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1 month ago | 
theguardian.com | Bernard E. Harcourt
On Monday, the Department of Justice announced the launch of “Joint Task Force October 7 (JTF 10-7)”. In an accompanying press release, the DoJ said it would bring to justice Hamas leaders who murdered and kidnapped innocent civilians in the deadly attack on Israel of 7 October 2023. Few would quarrel with this ambition.
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2 months ago | 
the1313.law.columbia.edu | Bernard E. Harcourt
In Marx 13/13, we return to Marx’s key texts and read them through the lens of world-historical interpretations that pushed Marxian thought and praxis in new directions: toward operaismo or workerism, Black Marxism, feminist, queer and transgender theories, postcolonialism, cultural studies, Freudian or Foucauldian strands of Marxism, as well as Leninist, Maoist, and social democratic forms of Marxism.
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Jan 21, 2025 | 
the1313.law.columbia.edu | Bernard E. Harcourt
The Manifesto of 1848 remains the most emblematic text of the revolutionary Marxist tradition: it declares and explains the intentions, and lays down the theoretical foundations in the form of a historical narrative and social analysis that concludes with a political program.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
the1313.law.columbia.edu | Bernard E. Harcourt
A few months after completing the Paris manuscripts of 1844—which we just discussed with Renata Salecl at Marx 4/13—in February 1845, Marx is expelled from France by the minister of foreign affairs, François Guizot, and moves his family to Brussels. There, Marx connects with Frederick Engels, whom he had met in Paris in August 1844.
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Nov 24, 2024 | 
the1313.law.columbia.edu | Bernard E. Harcourt
In February 1844, Marx published two articles in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher: “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” and “On the Jewish Question.” Together, these two articles push Marx, beyond the legal remedies that he had proposed in his 1842 articles on the thefts of wood, to call for revolution in Germany and human emancipation.
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Nov 22, 2024 | 
the1313.law.columbia.edu | Bernard E. Harcourt
For some time now, people worldwide have developed a particular fascination with the idea of the catastrophe which will bring an end to society as we know it. According to the Pew Foundation survey, at the end of last year, 39% of Americans believed that the world was ending. In 2019, US-Danish researchers led by Michael Bang Petersen interviewed 6000 people who were passionately spreading fake news and conspiracy theories on social media.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
the1313.law.columbia.edu | Bernard E. Harcourt
The critique of rights, of formal (or, in today’s parlance, liberal) democracy, and of civil society has reemerged today. Once again ‘the rights of man” or human rights are seen as unpolitical or and a distraction, while constitutional democracy and the state are under attack from the right and the left as being tools of the establishment, a cover for oligarchy and/or structures that serve particularistic interests rather than public purposes for the public good.
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
the1313.law.columbia.edu | Bernard E. Harcourt
In February 1844, Marx published two articles in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher (“German-French Annals”), which he and Arnold Ruge edited in Paris: “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” and “On the Jewish Question.”[1]The first article, Jean Hyppolite referred to as “a first communist manifesto.”[2] The working class—the proletariat, in Marx’s terms—bursts forth onto the scene for the first time.
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Oct 14, 2024 | 
the1313.law.columbia.edu | Bernard E. Harcourt
You know me by now. And knowing me, you understand well, I am sure, that my ambition for this inaugural seminar of Marx 13/13—and more broadly, for the entire series—is to actualize these texts and readings of Marx: to make them speak to our present, to help us think and act in the moment, to face our unique challenges today—those many crises of our own making, global warming, the Counterrevolution, Behemoth capitalism. Why start with Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach? you may ask.
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Aug 6, 2024 | 
the1313.law.columbia.edu | Bernard E. Harcourt
By Bernard E. HarcourtThe philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. — Marx, Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach (1845)Karl Marx’s writings contain many of the most impactful ideas that have transformed—and still today continue to transform—the course of human history. Marx’s ambition for philosophy, namely to change the world, has inspired critical thinkers and activists for over a century now and around the globe.
