Western Marxism

Credits: 2 credits

Semester: 3

Timetable:

Meeting Place:

Course Description

The phrase ‘Western Marxism’ was coined by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It is a body of various Marxist theoreticians based in Western and Central Europe, in contrast with philosophy in the Soviet  Union. While György Lukács's History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy are often seen as the works that inaugurated this current.

This course introduces students to the writings of Karl Marx’s western intellectual successors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It will treat the nineteenth-century context of industrialization and democratization in Europe in which Marx formulated his social, political, and philosophical critique, as well as the theoretical and philosophical legacy that followed through the twentieth century. The course will focus on and examine how western Marxism’s critique of capital evolved in complex relationship to the existence of Soviet Marxism.

Students will grasp the specialities of western Marxism and its position in the overall Marxism. They will be expected to acknowledge the outline of each main stream or school, i.e. humanistic Marxism, structuralism’s Marxism, psychoanalysis Marxism, feminism Marxism, ecological Marxism and the Marxist spatial theories.

Course Format

This course includes two parts. In part one. The course will be a lecture and spend 5 weeks exploring the advent and development of western Marxism as well as its theoretical distinct and major schools. In part two, the course will be a readings seminar, core readings for this year will include, it will spend 10 weeks reading the key writings by the influential thinkers (including Georg Lukács, Karl Korsch, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Herbert Marcuse, Ernest Mandel, James O'Connor, Juliet Mitchell, O’lin Wright, Michael Brourwey, Edward Thompson, Raymond Williams, Terry Eagleton, HenriLefebvre, David Harvey, Neil Smith). Students should expect to read significant amounts of Marxism and social critical theory.

Course Expectations

Students are expected to fully engage with the readings, enthusiastically participate in class discussion, and work toward integrating the material into their own research interests.