"All I know is that I am not a Marxist", Marx famously said. This move of detachment responds to an insight: how a (political) philosophy or theory - this difference will have to concern us - is put to use will ultimately be beyond the control of their inventors. Yet more radically understood, Marx' philosophy is itself the result of concrete struggles and political intervention and as such it escapes authorial control and can be reconstructed as a coherent body of work only after the fact. This course will historically contextualize the emergence of Marx' modes of theorizing in the 19th century and its German idealist origins. Marx' canonization along party lines, perhaps the most influential version of Marxism commonly called classical Marxism, will be brought into view mostly through the lens of those many heterodox strands within Western Marxism that put forward a different form of Marxism (e.g. black Marxism, the workerist movement, feminist and anti- and postcolonial Marxism and so on). And in doing so, the seminar will familiarize students with Marx' writings, arguments and key concepts such as class, social totality, value or productive labor.
Most texts will be provided via canvas, however, you are asked to get the English edition of "Capital, Vol. 1" in the translation by Ben Fowkes