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University of Guelph
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Interdisciplinary Social Sciences
Winter 2014
ISS*2990 Syllabus
Instructor: Dr. Victoria I. Burke
Course Time: 19:00-21:50 Wednesday
Course Location: MACK 115
Office Location: MACK 606
Office Hours: W 16:00-17:00 PM
Email: vburke@uoguelph.ca
Introduction to Marx
Recent critical theorists have said that, today, “capitalism is “on its deathbed”. Indeed, we have entered an extended period of low economic growth, and the USA has repeatedly had the need to extend its debt limit to avoid default. In some regions of the developed world, among some demographic categories, there is over 25% unemployment, and in general, throughout advanced economies, labor has been “casualized” . ISS*2990 Introduction to Marx will equip

2 students with the vocabulary and conceptual tools necessary to understand recent critical theory of capitalism. It will help students engage intellectually and critically with the present state of affairs. We will explore what it might mean to say, as some critical theorists have said today, that “economics dominates politics”. Karl Marx developed his sophisticated critique of capitalism in response to the rise of factory labor in nineteenth-century Europe, amidst the industrial revolution. It was a transformation in the means of production that greatly facilitated the accumulation of wealth in a few hands, and also dislocated and impoverished previously self-sufficient agrarian populations.
Students enrolled in ISS*2990 will learn such basic concepts from Marx’s thought as: alienated labor, bourgeois, proletariat, capital, division of labor, class struggle, means of production, wage labor, and the classless society. We will examine selections from key texts written by Marx, such as The Communist Manifesto , Das Kapital , the
Grundrisse , The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 , A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy , and the German Ideology . We will consider the nature of exchange relations, money, and profit. We will consider Marx’s and Engels’s critique of the bourgeois family. Marx also had four different conceptions of value: exchange value, use value, surplus value, and intrinsic value. The intrinsic value of the life of the worker is the notion of value from which the other three concepts of value are derived. Marx said intrinsic value was a theological notion. In addition to Marx’s critique of capitalism, we will also look at twentieth-century and recent
Marx-based literary, philosophical and sociological approaches to the critical theory of capitalism, including discussions of reification and recognition. History will be discussed throughout the course where relevant.
Required Texts:
The Marx-Engels Reader , Edited by Robert C. Tucker, W. W. Norton & Company ISBN 0-393-09040-X
Packet of Photocopied Materials (to be available in the bookstore by the first day of classes)
Materials on E-Reserve (on the E-Reserve section of the library website)
Obtaining Course Texts: The textbook and the photocopy packet are both available in the campus bookstore. The materials on E-Reserve can be access directly from the library website under E-Reserve.
Course Requirements: Students will be assessed on the basis of two Analysis papers (5-6 pages each), Class
Participation and a Comprehensive Final Examination.
Distribution:
1 st Short Paper (5-6 pages): 25%
2 nd Short Paper (5-6 pages): 30%
Class Participation 10%
Final Exam:: 35%
Guidelines for submitting written work: The essays must be submitted on white 8.5 x 11 paper, typed singlesided, and double-spaced. Students must keep a copy of their work for their own files in case the paper should become lost. If the paper becomes lost (by the student or the Instructor), it is the student's responsibility to be able to replace it. Papers may not be submitted electronically via e-mail or by fax. Only hard copies are accepted.

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Ecologically friendly writing assignments and Citation Style: In the interest of maintaining an ecologically sound course, cover sheets are not required on the assignments. Put your name and student number at the top of the first page and start the essay one quarter of the way down the page. Use the MLA, APA, or Chicago Manual of Style as a style guide for citations. It is not important which style sheet you use: what is important is that you are consistent and correct. Do not include a separate bibliography page, use footnotes at the bottom of each page. I will post a style guide for your convenience on the courselink site. Do not send emails to the instructor inquiring about citation style.
Class Participation Grading : Participation marks will be awarded on the basis of the level of student engagement with the class sessions. Points will not necessarily be awarded on the basis of attendance alone, and no records of attendance will be kept. In a group of this size, I will become familiar with students by name. Generally, students who make regular class contributions have a good chance of getting full marks. Students who display a capacity to engage with others (students, lectures) dialogically will generally be given greater credit than students whose social orientation is one-sided or aggressive. Other factors include: level of insight into readings, level of currency with present states of affairs, reading comprehension, consideration of others and productive engagement. If you are concerned about your mark, you can ask me at 2/3 point in the term what your expected participation grade will be, and I will give you an estimate at that point.
A Note on the Readings: I have cut down on the required readings as much as possible in order to keep the required readings to a reasonable price (and the photocopy packet as small as possible). In addition to Marx’s own writings, which provide a wealth of useful concepts (especially the notion of ‘alienated labour’), we will spend quite a bit of time on notable twentieth-century Marx-inspired critical theory. There were quite a few important Marxists who published in the twentieth century. We will be able to look at only a sampling of these. I have relegated some important works to the “recommended, not required” list. These texts will be discussed in lecture because they are important, but too much to include in the photocopy packet. or to require students to buy. Important works of Walter
Benjamin and Antonio Gramsci have also been excluded, for example. More Rosa Luxemburg and Georg Lukacs could have been fruitfully examined. The reading list is not at all exhaustive. It is a sampling of some of the most important texts in the constellation of Marxian and Marx-related literature.
A Note on “Marxism” as Topic: Rather than seeking to defend Marx’s ideas, or to entertain their plausibility today
(no one wants a centrally planned controlled economy—historically it failed in practice—and we will discuss the reasons for this), we will consider communism and the idea of the utopian classless society under the frame of “the intellectual history of an idea”. Much of the Marxian vocabulary is highly valuable, and many of Marx’s ideas are extremely salient today. The general “critique of capitalism” is still worthwhile (and indeed, needed). The course should be seen, not as an exercise in motivating class warfare or activism, but rather as primarily historical . We will examine the history and permutations (particularly in the twentieth century) of a set of ideas central to critical theory.
A Note on the Course Textbook: The Tucker book required for the course is a book that has been on the market for at least ten years. Students will easily be able to acquire it on the used book market, if desired. The book is in its second edition. I have never seen the first edition, and am not in a position to advise students as to whether it would be safe to order the first edition from a used bookseller.
Courselink Dropbox : The courselink site dropbox is for late papers only, for the exclusive purpose of giving them a time and date stamp. I will not grade papers online for this course. In order to receive a grade, you must hand in the paper in hardcopy. It will be returned to you with detailed comments, and suggestions for improvement, annotated on the paper.
Deadlines: The deadlines for the two short essay assignments are January 29, 2014 and March 12, 2014.10% will be subtracted from the student’s grade for every day that the paper is late. Late papers will not be accepted via

email,. Students need to plan in advance for these deadlines. Students who have trouble finishing, and who left the paper to the last minute will not be given sympathy.
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Late Papers: Late papers may be handed in to me directly or to my department mailbox. Essays are not to be submitted to front office staff at the sociology and anthropology department. Write the date and time you drop the paper off on the paper. If the date and time you indicate is inconsistent with what I know about the time I pick the paper up, and the dates and times I check the mailbox, the late penalty will be assessed on the basis of the time I pick the paper up. Put the paper directly into the mailbox without disturbing the office staff.
Email: questions about course content will not be answered on email. Students must avail themselves of class time and office hours in order to have their questions answered. Only short administrative questions will be answered on email. You can expect a response in 48 hours. If the answer to your question can be answered by looking at the courselink site, you will not receive a response. Technical question about how to use courselnk go to the courselink technical staff.
Desire2Learn Site: This class will have a Desire2Learn courselink website, where all handouts (including instructions for the essay assignments) will be posted. Students may access the site through Courselink, and are required to check the site regularly for announcements. Most materials are under the “Content” link. The dropbox is for late papers only (for the purposes of a time stamp). Students must also hand in a hard copy of the paper for marking purposes.
Readings, Lectures, Class Meetings: Students should read the assigned material prior to class. Students’ essays will be assessed on the basis of grammar, style, and the quality of their comprehension and synthesis of the reading material and lectures. Participation points will be awarded on the basis of the extent to which the student actively engages with the subject matter (the readings, lectures, and other students) in class discussions. It is expected that the student will attend the class sessions throughout the semester. It is expected that students will actively engage with other class members in discussing material, and in asking questions and raising objections that have arisen for them in their reading of the material regularly throughout the semester.
Course Schedule
Unit I: Marxist Foundations
WEEK 1 January 8: Course Introduction: Introduction to Alienated Labor, Marx & Hegel, The Communist
Manifesto
Discussion of recent Tory-proposed plan to phase out Canada Post home delivery as an anti-Marxist, “antiredistributive” measure
Discussion of recent rephrasing by the Economist magazine of old Marxist adage “property is theft” with the claim that “privacy is theft”.

Reading: Marx, “The Manifesto of the Communist Party,” Tucker, 469-500; Blanchette, “Praxis and Labor” [in the
U of G online collection: download from U of G library E-Reserve]; Fetscher, Marx and Marxism , “Liberal,
Marxist, and Democratic Concepts of Freedom”, 26-37; Fetscher, “The Relationship of Marxism to Hegel”, 40-6;
Fetscher, “Historical Preconditions of Marxism”, 302-305 (photocopies)
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WEEK 2 January 15: Alienated Labor (continued); the Division of Labor
Readng: Marx, “The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844,” Tucker, pp.66-105; Fetscher (cont’d.);
Aboulafia, Mitchell. “Hegel’s Dialectic and Marx Manuscripts of 1844” (In the U of G online collection: PDF
Download from E-Reserve); Marx, “The Division of Labor in Manufacture”, Tucker, pp. 392-411; The German
Ideology and the Grundrisse will be discussed in lecture, but are not required reading
WEEK 3 January 22: The Idea of Capital; Conceptions of Value
Readings: Marx, “Wage Labor & Capital”, Tucker, pp. 203-217; Marx, “Commodities & Money”, Tucker, pp. 302-
361; Marx, Capital, “Absolute and Relative Surplus Value”, Tucker, pp. 417-438; Marx, “The Crisis as the
Manifestation of All the Contradictions of Bourgeois Economy”, Tucker, pp. 450-465,
WEEK 4 January 29: Critique of “Bourgeois Philosophy”; the Bourgeois Family
Reading: Engels, “On the Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State”, Tucker, pp. 734-759
*1 st Essay Due: Alienated Labor (1250-1500 words)
WEEK 5 February 5: Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
Readings: Luxemburg, “The Proletarian Woman”, pp. 242-5; Luxemburg, “The Socialization of Society”, pp. 346-
348 (photocopies); Engels, “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”, Tucker, pp. 683-717
Unit II: Post-Marxist Critical Theory
WEEK 6 February 12: Marx-Influenced Theory in the Twentieth Century
Reading: Lukacs, Georg . History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectic s, 83-11; Gramsci,
Selections from the Prison Notebooks , 3 -14, 52-55, 245-247, 254-257; 275-276, 294-298 (all photocopies)
February 17-21 Reading Week (no classes)

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WEEK 7 February 26: Marx-Influenced Theory in the Twentieth Century
Reading: Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” pp. 253-264; Benjamin, The Arcades Project , “Arcades,
Magasins de Nouveautes , Sales Clerks,” 31-61; “Paris: Capital of the Nineteenth Century,” 14-26; “The Streets of
Paris,” 516-26; Adorno, “On the Concept of Enlightenment,” pp. 3-42 (all photocopies)
Recommended: Susan Buck-Morss. Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia (not in the photocopy packet or on E-Reserve: on physical reserve at the McLaughlin Library) (Discusses some of the reasons, rooted in human desire , for the fall of communism in eastern Europe (1989-91)). Will be discussed in lecture.
WEEK 8 March 5: Marx-Influence Theory in the Twentieth Century
Reading: Marcuse, “Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture,” pp. 13-31 (photocopy)
Discussion of the idea of “one dimensional man”
Recommended: Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” in Lenin and Philosophy (classic attempt to merge Marx with psychoanalysis: important development of the categories of “ideology”, “imaginary”,
“base and superstructure”--not in photocopy packet or E-Reserve – on physical reserve At the McLaughlin
Library—will be discussed in lecture)
Recommended: Axel Honneth and Judith Butler on Lukacs: Honneth, Axel, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea
(in the U of G online collection: PDF download from E-Reserve—will be discussed in lecture)
Recommended: Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Search for a Method (not in the photopcopy packet or on E-Reserve: on physical reserve at the McLaughlin library) (the attempt at a reconciliation between Marxism and existentialism).
Will be discussed in lecture
WEEK 9 March 12: Marx-Influenced Feminism
Reading: Fraser, “Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World,” pp. 12-29; Rubin“The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex”, 157-211 (photocopies); Hartsock, “ Women and/as Commodities: A Brief
Meditation” (in the U of G online collection: PDF download from E-Reserve)
*2 nd Essay Due
WEEK 10 March 19: Recent Marx-Influenced Critical Theory
Reading: Hardt & Negri, Empire . pp. 22-41; 280-303 (more of this work could have been included on the reading list and will be discussed in lecture); Brown, “Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy,” pp. 37-59 (all photocopies)
Discussion of the ideal of “deterritorialization”
Discussion of recent changes in the means of production

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WEEK 11 March 26: Recent Marx-Influenced Critical Theory
Reading: Boltanski & Chiapello, “Management Discourse in the 1990s,” pp. 57-101 (photocopy). More of this work will be discussed than could be included in the photocopy packet.
Discussion of recent changes in the nature of work
WEEK 12 April 2: Recent Marx-Influenced Critical Theory
Recommended: Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep
*Review and Prepare for Final Exam
FINAL EXAM is scheduled for Monday, April 14, 2014: 11:30AM - 01:30PM (2014/04/14): Location TBA
FINAL EXAM: PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING REGULATION FROM THE UNDERGRADUATE
CALENDAR: “Students are advised that the Final Examination schedules are available for Fall Semester by mid-
August, for Winter Semester by mid-December, and for Summer Semester by mid-April.
Students are required to consult the final examination timetable in order to avoid conflicts in examination times when adding courses.
Written approval must be obtained from the dean or director and the instructor-in-charge of the course to register in courses that have conflicting examination times.” The Final Exam for this course will not be re-scheduled or given at an alternative time, and students are not permitted to ask for a special exam sitting at their comvenience.
Bibliography for Photocopy Packet
Adorno, Theodor W, and Max Horkeimer. “The Concept of Enlightenment.” Dialectic of Enlightenment . Trans.
John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972. pp. 3-42. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 82-61160; 270 pp.
Boltanski, Luc, and Eve Chiapello. “Management Discourse in the 1990s.” The New Spirit of Capitalism . Trans.
Gregory Elliott (London, UK: Verso Press, 2007), 57-101. ISBN: 1-895184-554-1; 601 pp.
Brown, Wendy. “Neoliberalism and the End of Liberal Democracy.” Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and
Politics ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 37-59. ISBN 0-691-12360-8; 159 pp.
Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project . Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 14-26, 31-61, 516-526. ISBN 0-674-04326-X; 1073 pp.
Benjamin, Walter. “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” Illuminations . Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken
Books, 1969. pp. 253-264. ISBN 0-8052-0241-2; 278pp.
Fetscher, Iring. Marx and Marxism (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 26-37, 40-61, 302-305. Library of
Congress Card Catalogue Number 77-150299; 354 pp.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections From The Prison Notebooks . Edited and Translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffery
Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 3-14, 52-55, 245-247, 254-257; 275-276, 294-298.
ISBN 0-7178-0397-X; 483 pp.

Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 22-41; 280-303.
ISBN 0-674-00671-2; 478 pp.
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Lukacs, Georg . History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectic s. Trans. Rodney Livingstone
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,1971), 83-110; ISBN 0-263-62020-0;356 pp.
Luxemburg, Rosa. The Rosa Luxemburg Reader . Edited by Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 2004), 242-245, 346-348. ISBN 1-58367-103-X; 447 pp.
Marcuse, Herbert. “Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture.” The Essential Marcuse . Eds. Andrew Feenberg and
William Leiss (Boston: The Beacon Press, 2007), 13-31. ISBN: 978-0-8070-1433-2; 249 pp.
Rubin, Gayle. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” Toward an Anthropology of
Women . Ed. Rayna Reiter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), 157-211. ISBN 0-85345-372-1; pp. 416.
Materials Available for Download on E-Reserve:
Aboulafia, Mitchell. “Hegel’s Dialectic and Marx Manuscripts of 1844”. Studies in East European Thought . 18 (1)
(1978).
Blanchette, Oliva. “Praxis and Labor in Hegel”. Studies in East European Thought . 20 (3) (1979), 257-269.
Hartsock, Nancy C. M., “Women and/as Commodities: A Brief Meditation”. Canadian Women’s Studies/Cahiers de la Femme . Vol. 23, Nos 3-4.
Honneth, Axel, Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
Recommended (but too much to put in photocopy packet—on physical reserve at the McLaughlin library):
Althusser, Louis..
Lenin and Philosophy .
Buck-Morss, Susan. Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West . Cambridge, MA:
The MIT Press, 2000. pp. ix-xvi, 1-39, 260-278. ISBN: 0-262-02464-0; 368 pp.
Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Search for a Method .
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When You Cannot Meet a Course Requirement

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