29358 - Ideologies and Political Legitimation

Academic Year 2018/2019

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in Politics Administration and Organization (cod. 8784)

Course contents

The course focuses on the political thought of Karl Marx with particular reference to the problem of power. A systematic close reading of Marxian texts will be proposed in order to identify the different conceptions of power they articulate. The Marxian vocabulary of power will be reconstructed to show how and to what extent it allows both to describe and to criticize capitalist society. Marx semantics of power will therefore be analyzed in all its scope and continuity, highlighting the way he uses concepts taken from the tradition of political and social thought - such as State, political power, social power, domination, dominance, command and despotism - by changing their content. More specifically, the course will develop around four problematic axis:
1) Marx, ideology and its criticism: how does Marx analyze the relationship between society and the state, that is between social relations and political power?
2) What does Marx mean for social power? That is, how social movements and money define the possibilities and the limits of political power?
3) What are the specific forms of capitalist domination described by Marx and what does Marx mean when he speaks of "capital’s despotism"?
4) How are these articulations of power to be dissolved? How does Marx, especially through the historical examples of the 1848 French revolution and of the Paris Commune, investigate the possibility of overcoming the state centered conception of the political?

Readings/Bibliography

Bibliography 

Section A 

Principali testi di riferimento del corso:

K. Marx, Il capitale, Torino, Utet, 2013

K. Marx, Lineamenti fondamenti della critica dell'economia politica, Milano, Pgreco, 2012

K. Marx - F. Engels, Il manifesto del partito comunista, Roma -Bari, Laterza, 2016

K. Marx, Il 18 brumaio di Luigi Bonaparte, Milano, Editori riuniti, 2015

K. Marx e F. Engels, Inventare l'ignoto : testi e corrispondenze sulla Comune di Parigi, Roma, Alegre, 2011.

Section B

L. Althusser, Marx nei suoi limiti, Milano, Mimesis, 2004.

L. Althusser, Leggere il Capitale, Milano, Mimesis, 2006.

M. Tronti, Operai e capitale, Roma, DeriveApprodi, 2006.

A. Negri, Marx oltre Marx, Roma, Manifestolibri, 2003.

D. Harvey, Introduzione al capitale: 12 lezioni sul primo libro, Firenze, La casa Usher, 2014.

L. Basso, Socialità e isolamento. La singolarità in Marx, Roma, Carocci, 2008.

D. Bensaïd, Marx l'intempestivo. Grandezze e miserie di un'avventura critica, Roma, Alegre, 2007.

M. Tomba, Strati di tempo. Karl Marx materialista storico, Milano, Jaca book, 2011.

S. Mezzadra, Nei cantieri marxiani. il soggetto e la sua produzione, Roma, Manifestolibri, 2014.

Teaching methods

Teaching will be based on frontal lessons. There wil be the possibility to present and to discuss in the classwork a paper on a topic chosen among those discussed during the lessons.

Assessment methods

For students attending the course the verification will take place either with an oral exam or through the assessment of  a paper written after the course.

Students that will not attend classes have to choose one of the books listed in section B and contact the teacher in order to determine which parts of Marx' work they must study along with the chosen text. The assessment will consist of an oral exam or a paper of at least 3000 words.

All papers must include on the top of the first page first and last name of the student and the texts on which the paper is drawn up. They can be delivered by hand or be sent by mail at least 10 days before the date chosen for the exam.

Links to further information

https://unibo.academia.edu/MaurizioRicciardi

Office hours

See the website of Maurizio Ricciardi