class notes on Marx

Gramsci - actually handles class.. should be treated as the 5th book of Das Kapital

In sociology... Das Kapital is taught.

New left vs. old left - battle over old Marx vs. new Marx. A lot of Marx' transcripts weren't found until 60s. Very bitter battle - traditional Marxists saw class struggle as the key, saw the proletariat as the only character... thus, young Berkeley students couldn't be revolutionaries. Old left politicos just saw the counter culture as self-indulgent. Frankfurt school - Markusa. Loose Marx. Other theorists doing race, gender... was new left really situated in Marx?

Markuso, Adorno, Benjamin... a particular take on Marx. Gramsci notion of hegemony.

Feyerbach & Hegel really influenced early Marx... not grounded enough in historical knowledge.

In Manifesto - thought that it was a science of history, had to be grounded in history. By Vol. 1 of Capital, he was talking about the phenomenology of capital.

60s was when psychological Marx appeared.

Marx seemed to be calling the communist party the brain trust of the proletariat. Yugoslav theorists said that the dictatorship of the Communist party was contradictory.

Lenin was taking his example of a managed economy from Germany in WW1. That was his example of a managed society from an economy. Weber's ideas came from the same place.

French Revolution. Paris Commune -> could be an urban proletarian revolution. WW1 really shaped Soviet state mobilization.

They cannot represent themselves - they must be represented (from Brumier). Proletariat themselves doesn't have the intellectual capacities to consceptionalize or regulate a communal scoiety. It must be managed.

Metaphor: pototoes in a sack... peasants have so much that they don't know what they have. Development of class consciousness. Very important in Chinese revolution - speaking bitterness and trying to speak class consciousness. Was borrowed by feminists for class awareness in women's liberalization.

E.P. Thomspon - how the English working class creating a class consciousness.

What do the oppressed have in common other than their oppressor. First instinct is negation of their oppressor. How do they evolve from that to some vision of self? Niche: the proletariat will do nothing but seek revenge. Proletariat: class out to negate their oppressors. Communist party - trying to educate. Role of the Manifesto - try to elucidate the responsibilities that people have.

What is the "value" of class? What actually comes out of class?

Gramsci... Most intellectuals work for the bourgeoisie. Weber: politics is a vocation... journalists/professors can be neutral. Organic intellectuals.

Eric Hoffer - long shore-man who wrote a lot of philosophy - 60s in SF. Organic intellectual. Actually published (rare).

Dictatorship of the proletariat - big phrase in Germany.

Law encodes will of bourgeoisie instead of encoding justice.

Community of women. In Russia, after communist revolution, women movement that was suppressed. Engels - wrote a theory of women's subordination, private property of her husband. Believed that once class was ended, women would be emancipated. Saw the working class family as degrading the family.

Gramsci/Weblan: women become luxury mammals.

In primitive society... they had access to Morgan.... idea that in primitive societies, the sharing of women... free love situation.

Where did they get access to women? Women writing back to 1700s in France. Mary Wellstone Craft - part of the British tradition.

Did believed that under capitalism, women was suppressed. Gender-specific subordination. Inspired feminism.

Marx: children are educated by society, not families. In Germany, kindergarten at 6 months old. This was a way to crush the bourgeoisie tendencies of the family. Everyone's child was guaranteed space in those institutions. Job was also guaranteed until she got back to work after child birth.

Concealing power in technology.

Proletariat gets its consciousness of its collective spirit by experience of being disciplined by industrial system. Bourgeoisie needs to keep proletariat organized (so that they're not managing chaos)?

K-12 education: learning how to show up on time, do meaningless assignments, don't make connections between classes.. fragmentation of self useful for work.

In Germany - never said we are communists, we are socialists... the stage before communism... the stage before fishing. [Emulating Russia.]

Collapse of socialist states - in concert with capitalism's advance... led to decline of Marxism as a popular ideology in the academy.

New left: Yugoslavian syndicalists... decentralization.
Old left: Russian structure

Marxism more relevant than ever - globalization and commodity fetishization.

Castells, Wallerstein.

Before your European hegemony. Europe developed - applies world systems. Marx's stages still frame discourse. Feudal, pre-industrial, industrial, technological, etc. Progression.

Marx: roots of capitalism are not capitalism, but primitive accumulation. Force. Illegitimate in its own terms.

Weakening of the nation-state. Post-Marx folks seem to think that Marx was wrong because he had a conception of the State.. but he didn't. State: preserves the interest of bourgeoisie.

Shift in capital towards intellect. In Marxism - tiers... two: power was binary and increasingly binary. Nature of capital has evolved in directions that couldn't have been imagined.

Pretty hard to argue that working class people are oppressed when they own SUVs.... false needs manipulated through advertising and various forms of insecurities.

3rd world is no longer located geographically... it's not just Bangladesh, but it's also East LA. No longer separated by geography.

Marx really struggled against nationalism. In Marxist theory, it's doctrine.. the way Marxists handle economic collapses is to declare war. Hmmm.......


Bill Donhmoff - studies the rich. Studies bohemian grove and rich. The ruling class. Bush & Kerry are part of the intermarriage - cousins 9th removed or something.

Different forms of capital lead to different politics. Owners of land have different class interests.

Petty bourgeoisie most threatened by the Jew in France... define: property owner, small business owner. Volatile, threatened to lose their class status. When they feel threatened, they attack others... support fascist approaches. Support Republicans.

Our property: technological expertise... technocrat.

[Brumier - way that french renamed the calendar. Banned all Christian names. Huh?]

Bourgeoisie can only survive as long as they can always redo the means of production.

Intellectual wage laborers.

How fast your intellectual property burns out. Career trajectory of engineers - 25 years. Career crash in mid-life for engineers

General intellect. Information and knowledge will be freed from the means of production. Instead, knowledge has been commodified. Weber: professional classes who own expertise are a separate class. Ministers of society. Artisan class as the drivers of history.