Special Issue of Workplace Journal on ‘Marx, Engels and the Critique of Academic Labor’

Karen Gregory and I have edited a special issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor, which focuses on the contribution that Marx and Engels’ work can make to the critical study of academic labour. This is also something I explored in my earlier article for Workplace, ‘Writing about academic labor‘. In addition to editing the issue, Karen and I contributed an extended, introductory article and Karen took the opportunity to interview Stanley Aronowitz, who was also interviewed in 1998 for the first issue of Workplace.

The Call for Papers was first announced here in December 2014 and I’d like to thank the authors for their contributions (and patience), as well as Karen, who has been a pleasure to work with, and Stephen Petrina, the general editor of Workplace, for his encouragement and support. Here’s the Table of Contents:

Articles

Marx, Engels and the Critique of Academic Labor	PDF
Karen Lynn Gregory, Joss Winn

Towards an Orthodox Marxian Reading of Subsumption(s) of Academic Labour under Capital	PDF
Krystian Szadkowski

Re-engineering Higher Education: The Subsumption of Academic Labour and the Exploitation of Anxiety	PDF
Richard Hall, Kate Bowles

Taxi Professors: Academic Labour in Chile, a Critical-Practical Response to the Politics of Worker Identity	PDF
Elisabeth Simbürger, Mike Neary

Marxism and Open Access in the Humanities: Turning Academic Labor against Itself	PDF
David Golumbia

Labour in the Academic Borderlands: Unveiling the Tyranny of Neoliberal Policies	PDF
Antonia Darder, Tom G. Griffiths

Interviews

Jobless Higher Ed: Revisited, An Interview with Stanley Aronowitz	PDF
Stanley Aronowitz, Karen Lynn Gregory

Complete archive of Marx and Engels’ papers now online

Hand written fragment of the original Communist Manifesto (click to download archival PDF)

“As from today, the papers of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels can be viewed free of charge and in their entirety through the catalogue website of the International of Social History.

The writings of Marx and Engels are among the most influential in world history. In the twentieth century much of the world was ruled by regimes claiming to be Marxist, and the writings of Marx and Engels continue to play an important role in thinking on capitalism, labour, economic crises and revolutions. The Manifest der kommunistischen Partei has been translated into almost every language.

Many people would regard it as a historical sensation to be able to see the original documents, though you have to be particularly determined if you really want to read them: Marx’s handwriting in particular is virtually illegible.

The digitized documents can be browsed and each item viewed in full-screen mode. All the documents can be downloaded as a PDF file and printed. Go to socialhistory.org for more information.”

Direct link to online catalogue of Marx-Engels papers.

Marx-Engels papers completely available online now

MEGA2 project to complete “a historical-critical edition of the complete works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels”.

As an Archivist for Amnesty International, I visited the impressive International Institute of Social History in the Netherlands, which holds the collections of many trade unions and NGOs, as well as revolutionary Marxists. The “particular focus” of the IISH is the “long term global shifts in labour relations”.

I wish I could read German…

Call for Papers: Marx, Engels and the Critique of Academic Labor

UPDATE 02/02/15

We’ve received and accepted some excellent responses to this CfP but we’re hoping for more. Consequently, the deadline for abstracts has been extended until the 1st March. All other dates remain the same.

If you’re thinking of submitting an abstract please note that we’re specifically looking for “…papers that acknowledge the foundational work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for labor theory and engage closely and critically with the critique of political economy.”

Where we’ve had to decline a submission it’s because the author has not made clear how they intend to engage with Marx and Engels’ work at the level that we’re seeking for this special issue. If in doubt, feel free to get in touch. Thank you.

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Karen Gregory and I will be guest editors for a special issue of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor. Here’s the Call for Papers [download for printing]:

Marx, Engels and the Critique of Academic Labor

Special Issue of Workplace
Guest Editors: Karen Gregory & Joss Winn

Articles in Workplace have repeatedly called for increased collective organisation in opposition to a disturbing trajectory: individual autonomy is decreasing, contractual conditions are worsening, individual mental health issues are rising, and academic work is being intensified. Despite our theoretical advances and concerted practical efforts to resist these conditions, the gains of the 20th century labor movement are diminishing and the history of the university appears to be on a determinate course. To date, this course is often spoken of in the language of “crisis.”

While crisis may indeed point us toward the contemporary social experience of work and study within the university, we suggest that there is one response to the transformation of the university that has yet to be adequately explored: A thoroughgoing and reflexive critique of academic labor and its ensuing forms of value. By this, we mean a negative critique of academic labor and its role in the political economy of capitalism; one which focuses on understanding the basic character of ‘labor’ in capitalism as a historically specific social form. Beyond the framework of crisis, what productive, definite social relations are actively resituating the university and its labor within the demands, proliferations, and contradictions of capital?

We aim to produce a negative critique of academic labor that not only makes transparent these social relations, but repositions academic labor within a new conversation of possibility.

We are calling for papers that acknowledge the foundational work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for labor theory and engage closely and critically with the critique of political economy. Marx regarded his discovery of the dual character of labor in capitalism (i.e. concrete and abstract) as one of his most important achievements and “the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns.” With this in mind, we seek contributions that employ Marx’s and Engels’ critical categories of labor, value, the commodity, capital, etc. in reflexive ways which illuminate the role and character of academic labor today and how its existing form might be, according to Marx, abolished, transcended and overcome (aufheben).

Contributions:

A variety of forms and approaches, demonstrating a close engagement with Marx’s theory and method: Theoretical critiques, case studies, historical analyses, (auto-)ethnographies, essays, and narratives are all welcome. Contributors from all academic disciplines are encouraged.
Any reasonable length will be considered. Where appropriate they should adopt a consistent style (e.g. Chicago, Harvard, MLA, APA).
Will be Refereed.
Contributions and questions should be sent to:

Joss Winn (jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk) and Karen Gregory (kgregory@ccny.cuny.edu)

Publication timetable

Fully referenced ABSTRACTS by 1st February 2015
Authors notified by 1st March 2015
Deadline for full contributions: 1st September 2015
Authors notified of initial reviews by 1st November 2015
Revised papers due: 10th January 2016
Publication date: March 2016.

Possible themes that contributions may address include, but are not limited to:

The Promise of Autonomy and The Nature of Academic “Time”The Laboring “Academic” Body

Technology and Circuits of Value Production

Managerial Labor and Productions of Surplus

Markets of Value: Debt, Data, and Student Production

The Emotional Labor of Restructuring: Alt-Ac Careers and Contingent Labor

The Labor of Solidarity and the Future of Organization

Learning to Labor: Structures of Academic Authority and Reproduction

Teaching, Learning, and the Commodity-Form

The Business of Higher Education and Fictitious Capital

The Pedagogical Labor of Anti-RacismProduction and Consumption: The Academic Labor of Students

The Division of Labor In Higher Education

Hidden Abodes of Academic Production

The Formal and Real Subsumption of the University

Alienation, Abstraction and Labor Inside the University

Gender, Race, and Academic Wages

New Geographies of Academic Labor and Academic Markets

The University, the State and Money: Forms of the Capital Relation

New Critical Historical Approaches to the Study of Academic Labor

About the Editors:

Karen Gregory

kgregory@ccny.cuny.edu @claudikincaid

Karen Gregory is lecturer in Sociology at the Center for Worker Education/Division of Interdisciplinary Studies at the City College of New York, where she heads the CCNY City Lab. She is an ethnographer and theory-building scholar whose research focuses on the entanglement of contemporary spirituality, labor precarity, and entrepreneurialism, with an emphasis on the role of the laboring body. Karen co-founded the CUNY Digital Labor Working Group and her work has been published in Women’s Studies Quarterly, Women and Performance, The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, and Contexts.

Joss Winn

jwinn@lincoln.ac.uk @josswinn

Joss Winn is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at the University of Lincoln, UK. His research extends broadly to a critique of the political economy of higher education. Currently, his writing and teaching is focused on the history and political economy of science and technology in higher education, its affordances for and impact on academic labor, and the way by which academics can control the means of knowledge production through co-operative and ultimately post-capitalist forms of work and democracy. His article, Writing About Academic Labor, is published in Workplace 25, 1-15.