Tuesday, July 13, 2010

A Class Divided

Marx was not as bad as I thought it would be. I didn’t finish my reading last night because I figured out that we are doing Marx over two days, so I will finish tonight. I learned a lot about Marx’s background today. I thought that he was actually Russian, but it turns out that he was Jewish and spent most of his life in London. The lecture was much more interesting than the reading last night because Prof. K actually puts enthusiasm into the lecture. The reading is understandable, but it is just very dense and it takes a little bit of analysis, so it is much less interesting. I can see why the students I have spoken to that have gone in previous years enjoyed Prof. K so much. His style is casual, but informative at the same time.

The TA session today was interesting as well. Simon split us into three groups to interpret Marx’s arguments against capitalism. After we all came up with answers, we discussed them in a sort of informal debate. Each group seemed to have a different interpretation about Marx’s view on how workers are alienated from different aspects of life. It made for some interesting discussion. Ultimately it made us late for lunch, but all of the different views were definitely interesting.

The guest lecture was the best part of the day. Richard Stomber came to speak to us about gay/lesbian rights to marriage and a case that he worked on involving this issue. The case reached the highest court possible in New York, but he lost. The best part of the lecture was when he allowed for a debate between my classmates. It got to the point where the two sides were still debating and he had said good-bye and left the room because he had to get back to work. The debating lasted about ten minutes after class, and if it weren’t for people getting too into the spirit of the topic (i.e. getting REALLY frustrated) it could have lasted for another hour, if not more.

I continue my day with the work of Karl Marx. I remember the Communist Manifesto being a lot better than Estranged Labour so maybe tonight’s reading will be more interesting. For the love of knowledge, I’m signing off.

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