A panel discussion organized by the Platypus Affiliated Society, held on March 19, 2011, at Left Forum, Pace University.
Audio Recording
Panelists
James Vaughn - University of Texas at Austin, Platypus Affiliated Society
Jeremy Cohan - New York University
Richard Rubin - Platypus Affiliated Society
Spencer A. Leonard - University of Chicago, Platypus Affiliated Society
Description
The “bourgeois revolutions” from the 16 through the 19 centuries – extending into the 20–conformed humanity to modern city life, ending traditional, pastoral, religious custom in favor of social relations of the exchange of labor. Abbe Sieyes wrote in 1789 that, in contradistinction to the clerical 1st Estate who “prayed” and the aristocratic 2 Estate who “fought,” the commoner 3 Estate “worked:” “What has the 3 Estate been? Nothing.” “What is it? Everything.” Kant warned that universal bourgeois society would be the mere midpoint in humanity’s achievement of freedom. After the last bourgeois revolutions in Europe of 1848 failed, Marx wrote of the “constitution of capital,” the ambivalent, indeed self-contradictory character of “free wage labor.” In the late 20th century, the majority of humanity abandoned agriculture in favor of urban life – however in “slum cities.” How does the bourgeois revolution appear from a Marxian point of view?