1

MODULE DESCRIPTION

Level 3

Credit Value 20

Semester Taught One

Semester Examined One

Module Leaders

DR CEMAL BURAK TANSEL

! c.b.tansel@sheffield.ac.uk

" Elmfield G.58 | # 20660

DR PETER J. VEROVŠEK

! p.j.verovsek@sheffield.ac.uk

" Elmfield 1.05 | # 21664

THIS MODULE WILL FAMILIARISE students with Karl Marx’s corpus and guide them in examining a series of key historical processes—such as the development of capitalism and the modern states-system, imperialism and colonialism—from a Marxist lens. The first part of the module acts as a survey of the development of Marx’s own thought against the background of epochal socio-economic and political transformations that took place in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The second part focuses on a number of thematic issues and explores how Marx engaged with the questions of political strategy, labour mobilisation, gender, social reproduction and the impact of the violent expansion of capitalism beyond Europe. The second half of the module also focuses on putting Marx’s thought and Marxist theory in dialogue with other critical approaches, including, but not limited to, Feminism and Postcolonialism. The module concludes with a session that unpacks the relevance and utility of Marxist analyses of contemporary political and socio-economic issues, such as the aftermath of the global economic crisis of 2007–8, climate breakdown, struggles against neoliberalism and authoritarian statisms, and the crisis and reinvention of social democratic and socialist politics. 


2

This is an abridged reading list for POL3030. If you are a student taking this module and would like to access the full handbook, please visit the module’s Blackboard MOLE $ site.

http://www.cbtansel.netmailto:c.b.tansel@sheffield.ac.ukhttp://www.verovsek.commailto:p.j.verovsek@sheffield.ac.uk

SEMINAR TOPICS 
 1. The Rise of Industrial Capitalism and Utopian Socialism 2. Foundations of Historical Materialism I

3. Foundations of Historical Materialism II

4. The Critique of Political Economy I

5. The Critique of Political Economy II

6. Marx and Revolutionary Politics

7. Marx and Global Politics

8. Marx and Global History

9. Marx on Gender and Social Reproduction

10. The Present and Future of Marxism(s) 


3

— I —

THE RISE OF INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM AND UTOPIAN SOCIALISM

“We do not dogmatically anticipate the world, but only want to find the new world through criticism of the old one”.

— Marx, “Letter to Arnold Ruge” (1844). 


CORE READING

ENGELS, F. (1880) “Socialism: Utopian and scientific”, Parts 1–3. https://bit.ly/1KtHiHW

PADEN, R. (2002) “Marx’s critique of the utopian socialists”, Utopian Studies 13: 67–91.

RECOMMENDED READING

HOBSBAWM, E. J. (1996[1962]) The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848. New York: Vintage, Chapter 3 (pp. 53–76).

HUNT, L. (2010) “The French revolution in global context”, in The Age of Revolution in Global Context, c. 1760-1840, D. Armitage & S. Subrahmanyan (eds.). Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 20–36.

OWEN, R. (1817) Report to the Committee of the Association for the Relief of the Manufacturing and Labouring Poor. https://bit.ly/2WrVxeM

PROUDHON, P. J. (1847) Philosophy of Poverty, Introduction, Chapters 1–2. https://bit.ly/2W8yeHH

STEDMAN JONES, G. (2016[1981]). “Utopian Socialism reconsidered”, in People’s History and Socialist Theory, R. Samuel (ed.). Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 138–145.

ROELOFS, J. (1993) “Charles Fourier: Proto-red green”, Capitalism Nature Socialism 4(3): 69–88.

LEOPOLD, D. (2005) “The structure of Marx and Engels’ considered account of utopian socialism”, History of Political Thought 26(3): 443–466.

4

https://bit.ly/1KtHiHWhttps://bit.ly/1KtHiHWhttps://bit.ly/2WrVxeMhttps://bit.ly/2W8yeHH

HONNETH, A. (2017) “The original idea: The consummation of the revolution in social freedom”, in Idea of Socialism. London: Polity, pp. 6–26.

BARKER, J. (2018) “Happy birthday, Karl Marx. You were right!”, New York Times (30 April). https://nyti.ms/2r9pP4k 


5

https://nyti.ms/2r9pP4k

— II —

FOUNDATIONS OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM I

“It was by no means sufficient to investigate: Who is to emancipate? Who is to be emancipated? Criticism had to investigate a third point. It had to inquire: What kind of emancipation is in question? What conditions follow from the very nature of the emancipation that is demanded?”.

— Marx, “On The Jewish Question” (1844). 


CORE READING

MARX, K. (1844) “For a ruthless critique of everything existing (Letter to Arnold Ruge)”, in The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. 12–15.

MARX, K. (1844) “On The Jewish Question”, in The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. 26–52.

RECOMMENDED READING

MARX, K. (1844) “A contribution to the critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction”, in The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. 53–65.

TUCKER, R. C. (1978) “Introduction”, in The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. XIX–XXXVIII.

HAUG, W. F. (2005) “Dialectics”, Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory 13(1): 241–266.

LÖWITH, K. (1954) “Man’s self-alienation in the early writings of Marx”, Social Research 21(2): 204–230.

BENHABIB, S. (1986) Critique, Norm and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, Chapters 1–3.

BROWN, W. (2004) “Tolerance and/or equality? The ‘Jewish Question’ and the ‘Woman Question’”, Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 15(2): 1–31.

ALTHUSSER, L. (2005[1965]) For Marx. London: Verso, Chapter 2.

FARRIS, S. R. (2014) “On Anti-semitism and Islamophobia in Europe”, Al-Jazeera (5 June). https://bit.ly/2K27Ebv 


6

https://bit.ly/2K27Ebv

— III —

FOUNDATIONS OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM II

“According to the materialist view of history, the determining factor in history is, in the final analysis, the production and reproduction of actual life. More than that was never maintained either by Marx or myself. Now if someone distorts this by declaring the economic moment to be the only determining factor, he changes that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, ridiculous piece of jargon”.

— Engels, “Letter to Bloch” (1890).


CORE READING

MARX, K. (1845) “Theses on Feuerbach”, in The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. 143–145.

MARX, K. & ENGELS, F. (1846) “The German Ideology: Part I”, in The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. 146–200.

RECOMMENDED READING

CARVER, T. (2010) “The German Ideology never took place”, History of Political Thought 31(1): 107–127.

CARVER, T. (2015) “‘Roughing it’: The ‘German Ideology’ ‘Main Manuscript’”, History of Political Thought 36(4): 700–772.

KÜTTLER, W. (2011) “Social formation”, Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory 19(4): 229–237.

HUDIS, P. (2013) Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism. Chicago: Haymarket, pp. 37–75.

LUKES, S. (1982) “Can the base be distinguished from the superstructure?”, Analyse & Kritik 4(2): 211–222.

WILLIAMS, R. (1973) “Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory”, New Left Review (82): 3–16. 


7

— IV —

THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY I

“The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labour produces not only commodities: it produces itself and the worker as a commodity—and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general”.

— Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.


CORE READING

MARX, K. (1844) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, in The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. 66–125.

ENGELS, F. (1845) “Working class Manchester”, in The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. 579–585.

RECOMMENDED READING

HOBSBAWM, E. J. (1995[1975]) The Age of Capital, 1848-1875. London: Abacus, Chapter 2 (pp. 43–63).

MARCUSE, H. (1972[1932]) “The foundations of historical materialism”. https://bit.ly/2IXFkVK

DUSSEL, E. (2001) “The four drafts of Capital: Toward a new interpretation of the dialectical thought of Marx”, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 13(1): 10–26.

WENDLING, A. E. (2013) “Second nature: Gender in Marx’s Grundrisse”, in In Marx’s Laboratory: Critical Interpretations of the Grundrisse, R. Bellofiore, G. Starosta & P. D. Thomas (eds.). Leiden: Brill, pp. 347-369.

CARVER, T. (2008) “Marx’s concept of alienation in the Grundrisse”, in Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy 150 Years Later, M. Musto (ed.). Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 48–66.

MUSTO, M. (2008) “Marx’s life at the time of the Grundrisse: Biographical notes on 1857–8”, in Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy 150 Years Later, M. Musto (ed.). Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 149–161.

8

https://bit.ly/2IXFkVKhttps://bit.ly/2IXFkVK

CAFFENTZIS, G. (2013) “From the Grundrisse to Capital and beyond: Then and now”, in In Marx’s Laboratory: Critical Interpretations of the Grundrisse, R. Bellofiore, G. Starosta & P. D. Thomas (eds.). Leiden: Brill, pp. 265–281. 


9

— V —

THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY II

“[N]ature does not produce on the one hand owners of money or commodities, and on the other hand men possessing nothing but their own labour-power. This relation has no basis in natural history, nor does it have a social basis common to all periods of human. It is clearly the result of a past historical development, the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a whole series of older formations of social production”.

— Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (1867).


CORE READING

MARX, K. (1867) “Capital: Volume One”, in The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. 294–302, 431–438, 302–343.

HARVEY, D. (2010) A Companion to Marx’s Capital. London: Verso. Introduction & Chapter 1.

RECOMMENDED READING

CLEAVER, H. (2000) Reading Capital Politically. Leeds: Anti/Theses, Chapter 2.

HEINRICH, M. (2012) An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital, A. Locascio (trans.). New York: Monthly Review, pp. 81–98.

BREWER, A. (1984) A Guide to Marx’s Capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21–33.

STAROSTA, G. (2008) “The commodity-form and the dialectical method: On the structure of Marx’s exposition in Chapter 1 of Capital”, Science & Society 72(3): 295–318.

SHILLIAM, R. (2006) “Marx’s path to Capital: The international dimension of an intellectual journey”, History of Political Thought 27(2): 349–375.

MEZZADRA, S. (2011) “The topicality of prehistory: A new reading of Marx’s analysis of ‘so-called primitive accumulation’”, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 23(3): 302-321.

TOMBA, M. (2013) “Accumulation and time: Marx’s historiography from the Grundrisse to Capital”, Capital & Class 37(3): 355-372.

10

HAMZA, A. (2018) “Marx’s dyslexia”, Los Angeles Review of Books (16 April). https://bit.ly/2XzNA7K 


11

https://bit.ly/2XzNA7K

— VI —

MARX AND REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS

“It is altogether self-evident that, to be able to fight at all, the working class must organize itself at home as a class and that its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle—insofar as its class struggle is national, not in substance, but, as the Communist Manifesto says, ‘in form’. But the ‘framework of the present-day national state’, for instance, the German Empire, is itself, in its turn, economically ‘within the framework’ of the world market, politically ‘within the framework’ of the system of states. Every businessman knows that German trade is at the same time foreign trade, and the greatness of Herr Bismarck consists, to be sure, precisely in his pursuing a kind of international policy.”

— Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme” (1875).


CORE READING

MARX, K. (2010) “The Civil War in France”, in Political Writings, Vol. 3: The First International and After, D. Fernbach (ed.). London: Verso, pp. 187–233.

MARX, K. (1891[1875]) “Critique of the Gotha Program”, in The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. 525–541.

RECOMMENDED READING

MARX, K. (1891) “The possibility of a non-violent revolution (The 1872 Amsterdam speech)”, in The Marx–Engels Reader, pp. 522–524.

KAUTSKY, K. (1905) “To what extent is the Communist Manifesto obsolete?”, in Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record, R. B. Day & D. Gaido (eds. & trans.). Leiden: Brill, pp. 169–185.

LUXEMBURG, R. (2008[1906]) “The mass strike“, in The Essential Rosa Luxemburg, H. Scott (ed.). Chicago: Haymarket, pp. 119–140.

MARIÁTEGUI, J. C. (2011[1924]) “Nationalism and internationalism”, in José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology, H. E. Vanden & M. Becker (eds. & trans.). New York: Monthly Review, pp. 259–263.

MARTIN, J. (2002) “Performing politics: Class, ideology and discourse 
in Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire”, in Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire: 
(Post)modern Interpretations, M. Cowling & J. Martin (eds.). London: Pluto, pp. 129-142.

LEBOWITZ, M. A. (2003) Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class, second edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, Chapters 5 & 10.

12

DELEIXHE, M. (2019) “Marx, the Irish Immigrant-Workers, and the English labour movement”, Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory 27(2): 222–247.

ROSS, K. (2016) Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune. London: Verso, Chapter 1. 


13

— VII —

MARX AND GLOBAL POLITICS

“When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, ‘slavery’ on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up (…) when on those very spots counterrevolution (…) maintained slavery to be ‘a beneficent institution’, indeed, the old solution of the great problem of ‘the relation of capital to labor’, and cynically proclaimed property in man ‘the cornerstone of the new edifice’—then the working classes of Europe understood at once (…) that the slaveholders’ rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic”.

— Marx, “Address of the International Working Men’s Association to Abraham Lincoln” (1865).


CORE READING

MARX, K. (1853) “Extracts from the New York Tribune on the Crimean War”, Parts 1–4. https://bit.ly/2ZMocJK

MARX, K. (1870) “The first address to the General Council of the International Workingmen’s Association on the Franco–Prussian War”. https://bit.ly/2MJd2BR

TANSEL, C. B. (2016) “Geopolitics, social forces, and the International: Revisiting the ‘Eastern Question’”, Review of International Studies 42(3): 492–512.

RECOMMENDED READING

BLACKBURN, R. (2011) “Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln: A curious convergence”, Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory 19(4): 99–128.

CABRAL, A. (1979[1966]) “Presuppositions and objectives of national liberation in relation to social structure”, in Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings, M. Wolfers (trans.). New York: Monthly Review, pp. 119–137.

DUNBAR-ORTIZ, R. A. (2016) “The relationship between Marxism and Indigenous struggles and implications of the theoretical framework for international Indigenous struggles”, Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory 24(3): 76-91.

KANDAL, T. R. (1989) “Marx and Engels on international relations, 
revolution and counterrevolution”, in Studies of Development and Change in the Modern World, M. T. Martin & T. R. Kandal (eds.). New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 25–76.

14

https://bit.ly/2ZMocJKhttps://bit.ly/2MJd2BRhttps://bit.ly/2MJd2BR

DUFOUR, F. G. (2008) “Historical materialism and International Relations”, in Critical Companion to Contemporary Marxism, J. Bidet & S. Kouvelakis (eds.). Leiden: Brill, pp. 453-470.

ANDERSON, K. B. (2010) Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, Chapter 3. 


15

— VIII —

MARX AND GLOBAL HISTORY

“When reading the histories of primitive communities written by bourgeois writers it is necessary to be on one’s guard. They do not even shrink from falsehoods. Sir Henry Maine, for example, who was a keen collaborator of the British Government in carrying out the violent destruction of the Indian communes, hypocritically assures us that all the government’s noble efforts to support the communes were thwarted by the spontaneous forces of economic laws!”.

— Marx, “Letter to Vera Zasulich (Second Draft)” (1881).


CORE READING

MARX, K. (1853) “The British rule in India”, New-York Daily Tribune (10 June). https://bit.ly/1Bs7K2v

MARX, K. (1853) “The future results of British rule in India”, New-York Daily Tribune (22 July). https://bit.ly/2nAppnu

MARX, K. (1853) “Revolution in China and in Europe”, New-York Daily Tribune (14 June). https://bit.ly/31khECH

LINDNER, K. (2010) “Marx’s Eurocentrism: Postcolonial studies and Marx scholarship”, Radical Philosophy 161: 27-41.

RECOMMENDED READING

MARX, K. (1881) “Marx–Zasulich correspondence”. https://bit.ly/2TcipL3

ANDERSON, K. B. (2010) Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, Chapter 6.

SHANIN, T. (1983) “Late Marx: Gods and craftsmen”, in Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the “Peripheries of Capitalism”, T. Shanin (ed.). New York: Monthly Review, pp. 3-39.

CHANDRA, B. (1981) “Karl Marx, his theories of Asian societies, and colonial rule”, Review: A Journal of the Fernand Braudel Center 5(1): 13-91.

LARRAIN, J. (1991) “Classical political economists and Marx on 
colonialism and ‘backward’ nations”, World Development 19(2/3): 225– 
243.

16

https://bit.ly/1Bs7K2vhttps://bit.ly/2nAppnuhttps://bit.ly/31khECHhttps://bit.ly/2TcipL3

BROWN, H. A. (2010) “Multilinearism, contingency, and resistance: Reevaluating Marx on historical development in precapitalist societies”, New Political Science 32(3): 345–366.

HUDIS, P. (2004) “Marx among the Muslims”, Capitalism Nature Socialism 15(4): 51-67.

RAO, R. (2017) “Recovering reparative readings of Postcolonialism and Marxism”, Critical Sociology 43(4/5): 587-598.

HOBSBAWM, E. J. (1968) “Karl Marx’s contribution to historiography”, Diogenes 16(64): 37–56. 


17

— IX —

MARX ON GENDER AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION

“However terrible and disgusting the dissolution of the old family ties within the capitalist system may appear, the large-scale industry, by assigning an important part in socially organized processes of production, outside the sphere of the domestic economy, to women, young persons and children of both sexes, does nevertheless create a new economic foundation for a higher form of the family and of relations between the sexes.”

— Marx, Capital, Vol. 1 (1867).


CORE READING

FRASER, N. (2014) “Behind Marx’s hidden abode”, New Left Review 86: 55–72.

BROWN, H. (2012) Marx on Gender and the Family: A Critical Study. Leiden: Brill, Chapter 3.

RECOMMENDED READING

BARRETT, M. (2014) Women’s Oppression Today: Marxist/Feminist 
Encounter. London: Verso, Chapter 1.

GIMENEZ, M. E. (1978) “Structuralist Marxism on the Woman Question”, Science & Society 42(3): 301-323.

HARTMANN, H. (1979) “The unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism: Towards a more progressive union”, Capital & Class 3(2): 1-33.

DAVIS, A. (1983) Women, Race and Class. New York: Vintage, Chapter 5.

ACKER, J. (1988) “Class, gender, and the relations of distribution”, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 13(3): 473-497.

ARRUZZA, C. (2016) “Functionalist, determinist, reductionist: Social Reproduction Feminism and its critics”, Science & Society 80(1): 9–30.

CHAE, H. (2014) “Marx on the family and class consciousness”, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 26(2): 262-277.

GONZALEZ, M. & NETON, J. (2014) “The logic of gender: On the separation of spheres and the process of abjection”, in Contemporary Marxist Theory: A Reader, A. Pendakis, J. Diamanti, N. Brown, J. Robinson & I. Szeman (eds.). London: Bloomsbury, pp. 149–174.

18

CARVER, T. (2018) “‘Mere auxiliaries to the movement’: How intellectual biography obscures Marx’s and Engels’s gendered political partnerships”, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 33(4): 593–609.

MARX, K. (1865) “Karl Marx’s confession”. https://bit.ly/2tnECeY 


19

https://bit.ly/2tnECeY

— X —

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF MARXISM(S)

“If cooperative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; if united cooperative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan, thus taking it under their own control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of capitalist production—what else, gentlemen, would it be but Communism, ‘possible’ Communism?”.

— Marx, The Civil War in France (1871).


CORE READING

STREECK, W. (2011) “How will capitalism end?”, New Left Review 87: 35-64.

YPI, L. (2018) “The politics of reticent socialism”, Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy 2(3): 156–175.

RILEY, D. (2018) “An anticapitalism that can win”, Jacobin (1 July). https://bit.ly/2CYBYif

RECOMMENDED READING

TOOZE, A. (2017) “A general logic of crisis”, London Review of Books 39(1): 3–8. https://bit.ly/2Ufc7yi

FOSTER, J. B. (2016) “Marxism in the Anthropocene: Dialectical rifts on the left”, International Critical Thought 6(3): 393–421.

BANNERJI, H. (2011) “Building from Marx: Reflections on ‘race,’ gender, and class”, in Educating from Marx: Race, Gender and Learning, S. Carpenter & S. Mojab (eds.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 41-60.

AKYEAMPONG, E. (2018) “African socialism; or, the search for an indigenous model of economic development?”, Economic History of Developing Regions 33(1): 69-87.

VEROVŠEK, P. J. (2017) “The immanent potential of economic and monetary integration: A critical reading of the Eurozone Crisis”, Perspectives on Politics 15(2): 396–410.

SOTIRIS, P. (2019) “Is a ‘left populism’ possible?”, Historical Materialism: Research in Critical Marxist Theory 27(2): 3–39.

20

https://bit.ly/2CYBYifhttps://bit.ly/2CYBYifhttps://bit.ly/2Ufc7yi