Marxist Political Economy-2

Semester and Year Offered: Monsoon/Winter Semester, Second year

Course Coordinator and Team: Arindam Banerjee, Satyaki Roy

Email of course coordinator: arindam[at]aud[dot]ac[dot]in

Pre-requisites:

Aim: This course provides the opportunity for advanced-level specialization of a student in political economy analysis, which is one of the focus areas of the programmes. The course will carry forward the study of Marxist political economy building on the discussions in Marxist Political Economy I. It is open to all MA students in the second year of their degree at Ambedkar University, Delhi. While Marxist Political Economy I concentrates on a thorough reading of all three volumes of Capital, this course aims to develop on this systemic understanding to engage with two kinds of epistemologies : first, those which have broadly been associated with the Marxist praxis of emancipation and second, those which are as critical engagements and departures from Marxist theories.

Course Outcomes:

1. Develop an advanced understanding of the conceptual agreements and disagreements between Marxian theories and praxis and other critical theories which embody a departure from the Marxian ideas.
2. Acquire the capacity to understand and interpret Marxist and other critical theories and apply them to social problems.
3. Develop the capacity to comprehend and articulate complex arguments and perspectives through their term papers and essays.

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

Part 1: Marxism and Emancipation

1. Finance Capital and Imperialism
2. Theories of Imperialism
3. Monopoly Capital and the State
4. From state to nation state
5. Oppression and exploitation
6. Transition, transformation and emancipation

Part 2: Marxist theory: Engagements and Departures

1. Epistemology of Marx
2. Althusser’s anti-essentialist reading of Marx
3. Critical review of post-Marxist theories
4. State, power and class: Marx and Foucault
5. Marx and post-modern condition
6. Sociological tradition: Gramsci, Polanyi, Lucaks

Assessment Details with weights:

• In-Class Presentation (20%): Students will make presentations on various aspects of Marxist Political Economy
• Book Review (40%): Students will review one important book in the area of Marxist political economy, engaging with the arguments and relating them to the wider literature
• Term paper (40%): Students will critically engage with the various facets of Marxist Political Economy and it departures from Classical Political Economy and neo-classical economics in a 2500 word paper.

Reading List:

• K Marx, Grundrisse
• K Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
• F Engels, The Family, Private Property and the State
• K Marx, On the Jewish Question
• V I Lenin, The State
• V I Lenin, The State and Revolution
• V I Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
• Rudolf Hilferding: Finance Capitaal
• Nikolai Bukharin: Imperialism and the World Economy
• R Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital
• Paul Baran: Political Economy of Growth
• Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy: Monopoly Capital

ADDITIONAL REFERENCES:

• Immanuel Wallerstein: World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction
• Andre Gunder Frank: Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America
• Samir Amin: Accumulation on a World Scale
• Arrighiri Emmanuel: Unequal Exchange: A Study of the Imperialism of Trade
• Giovanni Arrighi: The Geometry of Imperialism
• David Harvey: The New Imperialism
• M. Hardt and A. Negri: Empire
• PrabhatPatnaik: The Value of Money
• Alice H. Amsden: The Rise of "The Rest": Challenges to the West from Late-Industrializing Economies.
• James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer: Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21st Century.
• Anthony Brewer: Marxist Theories of Imperialism
• R Luxemburg, The National Question
• R Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution
• R Luxemburg, Women’s Suffrage and Class Struggle
• R Luxemburg, The Fallen Women of Liberalism
• Clara Zetkin, Social Democracy and Women’s Suffrage
• A Davis, Women, Race and Class
• F Fannon, The Wretched of the Earth
• J C Mariategui, Seven Interpretive Essays
• A Kollontai, The Social Basis of the Women’s Question
• A Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks
• N Poulantzas, Classes in Contemporary Capitalism
• N Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism
• B T Ranadive, Caste, Class and Property Relations
• L. Althusser, For Marx
• L. Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays
• L. Althusser and E. Balibar , Reading Capital
• G. Lucaks, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics
• S. Resnick and R. Wolff, Knowledge and Class: A Marxian Critique of Political Economy
• S. Resnick and R. Wolff, New Departures in Marxian Theory
• E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics
• T. Carver and P. Thomas (eds) Rational Choice Marxism
• J. Roemer (ed) Analytical Marxism
• M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
• M. Foucault, Madness and Civilisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
• M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire
• N. Kaul, Imagining Economics Otherwise: Encounters with identity/difference
• K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation: the Political and Economic origins of our Time