Watch Marx 8/13 here:

Watch the full-length introduction to Marx 8/13 here:

In these early days of a Counterrevolution, Bernard E. Harcourt and guests Kendall Thomas, W.J.T. Mitchell, and Michaela Soyer read and discuss Engels’ Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 1848 and Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in conversation with Herbert Marcuse’s Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972)

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

6:15 PM New York time (EDT, UTC/GMT -5)

Columbia University, New York, 10027

We are witnessing today a new and radical offensive in the American Counterrevolution—a counterrevolution of long date. We are, right now, in the demolition phase of this new offensive. In the first few weeks of his mandate, President Trump is taking a bulldozer to the existing federal government and wrecking its foundations, in an effort to eradicate the federal regulatory state and replace it with an oligarchic-theological, fealty-based cult with an authoritarian grip.

The times could not be more urgent to critically analyze and understand this moment. Few texts are more important to do that than Engel’s Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 1848 and Marx’s Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.

So we turn next to those texts at our seminar, Marx 8/13, in the context of our own Counterrevolution. And to enrich our understanding, we will place these texts in conversation with Herbert Marcuse’s book, Counterrevolution and Revolt, published in 1972, at the time of a previous triumphal offensive of counterrevolution in the wake of the Civil Rights movement and during the Vietnam War protests.

Welcome to Marx 8/13!

 

 

Primary text: Friedrich Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany 1848 (1851-52) and Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte(1852)

Secondary text: Herbert Marcuse’s Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972)

Supplemental reading: Bernard E. Harcourt, The Counterrevolution (2018)

Philosophers: Bernard E. Harcourt, Kendall Thomas, W.J.T. Mitchell, and Michaela Soyer

Date: Wednesday, February 12, 2025

In-person location: Jerome Greene Annex, Columbia University, New York, 10027

Time: 6:15 PM New York time (EDT, UTC/GMT -5)

Livestream: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu or https://www.youtube.com/@columbiacenterforcontempor7652

Readings: On-line here

Language: English