In this moment of unprecedented economic inequality and populist backlash, the time seems ripe for a return to Marx. But what would such a 21st-century Marxism look like? How would Marx understand (or not understand) Trump and Brexit? How might Marxist thought need to be updated in light of the present? What can Marxism learn from other forms of critical thought and activism that have emerged in the 20th and 21st centuries, especially those concerned with race and gender? Our seminar will examine the contemporary viability of Marx’s fundamental concepts—labor, exploitation, ideology, surplus-value, class-consciousness, and revolution, among others. We will thus read classic texts by Marx (and Engels) alongside contemporary texts engaged with Marxist thought. We’ll also read the occasional relevant novel, film, or poem, in order to test the contemporary relevance of Marxism for the sphere of culture.

The question of labor will be a particular focus, with an emphasis on those kinds of labor that do not fit Marx’s primarily industrial conception of labor: the historically unrecognized labor of women—exemplarily housework and “care” (or “affective labor”)—brought to light by Marxist feminism; forms of labor associated with the internet, globalization, and digitality (so-called “informational” or “communicative” labor”); most problematically, slavery, which arguably throws the whole paradigm of labor into question, inasmuch as the racialized slave is treated from birth as a non-person and therefore is not merely an alienated or exploited worker. Other areas of interest include student-debt and debt more generally, social media and ‘algorithmic capitalism,’ contemporary political movements such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.