No! One can't speak of a social mission in that sense!

Heidegger (1969) critiques Marx's contention that: "Philosophers have only interpreted the world differently; what matters is to change it."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQsQOqa0UVc

(Translation is in the info box to the side of the video.)

This point came up in the seminar and Heidegger's response may be of interest.

Keston Sutherland

"What is bathos?" (On Marx and Alexander Pope)

Wed, 3 February 2010
5 - 6:30 pm
Main Building (RHB) 308

Keston Sutherland is lecturer in English at the University of Sussex as
well as a poet and founding editor of Barque Press.

Free, open to the public, no booking required.

Keston's essay 'Marx in Jargon' (http://english.okstate.edu/worldpicture/WP_1.1/KSutherland.pdf) is great, so the talk should be good. There's a facebook site entitled 'Keston Sutherland: better than Crack', and I think we can take that as a good sign

I was talking to Dory at the party last night about Eyal Weizman's work, which deals with the ways in which military forces have appropriated contemporary(ish) theory to help them think strategically about urban environments. It doesn't really have much connection to the material we're looking at this week, but as it's interesting and will be relevant later - and as I'll forget to mention it if I don't do anything about it now - I thought it might be an idea to post a link to the following essay:

The art of war: Deleuze, Guattari, Debord and the Israeli Defence Force

"The Israeli Defence Forces have been heavily influenced by contemporary philosophy, highlighting the fact that there is considerable overlap among theoretical texts deemed essential by military academies and architectural schools..."

http://www.metamute.org/?q=en/node/8192

Hi,

These are a few very provisional links relating to the issue of alienation, which we spoke about very briefly last week.
Firstly, here's the Chris Arthur text I mentioned, which is useful as regards the translation of the word(s):
http://chrisarthur.net/dialectics-of-labour/appendix.html

If you want to pursue the theme further you could look at Marx's essay on Estranged Labour (from the 1844 Manuscripts), which can be found here:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm the
The section on Private Property and Communism in The German Ideology might also be useful (you need to scroll down for that section if you click this link):
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01a.htm#a4...but of course one of the really key sections of text relating to this theme is of course the description of commodity fetishism and the 'ontological inversion' that it involves, as set out in the sections of Capital that we looked at the other week.

If you want to go beyond Marx you might want to look at Lukacs' essay Reification and the Class Consciousness of the Proletariat (very influential, but very difficult in the later sections): http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/hcc05.htm or maybe
even Debord's The Society of the Spectacle, which is the text that I'm
most concerned with. http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/debord/ Karl Korsch's
Marxism and Philosophy might be interesting too, as it's similar to
Lukac's text in some ways. http://www.marxists.org/archive/korsch/1923/marxism-philosophy.htmIf you get really into the alienation issue I can point towards some
of the Hegel stuff that it stems from.

I haven't had time this week to write anything pertaining to last week's discussion, but I thought these two links might be of interest. Firstly, this is a link to collection of Marx and Engels' own comments on literature and art. They don't all relate to the issue of value - some are more to do with aesthetics, others touch on ideology - but it would be worth having a look through. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/art/index.htm

Secondly, as regards the issue of aggregations of socially necessary labour time, I'd reccomend this: http://libcom.org/library/incomplete-marx-felton-c-shorthall
it's The Incomplete Marx by Felton Shortall, and it's a text that I found very useful when reading Capital. This chapter in particular may be worth a look - http://libcom.org/library/incomplete-marx-8 - as it raises this issue:

“Against any labour theory of value that suggests that labour is the substance of value it may be objected that labour is not homogeneous -- that there exists a vast array of different types of labour -- and that therefore labour cannot serve as the single substance of the value of all commodities. To overcome such an objection it is necessary to demonstrate how the multiplicity of different labours that enter the production of commodities can be reduced to particular expressions of some universal labour-in-general which may then itself serve as the homogeneous substance of value.”

Humphrey McQueen

A readable essay by the ever entertaining Humphrey McQueen makes some good points

http://marxmyths.org/humphrey-mcqueen/article.htm#n15

Terri Senft: For Students: Close Readings: Specters of Marx

Terri Senft: For Students: Close Readings: Specters of Marx

Really good documentary on chaos theory: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pv1c3/The_Secret_Life_of_Chaos/
What do these ideas do to theories about the freedom and self-determination of the individual subject (e.g. those pertaining to Marx and Marxism)?

Hi,

Here are a few links to some of the texts discussed in the lecture and seminar today.

Firstly, this is a link to David Harvey's website which includes a series of lectures on Capital: http://davidharvey.org/reading-capital/

John also mentioned Michael Hardt's notes on Capital (Volumes 1 - 3), but I'm having trouble finding a readable version. This one seems to have lots of items that can't be displayed properly, so I'll have a look for a better version when I have time. http://www.duke.edu/~hardt/Capital.html

We also spoke briefly about the Francis Wheen 'biography' of Das Kapital, which may be of interest as regards considering Marx as a writer. Wheen argues that Capital is a gothic novel in this excerpt; if you like it, maybe track down the book itself. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jul/08/politics

Also, John mentioned an essay by Nicole Pepperell called 'When is it Safe to ead Capital'. The essay looks at the first chapter of Capital in relation to Hegel's Phenomenology and Logic, and it can be found in the book of essays that he mentioned in the lecture. The essay is also available on Nicole's blog: http://www.roughtheory.org/content/when-is-it-safe-to-read-capital/

Finally, this text might be of interest in relation to the mode of presentation / mode of analysis ideas that we spoke about: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm (scroll down to section 3, entitled 'On the Method of Political Economy'). The analsysis / presentation issue is also raised in the afterword to the second German edition of Capital, which can be found in the Penguin edition. The relevant quotation is on p.102, but it's worth reading the whole thing (see in particular Marx's comment about 'coquetting' with Hegel on p.103).

Cheers

Tom