 (pp73-165)
Nancy Fraser. 2014. Beyond Marx’s Hidden Abode. NLR 86 (55-72).
WEEK 5: Tuesday September 22 – NO CLASS
WEEK 6: Tuesday September 29
Federici – Ch2-4 (pp61-218)
Movie: TBD
WEEK 7: Tuesday October 6
George Caffentzis. “On the Notion of a Crisis of Social Reproduction.” In Women,
Development and Labor of Reproduction eds M. Dalla Costa and G.F. Dalla Costa.
New Jersey: Africa World Press. (pp153-188)
Geoffrey Weber. “EP Thompson’s Romantic Marxism.” Jacobin (July, 2015)
Access at: www.jacobinmag.com/2015/07/making-english-working-classluddites-romanticism/
David Camfield. 2004. “Re-Orienting Class Analysis: Working Classes as
Historical Formations.” Science and Society 68.4: 421-446.
EP Thompson. 1993. “Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism.” In
Customs in Common (New York: New Press): 352-403.
WEEK 8: Tuesday October 13
Movie: Hot Girls Wanted
3.3 Emma Goldman. The tragedy of woman’s emancipation
4.4 Alexandra Kollantai. Communism and the Family
10.4 Combahee River Collective. A Black Feminist Statement
10.5 Audre Lord. Age, Race, Class and Sex
13.1 Wally Seccombe. The Housewife and her labour under capitalism
15.2 Sylvia Federici. Why sexuality is work.
15.3 Audre Lord. Uses of the Erotic
16.1 Heidi Hartmann. The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism
16.2 Iris Marion Young. Beyond the Unhappy Marriage.
This weeks readings are all from the Revolutionary Feminist Reader (2015).
Communist Research Cluster
https://communistresearchcluster.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/crc_ci_vol_thr
ee_1_1.pdf
WEEK 9: Tuesday October 20
Harvey – Ch8, Ch9 (pp91-130)
Marx (Capital Vol1) – Ch13 (439 – 1st full paragraph; 443-4; 447-54); Ch16 (643-7;
650-1); Ch25 (762-6; 771-2; 777-784; 788-790; 792-794)
Marx (Capital Vol3) – Ch 23 (503-14); Ch24; Ch27;
Jacobin #17: Frase, Heideman
WEEK 10: Tuesday October 27
Mills – Intro, Ch1-CH10 (1-238)
WEEK 11: Tuesday November 3
Boltanski and Chiappello – Intro, Ch1, Ch2 (pp1-164)
Gina Neff, Elizabeth Wissinger and Sharon Zukin. 2005. Entrepreneurial Labor
Among Cultural Producers: “Cool” Jobs in “Hot” Industries. Social Semiotics
15.3: 307-34
Christopher Newfield. 2010. The Structure and Silence of the Cognitariat.
Eurozine. Access: www.eurozine.com/articles/2010-02-05-newfield-en.html
WEEK 12: Tuesday November 10
Harvey – Ch10, Ch11 (pp 131-163)
McNally – Intro through Ch5 (pp1-145)
WEEK 13: Tuesday November 17
Movie: TBD
Joseph – Debt to Society
WEEK 14: Tuesday November 24
Marx (Grundrisse) – Fragment on Machines (690-700; 703-706; 711-2)
Graeber – Utopia of Rules: Ch2 Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit
Jacobin Magazine Issue #17 (Read articles by: Levine, Aschoff, Erickson, Rundle)
WEEK 15: Tuesday December 1
Jacobin #17: Smith, Medina
Paul Mason. The End of Capitalism has Begun. Guardian:
www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalismbegun
Murray Bookchin. 1986. “Towards a Liberatory Technology” in Post-Scarcity
Anarchism.
Lewis Mumford. 1962 [1934]. Excerpts TBD in Technics and Civilization
E.F. Schumacher “Buddhist Economics” and Langdon Winner “The Political
Philosophy of Alternative Technology” in Technology and the Future (1986)
WEEK 16: Tuesday December 8 (Final exam period)
Movie: TBD
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*Content Last updated July 2014