MARXISM

 What is Marxism?
Examines how capitalism operates at social, economic and political levels and thereby
affects and is affected by the role of the state, international relations, spatial relations
and culture.

 To what event do you attribute the resurgence of Marxist Analysis?

o Emergence – in the age of secular Enlightenment, Medieval Period, when the people
started to ask questions
o Resurgence – after the fall of Soviet Union, end of Cold War
o Is based on “foundationalist ontology” (focuses on good sense, focusing on the essence,
focuses on the substance rather than the form)
o Is empirical; focuses on the essence rather than the appearance of capital
o Seeks the empirical excavation of reality through a dialectical approach (history and
materialism)

 What is the difference between “common sense” and “good sense”?

o Common sense – everybody has it, but no one can understand the concept
ontologically, bestowed passively
o Good sense – something achieved through analysis

MARXIST ANALYSIS IN THE 19TH C

 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel’s The Communist Manifesto (1848) – “a warning about the
growing power of wage labor with socialism and communism portrayed as the next two stages
of history.
o Capitalism introduces a complimentary and contradictory relationship between labor
and capital
o Once globalized, a bourgeois world economy would create the contradictions to an
international working class coming to power
o Everyone is compelled by reason to sell his/her labor power in a competitive situation,
must adapt “on pain of extinction”

MARXIST ANALYSIS IN THE 21ST C

 Context: Difficulty in measuring class struggle beyond the traditional strikes and mass
demonstrations; the working class “has disappeared;” majority of wage workers do not work in
manufacturing industries (working in call centers, at home, jobs through the internet)
 Is Marxist analysis still relevant? YES
o Capitalist exploitation in a global economy: casualization; part-time and migrant labor
o Naomi Klein’s No Logo (2001) helped form the corporate anti-globalization movement;
o Klein’s The Shock Doctrine (2008) – capitalism and spectacular failures go hand in hand
  Cite examples of contemporary Marxist perspectives
o Political Economy (Marx and Engels, 1848; Panitch, 2009)
o Nationalism (Anderson, 2008)
o State formation (Moore, 1966)
o Nation state (Wood, 2003)
o Neo-Gramscian approach (Cox, 1981, 1999; Gill, 1999, 2003)
o World System Theory (Wallerstein, 2004) – off shoot of the dependency theory, how
states as classified as core periphery, semi-periphery
o Space (Harvey, 2006; Lefebvre, 1991)
o Political Culture (Thompson, 1980; Benjamin, 1933; Moretti, 2000)

 Cite two examples of applying contemporary Marxist approaches in the analysis of specific
issues.
o Neo-Gramscian analysis will examine how the US tried to use world sympathy over rge
9/11th attack to challenge Iraq directly
o World systems “geopolitical” approach will argue that oil is already under the global
control of the US, and that the move is meant to intimidate rising nuclear power and to
facilitate military bases in the area.

MARXIST APPROACHES TO COMPARING NATIONS, STATES AND SPACES (refer to ppt at yahoo mail)

 Nations and states:

o Spatial Politics
 Marxist geographers contend that capitalism seeks to (re)capture ‘pre-existing
spaces’ (Lefbvre, 1991:326) and there is a contest between state sovereignty as
well as cooperation.”
 Ex. Katznelson’s thesis: “Workplace politics and residence politics resided in
different geographical and political zones, thwarting the rise of socialism in
America (Answer to: Why has America failed to produce a socialist party like the
parties that arose in Europe?)