Notes

This is the Tuesday make-up discussion for the first week of FTP's 16-week Summer PoliEd program. This week, we read works which focused on the Marxist analysis of capitalism, those being first chapters of the Grundrisse and the Communist Manifesto, as well as the entirety of Wage, labor, and capital. We have implemented a modified structure of the harkness discussion format which we are still tailoring and improving. The way the discussion format goes as follows: we talk about each work for about 30 minutes and then we go onto the next work, when we finish, we open our discussion to talk about all the works. Since this is our first make-up, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of people, we can be a little more relaxed about the discussion times, perhaps even ending the discussion early. Before each 30 minute discussion, we begin by commenting on what we found interesting in the work, and perhaps adding what we would like to discuss. On Saturday, we started with the Grundrisse, then moved onto the Communist Manifesto, then Wage, labor, and capital, and ended off the discussion with a broader discussion where you could talk about every work. If people aren't posing questions, we simply went down the list of questions and talked about them. All questions are encouraged, whether they be narrow clarification questions or broader, open-ended questions meant to facilitate discussion.

I suppose I could start off, from the Grundrisse, I was particularly interested in the utility of the category of "totality." Why is this idea so powerful? Why does it give us a unique theoretical approach that has revolutionary consequences?


To start off, I absolutely love the first chapter of the Communist Manifesto. I think that it beautifully shows Marx's intellect and the power and applicability of Marxist theory. For example, Marx's commentary on how capitalism has a tendency to expand beyond national borders and how capitalist culture is marked by constant disintegration are, I believe, more applicable today than they were 150 years ago.

For Wage, Labor, and Capital, I copied a quote down that I thought was really, really interesting: “If capital grows rapidly, wages may rise, but the profit of capital rises disproportionately faster. The material position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of his social position. The social chasm that separates him from the capitalist has widened.” -- I would like to just talk about this idea and its implications.