Marx & Engels: Scholar

Two Marxisms? — the contested ground

A course on the thought of Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels.

Course outline

1. The Invention of Dialectics: Did Engels Distort Marx? — After Marx died, a doctrine called 'dialectical materialism' was built in his name — and some of the sharpest readers say it was Engels's invention, a dialectic stretched from human history onto the…
2. The Making of an Icon: Marx vs 'Marxism' — In his own lifetime Marx disowned the 'Marxists.' The systematic doctrine the world came to know was largely built after he died — by Engels, the parties, and the states — until the man and the icon…
3. Young Marx vs Mature Marx: Is There a Break? — The young Marx wrote of alienation and the human essence; the mature Marx wrote of value-forms and impersonal structures. One mind deepening — or, as Althusser claimed, two Marxes split by an…
4. Iron Laws or Agency: Does History Decide Us? — Marx is read both ways: as the prophet of iron laws that grind on whatever anyone does, and as the theorist of men making their own history. His own texts give ammunition to both — and the difference…
5. Engels on Gender and the Family: Foundational or Flawed? — Alone, after Marx died, Engels carried the materialist method into the household — and called the rise of private property 'the world historical defeat of the female sex.' A founding text of…
6. Greatness or Illusion: Was Any of It Science? — Engels called it 'scientific socialism' — a science of history to set beside Darwin's of nature. Was it? Or was it a prophecy, a faith dressed in the language of law? Here the whole course comes to…

Part of the Symposium course library.