Lecture Outlines for Sociology 621
Class, State, and Ideology:
an Introduction to Sociological Marxism
Fall, 2003
LECTURE TOPICS
PART I. INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS MARXISM? WHY STUDY IT?
9/3 1. Setting
the agenda: The Goals of Emancipatory Social Theory
9/8 2. Foundational Theses of Sociological Marxism
9/10 3. Foundational Theses of Sociological
Marxism, continued
PART II. THE THEORY OF HISTORY
9/15 4. The
Classical Marxist Theory of History
9/17 5. The Classical Marxist theory of History,
continued
9/22 6. Critiques
and reconstructions
9/24 7. Critiques and reconstructions. continued
9/29 8. Capitalist
Dynamics: a sketch of a theory of capitalist trajectory
PART III. CLASS STRUCTURE
10/1 9. What is Class?
10/6 10. The Concept of Exploitation
10/8 11. Rethinking the Class Structure of
Capitalism
10/13 12. Class and Gender I: Marxism and feminism
10/15 13. Class and Gender II: the interaction of
class and gender
10/20 14. Class and Race
IV. CLASS FORMATION
10/22 15. Basic Concepts of class formation
10/27 16. Rationality, solidarity and class struggle
10/29 17. Dilemmas of Working Class Collective Action
11/3 18. Class Compromise
PART V. THE THEORY OF THE STATE AND POLITICS
11/5 19. What is “Politics”? What is “the
state”?
11/10 20. What, if anything, makes the capitalist
state a capitalist state? Is the state a patriarchal state?
11/12 21. The State & Accumulation: functionality
and contradiction
11/17 22. The State and the Working Class: The democratic
capitalist state and social Stability
PART VI. IDEOLOGY AND CONSCIOUSNESS
11/19 23. What is Ideology?
11/24 24. Mystification: ideology as false consciousness
11/26 25. Ideological Hegemony and Legitimation
12/1 26. Ideology and Exploitation: the problem
of consent
12/3 27. Explaining Ideology: Micro-foundations
for the theory
PART VII. SOCIALISM AND EMANCIPATION
12/8 28. The Classical Theory of Socialism
12/10 29. New Models of emancipatory futures