Monday, September 29, 2008

A's All Around?


I'm teaching Marx this semester. My students have been, understandably, absorbed by all the news coverage surrounding the current financial crisis. Two weeks ago, I glibly announced that should global capital collapse this semester everyone in the class would get an A. I explained that they should really keep studying, though, since I was confident that the cost of the market failures would be speedily passed on to us, the citizenry, and that capitalist accumulation, newly emboldened, would continue apace. I still believe this will happen. But today's news that the bailout package failed in the House makes me wonder if maybe I won't be giving out a lot of A's this semester after all.

7 comments:

  1. And that, my friend, is the problem with contract grading :)

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  2. Ha!

    And if your rash little promise provokes the Imp of the Perverse to actually enact a global capital collapse, then what are you going to do about _that_, mister?

    You didn't make any promises about global warming or the apocalypse now, did you?

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  3. None. You won't be able to blame rising sea levels or the rapture on me.

    But had I known I could bring down capital by simple grade inflation, I would have been shoveling out the A's long ago...

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  4. In true neo-Hegelian style, you could always say that the A you gave them in turn gave rise to its antithesis, an F, and because of the resulting synthesis, you have all received a historically transcendent C. Should they complain, remind them that it now qualifies them to become President of the Unites States.

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  5. Hmm. Maybe you could say you meant specifically if capitalism was overcome in a historically progressive manner?

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  6. how funny you are teaching Marx now. One of my old students stopped by Tuesday to say "Hey, umm, is this what Marx meant by late Capitalism?" It just made me grin.

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  7. i usually finish marx by dipping into lenin! And prompt students to think about whether one implies the other. In other words, did Marx under theorize the political? as his debate with bakunin asks....

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