Bernard E. Harcourt introduces the final session of the Marx 13/13 seminars on the Late Marx (Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), Conspectus of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy (1874), and Letters to Vera Zasulich (1881)) with the philosopher Étienne Balibar @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/13-13/

The full text of this introduction to Marx 11/13 is here: https://tinyurl.com/IntroMarx1313

The video recording of the seminar Marx 13/13 with Étienne Balibar is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/5nwOCRrql4w?si=vskXmMsLgZeVrZs6

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

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

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This is the full-length introduction to the final session of Marx 13/13 at which we read and discuss Marx's last writings, including his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), his conspectus and critique of Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy (1874), and his letter and drafts to the Russian revolutionary, Vera Zasulich (1881).

What makes these final texts so utterly fascinating and important is that they encapsulate Marx’s post-economic political thought: his political thinking after he had fully developed and articulated his mature political-economic theories. These political texts of the Late Marx—by contrast to the Communist Manifesto (1848), the Eighteenth Brumaire (1852), or the earlier articles on the thefts of wood (1842)—formulate political views within the framework of Marx’s mature economic thinking.

What we have, in effect, here, is the unwritten final political volume of Capital.

In this political moment, it is especially important to end here, on these political writings, in this last seminar of Marx 13/13, in order to discuss their contemporary relevance. We will study them at the seminar Marx 13/13 with the philosopher Étienne Balibar, with whom we began this seminar series eight months ago and who has been a constant companion on this journey—perhaps since at least the early 1960s.

Let me here introduce these final texts in this video before turning to our seminar with Étienne Balibar.

Welcome to Marx 13/13!