Marx's Forgotten Concepts

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The much-heralded “return to Marx” in contemporary political theory has offered creative and influential reinterpretations of many of his most famous ideas, from his theory of value and account of ideology to his understanding of revolution and analysis of class. Yet Marx was an encyclopedic thinker whose work ranged far beyond these familiar themes—and this panel argues that Marx’s political theory must be reconstructed today in similarly capacious terms. The panel’s four papers, from scholars both junior and senior at a range of institutions in the United States and Canada, self-consciously bracket Marx’s most influential arguments in order to recover concepts from his work that remain widely neglected. Chris Chambers looks beyond familiar readings of Marx’s theory of labor to foreground his account of joblessness, with implications for contemporary debates about precarity. Jasmine Chorley-Schulz recovers from Marx and Engels a neglected account of the political ambiguity of working-class soldiers, resituating the organization of violence within political economy. Robyn Marasco argues that Marx’s social theory cannot be understood apart from his account of the family as a political institution for organizing power (and not only an economic one for managing property). Alicia Steinmetz and Matt Shafer locate an incipient theory of advertising in Marx’s notes on use-value, demonstrating how the production of apparent usefulness through marketing deepens the domination of capital. Taken together, the four papers thus canvass a range of subject-positions and power-relations that are not typically seen as fundamental to Marxist thought, but which prove essential to Marx’s significance for political theory today. The panel is chaired by Terrell Carver; Michael Gorup joins as discussant.

Chair: Terrell Carver, Professor, University of Bristol (UK)
Discussant: Michael Gorup, Assistant Professor, New College of Florida

Panelists:
Chris Chambers, Senior Fellow, University of Pennsylvania
Jasmine Chorley-Schulz, PhD Candidate, University of Toronto
Robyn Marasco, Professor of Political Science, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, CUNY
Matt Shafer, Assistant Professor, Florida International University
Alicia Steinmetz, Assistant Professor, Florida International University

Sub Unit

• Division 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Individual Presentations

• Marx and the Militia Question - Jasmine Chorley-Schulz, University of Toronto

• Marx and the Family, Reconsidered - Robyn Marasco, CUNY, Hunter College

• The Use-Effect: Marx's Theory of Advertising - Matthew Shafer, Florida International University; Alicia Steinmetz, Florida International University

Chair

• Terrell Carver University of Bristol

Discussants

• Michael Gorup New College of Florida

• Chris Anthony Chambers University of Pennsylvania