Assignment title: Information
Essay Question
In Volume 1 of Capital, Marx argued that 'capital comes dripping from head to
toe, from
every pore, with blood and dirt'. Why does Marx use images of blood, monsters
and
vampires to describe colonialism and the rise of capitalism? Discuss this in
relation to the
transformation of class, race and/or gender relations, and drawing on the
notions of
primitive accumulation and/or imperialism.
Primary resources (other references on the topic is also needed in the essay.
• Marx, K. 1976, Capital I: A Critique of Political Economy, Penguin, London. (See
especially chapters 10 The Working Day' and 31 'Genesis of the Industrial
Capitalist').
• McNally, D. 2011, Monsters of the Market: Zombies, Vampires and Global
Capitalism,
Brill, Leiden.
• Neocleous, M. 2003, 'The Political Economy of the Dead: Marx's Vampires',
History of Political Thought, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 668-684.
• Federici, S. 2004, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive
Accumulation,
Autonomedia, New York.
• Humphries, J. 1990, 'Enclosure, Common Rights, and Women: The
Proletarianization of
Families in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century', Journal of
Economic
History, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 17-42.
• Linebaugh, P. 2000. The Many-headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and
the
Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Verso, London.
• Moretti, F. 1982. 'The Dialectic of Fear', New Left Review, vol. 1, no. 136, pp. 67-
85.
• Kornbluh, A. 2010, 'On Marx's Victorian Novel', Mediations, vol. 25, no. 1, pp.
15-38.
• Bieler, A; Bozkurt, S., Crook, M., Cruttenden, P. S., Erol, E; Morton, A. D.,
Tansel, C. B., & Uzgören, E. 2016, 'The enduring relevance of Rosa Luxemburg's
The
Accumulation of Capital', Journal of International Relations and Development,
vol. 19,
no. 3, pp. 420-447.
• Bieler, A. & Morton, A. D. 'Axis of Evil or Access to Diesel?: Spaces of New