Critical Theory: The Podcast

Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 7/13 on Marx's Class Struggles in France 1848-1850 and W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880, with the philosopher Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/7-13/

The full text of this introduction to Marx 7/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx713

The video recording of the seminar Marx 7/13 with Gayatri Spivak is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/XHzuttBLKFY?si=oWWOihVLfYlsd_wj

Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/

Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13

*****

In a series of articles published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1850, Marx offers a sweeping historical account of the French revolution of 1848. Marx theorizes at the same time as he recounts history, and vice versa: he confronts theoretical insights and hypotheses with historical developments, statistics, economic research, and first-hand accounts. The articles are political, engaged, opinionated, often satirical and witty, biting at times, punchy, and rallying. Reading them, one senses that they are a call to revolution.

In the articles, collected by Engels and published in 1895 under the title Class Struggles in France 1848-1850, Marx develops a central thesis: the French revolution of 1848 may not have brought about the emancipation of the proletariat, but it turned the proletariat into a more self-conscious class, into a “real revolutionary party.” All the wins and the many more losses of the workers—and their defeat in the bloody June days of 1848—gave birth to a revolutionary working class. The February Revolution effectively created a counterrevolutionary front that helped crystalize the workers into a revolutionary party. What was defeated, Marx asserts, was not the revolution, but instead “the pre-revolutionary traditional appendages” that had not yet sharpened into real class struggle. That would only happen, Marx maintained, “not by the victory of February, but only by a series of defeats.”

W.E.B. Du Bois, in his magisterial Black Reconstruction in America, returns to Marx’s analysis of class conflict to understand the postbellum era. Black Reconstruction in America can be read through the lens of Marxian class conflict, which, in Amy Allen’s words, “renders the emancipation of slaves as the first successful workers’ revolution, prefiguring the Bolshevik revolution by more than 50 years. This claim follows directly from the argumentative backbone of DuBois’s text whereby the slave becomes the black worker, the slave rebellion a general strike, the Reconstruction Era the dictatorship of the proletariat in the states of the former Confederacy, and the subsequent dismantling of Reconstruction as a counterrevolution of property.”

Few scholars have worked more productively on the relationship between Marx and Du Bois than Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who dedicated her Du Bois lectures at Harvard and her forthcoming book from those lectures to Marx and Du Bois. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, University Professor at Columbia University and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, is a preeminent expert on Marx and Du Bois, and is also an activist in rural education and feminist and ecological social movements since 1986. It is a privilege to welcome Gayatri Spivak back to these 13/13 seminars to discuss and read Marx’s Class Struggles in France 1848-1850 in conversation with W.E.B. Du Bois’ Black Reconstruction in America.

This is the full length introduction to the seminar Marx 7/13.

Welcome to Marx 7/13!

Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 8/13 on Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and Engels' Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 1848, in conversation with Herbert Marcuse's Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972) @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/8-13/

The full text of this introduction to Marx 7/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx813

The video recording of the seminar Marx 8/13 is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/HIkB-GDCm6U?si=dBvYsnZEr0VR-M0L

Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/

Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13

*******

We are witnessing today a new and radical offensive in the American Counterrevolution. We are, right now, in the demolition phase of this new offensive. In the first few weeks of his mandate, President Trump is taking a bulldozer to the existing federal government and wrecking its foundations, in an effort to eradicate the federal regulatory state and replace it with an oligarchic-theological, fealty-based cult with an authoritarian grip.

The times could not be more urgent to critically analyze and understand this moment. Few texts are more important to do that than Engel’s Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 1848 and Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.

So we turn to those texts at our seminar, Marx 8/13, in the context of our own Counterrevolution. And to enrich our understanding, we will place these texts in conversation with Herbert Marcuse’s book, Counterrevolution and Revolt, published in 1972, at the time of a previous triumphal offensive of counterrevolution in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and during the Vietnam War protests.

This is the full-length, long-form introduction to the seminar Marx 8/13. This introduction discusses the texts we will be reading in the seminar as a foundation for our discussion of the current Counterrevolution.

Welcome to Marx 8/13!

The philosophers Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser read and discuss with Bernard E. Harcourt Marx and Engels' The Communist Manifesto and Lenin's April Theses @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/6-13/

Wednesday, January 22, 2025 at Columbia University in the City of New York.

For a full introduction to Marx 6/13: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx613

Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/

Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13

*****

What we know today as “The Communist Manifesto” is a document that was commissioned by the Communist League at its first congress, held in London in June 1847, written by Marx and Engels between November 1847 and January 1848, and printed in London anonymously in German in late February 1848 under the title “Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei” (Manifesto of the Communist Party).

The Manifesto was intended to be the platform and program of the newly formed Communist League—successor to the League of the Just founded a little more than a decade earlier by German emigrés in Paris. Its mission was to set forth the principles and beliefs of the Communist League. In draft form, written by Engels, it was a confession of faith, a credo. When first printed, it was only 23 pages long.

Few documents have had such a world historic impact.

In the seminar Marx 6/13, we will read and discuss the Manifesto in conversation with another short pamphlet that both interpreted it and put it into practice: Lenin’s April Theses, delivered to Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in April 1917, at the time of Lenin’s return to Russia after the February revolution.

To study these works, we are privileged to have with us three brilliant critical philosophers, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser, the authors of another manifesto, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, published by Verso in 2019.

This is the recording of the seminar Marx 6/13 with Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser.

Welcome to Marx 6/13!

Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 6/13 on Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto and Lenin's April Theses, with the philosophers Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser, authors of Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto (Verso, 20190) @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/6-13/

The full text of this introduction to Marx 6/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx613

Also on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/MwY4cQrozy0

The video recording of the seminar Marx 6/13 with Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/KxVnCaudZ_M?si=Mt7P8DgnIzHRJoPa

Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/

Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13

*****

What we know today as “The Communist Manifesto” is a document that was commissioned by the Communist League at its first congress, held in London in June 1847, written by Marx and Engels between November 1847 and January 1848, and printed in London anonymously in German in late February 1848 under the title “Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei” (Manifesto of the Communist Party).

The Manifesto was intended to be the platform and program of the newly formed Communist League—successor to the League of the Just founded a little more than a decade earlier by German emigrés in Paris. Its mission was to set forth the principles and beliefs of the Communist League. In draft form, written by Engels, it was a confession of faith, a credo. When first printed, it was only 23 pages long.

Few documents have had such a world historic impact.

In the seminar Marx 6/13, we will read and discuss the Manifesto in conversation with another short pamphlet that both interpreted it and put it into practice: Lenin’s April Theses, delivered to Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in April 1917, at the time of Lenin’s return to Russia after the February revolution.

To study these works, we are privileged to have with us three brilliant critical philosophers, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser, the authors of another manifesto, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto, published by Verso in 2019.

This is the full length introduction to the seminar Marx 6/13.

Welcome to Marx 6/13!

Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 5/13 on Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology and Monique Wittig’s The Category of Sex, with the philosopher Jules Joanne Gleeson @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/5-13/

The full text of this introduction to Marx 5/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx513

The video recording of the seminar Marx 5/13 with Jules Gleeson is here: TBD

Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/

Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13

*****

The German Ideology represents, famously, the exact point of rupture, according to Louis Althusser, between the early, philosophical, ideological Marx and the mature, scientific, economic works. It is the precise location of what Althusser called the “epistemological break in Marx’s intellectual development” because it is there, Althusser argued, that Marx self-consciously shed his philosophical skin (but still in a philosophical way). The German Ideology, written in 1845-46 and only published in full in 1932, has been the source of myriad interpretations and controversies over the materialist conception of history, the advent of revolution and communism, and divergent theories of ideology.

Most recently, The German Ideology has been a key reference point for new writings in the field of Transgender Marxism. And so, to help us read, discuss, and actualize The German Ideology and Monique Wittig’s 1982 article “The Category of Sex,” we are privileged to welcome to Marx 5/13 the brilliant critical theorist Jules Joanne Gleeson, who most recently co-edited with Elle O’Rourke the collection titled Transgender Marxism (London: Pluto Press, 2021).

This is the full-length introduction to the seminar by Bernard E. Harcourt. Join us for the seminar with Jules Gleeson here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/5-13/

Welcome to Marx 5/13!

Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 4/13 on Marx’s 1844 Paris Manuscripts and Jacques Lacan's 1958 seminar on Formations of the Unconscious, with the philosopher Renata Salecl @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/4-13/

The full text of this introduction to Marx 4/13 is here: https://the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024/11/25/bernard-e-harcourt-on-marxs-paris-manuscripts-of-1844-jacques-lacan-and-renata-salecl-introduction-to-marx-4-13/

The video recording of the seminar Marx 4/13 with Renata Salecl is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/iTiYK500190?si=RiCDweIBjujI0RJr

Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/

*****

When Marx’s Paris manuscripts on political economy and on Hegelian philosophy were posthumously published in 1932, in German, under the title Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, the publication produced shock waves in the intellectual world and in Marxist circles.

Their publication rejuvenated the reception of Marx’s writings. It opened new interpretations of his work. It gave birth to an entire field of philosophical investigation on alienation. And it gave rise to contentious debates over the value of the youthful, philosophical writings of Marx, as opposed to the more mature, scientific, economic writings.

In the Paris manuscripts, Marx develops, famously, a theory of human self-alienation, a first sketch of his signature historical account, focusing mostly on the transition from capitalism to communism, with the abolition of private property, and insights from his work on the critique of Hegel, specifically focused on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit rather than his Philosophy of Right. The Paris manuscripts have generated a large body of remarkable scholarship along all of these dimensions.

At Marx 4/13, we return to the question of alienation in conversation with a brilliant philosopher in the psychoanalytic tradition, Renata Salecl, who joins us in New York from Ljubljana, Slovenia. Renata Salecl will discuss forms of social and political alienation that are currently being experienced and spreading widely across extreme right-wing movements in the West today. She will also reflect on apathy in today’s times and how it differs from alienation. Lacan’s text will help us understand the logic of desire and anxiety. In the seminar, we will look at the role anxiety, desire, and jouissance play in people’s fascination with populist authoritarian leaders—and how those emotions are experienced as well on the other side of the political spectrum.

Renata Salecl proposes that we reread Marx’s theory of alienation from the Paris manuscripts in conversation with Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic writings, more specifically, paired with Lacan’s lecture “The Dream by the Butcher’s Beautiful Wife,” from a seminar he delivered on April 9, 1958, at the Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris.

Welcome to Marx 4/13!

Readings for Marx 4/13 here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/4-13-readings-marxs-economic-and-philosophical-manuscripts-of-1844-and-jacques-lacan/

Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 3/13 on Marx’s 1844 articles on the Critique of Hegel and "On the Jewish Question" and Claude Lefort's commentary in "Human Rights and Politics," with the critical theorist Jean Louise Cohen @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/3-13/

The full text of this introduction to Marx 3/13 is here: https://the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024/11/08/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-marx-3-13-marxs-1844-articles-on-the-critique-of-hegel-and-the-jewish-question-claude-lefort-on-human-rights-and-politics-with-jean-louise-cohen/

Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/

Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13

***

In February 1844, Marx published two articles in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher (“German-French Annals”), which he and Arnold Ruge edited in Paris: “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” and “On the Jewish Question.”

The first article, Jean Hyppolite referred to as “a first communist manifesto.” The second article, “On the Jewish Question,” called for human, as opposed to merely legal or political emancipation. Together, these two articles from 1844 push Marx beyond the legal remedies that he had proposed in his 1842 articles on the thefts of wood, which we discussed at Marx 2/13. There, you will recall, Marx called for a legal settlement based on an internationalist customary right of the poor, universal as to the class of poor peoples of all countries, because of their condition in the social order. By contrast, in these 1844 articles, Marx recognizes the thoroughgoing political and social nature of the struggle and turns instead to the working class and to social revolution for the realization of human emancipation.

From Marx’s juridical writings in 1842, then, we turn now in Marx 3/13 to his political writings on the state and the true nature of human emancipation. At Marx 3/13, we will read and discuss Marx’s 1844 articles with the philosopher and political theorist Jean Louise Cohen of Columbia University, in conversation with a commentary on Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” by the French political philosopher Claude Lefort. A former Trotskyist and co-founder with Cornelius Castoriadis of the journal and social movement Socialisme ou Barbarie (“Socialism or Barbarism”) in the 1950s, Claude Lefort became a staunch critic of the Soviet régime and an expert on questions of totalitarianism. In an article published in 1980, under the title “Politics and Human Rights,” Claude Lefort returned to Marx’s article “On the Jewish Question” to discuss the rise of human rights discourse within dissident movements in the East Bloc.

Welcome to Marx 3/13!

Readings for Marx 3/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/3-13-readings-marxs-critique-of-hegel-and-on-the-jewish-question/

This is the Marx 2/13 seminar with philosopher Judith Revel and Bernard E. Harcourt on Marx’s 1842 articles on the Debates on the Law on the Thefts of Wood and Michel Foucault's 1973 lectures on The Punitive Society @CGCParis.

Read more here: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/2-13/

The full text of this introduction to Marx 2/13 is here: the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024...

The video recording of Marx 2/13 with Judith Revel can be watched here: https://youtu.be/pY_T7rdQYvc?si=bCMA4SvmeTwS2fb_

Information about Marx 13/13: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/

Information on the 13/13 series: cccct.law.columbia.edu/conten...

Marx’s series of articles on the thefts of wood (1842) has been a touchstone to critical legal scholars, critical sociologists of crime, and radical lawyers since the early 1970s. The British social historians, E. P. Thompson, Peter Linebaugh, and the group that collectively assembled the classic work Albion’s Fatal Tree, wrote extensively about the articles. In France, the renowned critical jurist and penologist, Pierre Lascoumes, edited and presented the Marx texts in an important volume titled Marx: du “vol de bois” à la critique du droit (1984), and the critical legal scholar, Mikhaïl Xifaras, published a lengthy significant treatment of the articles. The Italian critical criminologist, Dario Melossi, marshalled Marx’s articles in his landmark work on penality and capitalism. In the legal academy in the United States, Marx’s articles on the theft of wood became a reference point within Critical Legal Studies in the 1970s.

Michel Foucault was steeped in these debates, especially of the historians, when he turned in 1973 to explore the construction of the “delinquent” and disciplinary power in his lectures at the Collège de France, The Punitive Society. The year before, in his lectures on Penal Theories and Institutions, Foucault had dedicated the first half of his yearly teaching to a detailed analysis of the Nu-pieds rebellion in Normandy in 1639 and to its repression by Richelieu and the Chancellor Séguier. Foucault had negotiated the querulous territory of historians—the vast literature on seventeenth-century popular uprisings, including the quarrels between a leading French historian of the ancien régime, Roland Mousnier, and the Soviet historian Boris Porchnev, a specialist of French popular uprisings during the period 1623-1648. Foucault read and admired the English historians around E.P. Thompson.

Immersed in this literature, Foucault threw himself into studying the birth of the penitentiary and what he would call “the punitive society.” In that enterprise, Marx’s articles on the thefts of wood would serve as a stepping stone for the development of his theories of “illégalismes,” of the subjectivation of the “criminal” subject, of the development of nineteenth century theories of the “criminal as social enemy.” Foucault refers explicitly to Marx’s articles in his lectures, The Punitive Society, on January 24, 1973, and draws on them in Discipline and Punish to formulate a theory of “illégalismes.” Foucault pushed Marx’s texts in a uniquely productive direction.

In Marx 2/13, the philosopher Judith Revel will discuss these texts.

This is the full seminar.

Welcome to Marx 2/13!

This is the seminar Marx 1/13 with the philosopher Etienne Balibar and Bernard E. Harcourt on Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach and Ernst Bloch’s Commentary from The Principle of Hope @CGCParis.

Read more here: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/1-13/

The full text of this introduction to Marx 1/13 is here: the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024...

The video recording of the seminar Marx 1/13 with Étienne Balibar can be watched here: https://youtu.be/gAB6FveTjEc?si=ERuOf5jssUdvDwY3

Information about Marx 13/13: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/

Information on the 13/13 series: cccct.law.columbia.edu/conten...

Ludwig Feuerbach’s writings served both as a foil and a springboard for Marx to develop his radical philosophical approach. Feuerbach was a pivotal thinker, for Marx, who put him on the path to a new materialism having the standpoint of “human society, or socialized humanity,” as Marx wrote in Thesis #10. Feuerbach turned idealist systematicity on its head in order to focus attention on the being of humans (what was called human essence, human nature, species being). Although Feuerbach did not complete that turn to the satisfaction of Marx, Feuerbach launched a movement that would give Marx momentum.

Marx wrote extensively about Feuerbach in the years 1844-1845 in The Holy Family: A Critique of Critical Criticisms (1844) and The German Ideology (unpublished, 1845). In 1888, Frederick Engels published Marx's jottings from a notebook under the title "Theses on Feuerbach" as an appendix to his book, Ludwig Feuerbach and the Outcome of Classical German Philosophy (1888).

Engels' publication of the Theses on Feuerbach has been a source of controversy and commentary since, with the Theses themselves entering what Étienne Balibar calls the pantheon of "emblematic formularies of Western philosophy." With that, of course, comes the risk of distortions or misreadings or projections or, as well, excellent commentaries on such emblematic formulas. Engels had a project in mind when he published the Theses, possibly to systematize Marx's thought, perhaps to solidify his interpretation of historical materialism. Was that Marx's project as well?

In this seminar, the philosopher Étienne Balibar rereads the Theses in conversation with Ernst Bloch's commentary on the Theses from The Principle of Hope. Balibar uses the Theses as an entry point for our study of Marx this year.

Why start with Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach? you may ask. How does Ernst Bloch's commentary reorient the interpretation of Marx and shape a style of Marxism? Please join us for the seminar to hear Étienne Balibar address these questions.

Welcome to Marx 1/13!

Readings for Marx 1/13: marx1313.law.columbia.edu/1-1...

Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 2/13 on Marx’s 1842 articles on the Debates on the Law on the Thefts of Wood and Michel Foucault's 1973 lectures on The Punitive Society, with the philosopher Judith Revel @CGCParis. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/2-13/

The full text of this introduction to Marx 2/13 is here: https://the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024...

The video recording of Marx 2/13 with Judith Revel can be watched here: https://youtube.com/live/8uQ2LPyrbtE

Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/

Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/conten...

Marx’s series of articles on the thefts of wood (1842) has been a touchstone to critical legal scholars, critical sociologists of crime, and radical lawyers since the early 1970s. The British social historians, E. P. Thompson, Peter Linebaugh, and the group that collectively assembled the classic work Albion’s Fatal Tree, wrote extensively about the articles. In France, the renowned critical jurist and penologist, Pierre Lascoumes, edited and presented the Marx texts in an important volume titled Marx: du “vol de bois” à la critique du droit (1984), and the critical legal scholar, Mikhaïl Xifaras, published a lengthy significant treatment of the articles. The Italian critical criminologist, Dario Melossi, marshalled Marx’s articles in his landmark work on penality and capitalism. In the legal academy in the United States, Marx’s articles on the theft of wood became a reference point within Critical Legal Studies in the 1970s.

Michel Foucault was steeped in these debates, especially of the historians, when he turned in 1973 to explore the construction of the “delinquent” and disciplinary power in his lectures at the Collège de France, The Punitive Society. The year before, in his lectures on Penal Theories and Institutions, Foucault had dedicated the first half of his yearly teaching to a detailed analysis of the Nu-pieds rebellion in Normandy in 1639 and to its repression by Richelieu and the Chancellor Séguier. Foucault had negotiated the querulous territory of historians—the vast literature on seventeenth-century popular uprisings, including the quarrels between a leading French historian of the ancien régime, Roland Mousnier, and the Soviet historian Boris Porchnev, a specialist of French popular uprisings during the period 1623-1648. Foucault read and admired the English historians around E.P. Thompson.

Immersed in this literature, Foucault threw himself into studying the birth of the penitentiary and what he would call “the punitive society.” In that enterprise, Marx’s articles on the thefts of wood would serve as a stepping stone for the development of his theories of “illégalismes,” of the subjectivation of the “criminal” subject, of the development of nineteenth century theories of the “criminal as social enemy.” Foucault refers explicitly to Marx’s articles in his lectures, The Punitive Society, on January 24, 1973, and draws on them in Discipline and Punish to formulate a theory of “illégalismes.” Foucault pushed Marx’s texts in a uniquely productive direction.

In Marx 2/13, the philosopher Judith Revel will discuss these texts.

This is the full introduction to the seminar.

Welcome to Marx 2/13!