Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
I. Marx’s writings
A. Political economy (Capital)
1. Analytical, theoretical, abstract
2. Response to prior studies in political economy (Petty, Smith, Ricardo)
3. David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Capital: [In Capital] “Marx is
engaged in a critique of classical liberal political economy. He
therefore find it necessary to accept the theses of liberalism…in order
to show that the classical political economists were profoundly wrong
even in their own terms. So rather than saying that perfectly
functioning markets and the hidden hand can never be constructed
and that the marketplace is always distorted by political power, he
accepts the liberal utopian vision of perfect markets and the hidden
hand in order to show that these would not produce a result beneficial
to all, but would instead make the capitalist class incredibly wealthy
while relatively impoverishing the workers and everyone else.” (p. 52)
4. Capital as an exercise in deconstruction?
B. Historical materialism (Preface)
1. Analytical, theoretical, historical
2. A positioning of the capitalist mode of production in its specific
geographical-historical context. Capital is not an abstract analysis of
“the economy” in general (ala neoclassical economics), but a specific
analysis of the dynamics of capitalism. Marx’s historical materialism
broadly positions the development of this particular mode of
production (cf., Grundrisse)
C. Social analysis/journalism (Eighteenth Brumaire)
1. Analytical, critical, polemical
2. Politically motivated analysis of current or recent events, informed by
various ideas from both political economy and historical materialism.
In works such as the Eighteenth Brumaire, much of the stiff theoretical
writing vanishes and processes such as class struggle come to the
fore in a more fluid, multi-faceted and dynamic way.
II. Marx’s career, and method (see timeline on reverse page)
A. Early writings, political activism/journalism (Manifesto, Eighteenth Brumaire)
B. The failures of 1848 and retreat to the archives (Grundrisse, Preface)
C. The First International, mature theoretical writings (Capital)
D. Marx’s method: dialectic; abstraction and concretion
III. The Preface
A. Relationship between ideology/consciousness/law and “material conditions”
B. Base-superstructure model? (Cohen: yes; Althusser: no)
IV. The Eighteenth Brumaire
A. Misinterpretation 1 (e.g., Giddens): relationship between ideology and
material processes (p. 300)
B. Misinterpretation 2 (e.g., Weberians): the Bonapartist state: not “suspended
in mid-air” (p. 317)
C. Misinterpretation 3 (e.g. Said): small peasants and representation (p. 318)
Chronology