Questioning Capitalism Reading Schedule (tentative)
June 20th (4 readings, 55pp)
Angela Y. Davis, “From the Prison of Slavery to the Slavery of Prison: Frederick Douglass and the Convict
Lease System,” Angela Y. Davis Reader (New York: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), 74 – 95.
Eric Williams, Capitalism & Slavery
Preface and Chap 1: The Origin of Negro Slavery (3 – 29)
Chap 7: The Development of British Capitalism, 1783 – 1833 (126 – 134).
June 27th (8 readings, 59pp)
“Constitution of the Lowell Factory Girls Association” (1836). Available online at
http://library.uml.edu/clh/all/doc01.htm
Thomas Dublin, “Women, Work, and Protest in the Early Lowell Mills: 'The Oppressing Hand of Avarice
Would Have Us',” Labor History 16 (1976), pp. 99-116. (Online version available at:
http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/whole_cloth/u2ei/u2materials/dublin.html
Clara Zetkin, “Social-Democracy and Women’s Suffrage,” (1906) (22pp)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1906/xx/womansuffrage.htm
Angela Y. Davis, “Foreword,” in Selected Writings of Clara Zetkin (9 – 16).
Clara Zetkin, Selected Writings of Clara Zetkin
“Women’s Work and the Trade Unions,” (51 – 59)
“What the Women Owe to Karl Marx,” (93 – 97)
“To the Socialist Women of All Countries,” (114 – 116)
July 4th (NO COURSE?)
July 11th (3 readings, 100pp)
Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States
Chapter 11: “Robber Barons and Rebels,” (253 – 296)
Chapter 12: “The Empire and the People,” (297 – 320)
Chapter 13: “The Socialist Challenge,” (321 – 358)
July 18th (2 readings, 58pp)
1
Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States.
Chapter 2: “From Household Manufacturers to Wage Work,” (20 – 44)
Chapter 7: “Protective Labor Legislation,” (180 – 214)
July 25th (2 readings, 50pp)
Eugene D. Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in
the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (1983).
Chapter 7: “The Political Crisis of Social History: Class Struggle as Subject and Object,” 179 – 212.
Chapter 9: “Yeomen Farmers in a Slaveholders’ Democracy,” 249 – 266.
August 1st
Dorothy Day, “Distributism vs. Capitalism,” The Catholic Worker, October 1954, 1-6.
http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/daytext.cfm?TextID=175
Nicos Poulantzas, “The Problem of the Capitalist State,” New Left Review (1969) PDF:
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/SOC621/ProblemOfTheCapitalistState.pdf
Sean Wilentz, “Against Exceptionalism: Class Consciousness and the American Labor Movement, 17901920,” International Labor and Working Class History Vol. 26 (1984), pp. 1-24.
August 8th (7 readings, 49 pp)
Malcolm X, February 1965: The Final Speeches, “The Oppressed Masses of the World Cry Out for Action
Against the Common Oppressor,” 46 – 64.
Huey Newton, The Huey Newton Reader.
“The Founding of the Black Panther Party,” 49 – 52
“On the Peace Movement: August 15th, 1969,” 150 – 153.
“The Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements: August 15th, 1970,” 157 – 159.
“Black Capitalism Re-analyzed I: June 5th, 1971, “ 227 – 233.
“Uniting Against a Common Enemy: October 23rd, 1971,” 234 – 240.
“On Pan-Africanism or Communism: December 1st, 1972,” 248 – 255.
August 8th (15pp
Angela Y. Davis and Fania Davis, “Slaying the Dream: The Black Family and the Crisis of Capitalism,”
Women, Culture, and Politics (New York: Vintage, 1990), 73 – 90.
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August 15th (
J.K. Gibson-Graham, The End of Capitalism : A Feminist Critique of Capitalist Economy
Introduction: “A Politics of Economic Possibility,” xix – xxxvi
Chapter 1: “Affects and Emotions For a Postcapitalist Politics,” 1 – 21.
Chapter 2: “Reluctant Subjects: Subjection and Becoming,” 23 – 51.
August 22nd
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
Stephen Hartnett, “Prison Labor, Slavery, and Capitalism in Historical Perspective,” on History is a
Weapon: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/hisprislacap.html
August 29th
Chris Hedges? Hardt and Negri? More Alexander?
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