Cours à McGill: « By the turn of the twentieth century, two names were, above all others, associated with this socialist threat: Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. One, a prolific writer and self-declared disciple of Hegel and Adam Smith, coined the term “scientific socialism” for his brand of critical theory, denounced “the fetishism of money,” and pronounced himself a spokesperson for the proletariat in its efforts to complete the revolution begun by the bourgeoisie in 1789. He had a large following among workers, and was quite famous, in part for his polemics with other socialists of the day, whom he considered to be insufficiently radical in their attacks on private property and the state. The other, much more obscure in his own time, was Marx. If you were surprised to read that last sentence, you are hardly alone. Although Marx’s mockery of Proudhon – his 1847 broadside, The Poverty of Philosophy – is fairly well-known, the extent and precise nature of the relationship between the two has never been examined in any great depth. In particular, no one has read Marx’s magnum opus, Capital, as an argument with Proudhon about what capitalism is, how it works, what its effects are, and what it would mean to overthrow it. This task is what I propose for this class. To lay all my cards on the table, I believe that Marx, picking up on some of Proudhon’s suggestions, wrote Capital to be a modern-day Inferno, a descent into the Hell of modern capitalism. By guiding them on this this descent, Marx hopes to induce his readers – workers and socialist agitators – to abandon the Proudhonism that he thought was endemic to the workers’ movement of his day. In order to understand Capital, therefore, I propose that we read it in conjunction with selections from the works of Proudhon. Hopefully, this will also help us to better understand Proudhon himself, a writer who continues to exercise significant influence, even though his writings do not generally benefit from serious study. In coming to understand both Marx and Proudhon, moreover, we will also clarify the great schism that has split the radical Left since its inception, that between Marxism and anarchism. Finally, by studying these two critical theories in conjunction we may get a better picture of that to which they both object, capitalism, the social system that has been definitive of modernity. » mcgill.ca/politicalscience/sites/mcgill.ca.politicalscience/files/poli_459-roberts-f14_outline.pdf
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 01:11:52 +0000
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