Marx's Capital, vol.1, sec. 3-4 of ch. 25 & selections from Cohen's Marx's Theory of History

Questions

1. What is constant and variable capital? What is meant by organic constitution?

2. How does Cohen's account of functional explanation address Marx's claim that it is (historical) periodicity (p. 786) that creates the law-like necessity of capital's reproduction?

3. Is Cohen doing a necessary reconstruction of Marx's account of causality with his functional explanation?

4. Cohen claims Marx's identifies "two reasons for the contraction of the working day effected by the Factory Acts" (p. 294), but it seems that Marx's chapter of the working day has more than two (it is multilayered). How do we address this?

5. Does the industrial reserve army functions as a unifying mechanism? Or does it group different population whose unity as a functional mechanism requires further explanation?

6. What is the logic of Cohen's account of functional explanation in Marxism? Under what conditions does Cohen's interpretation makes sense? Does it make Marxist analysis useful, attractive, etc.? Under what conditions does it not? We can use the industrial reserve army as the example to address this.

7. How does this account of functional explanation differ or contrast from Durkheim's?

8. Is antagonism the/a function of the general laws of capitalism or is it the effect of various interests caused by (the laws of) capital?

Durkheim The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Ch. 3 and Ch. 5

 October 15th, 2026

Questions

1. (119): to demonstrate the utility….do not create it.” Is Durkheim dichotomizing origins from purpose? And, given pg. 124, so what is this new distinction between usefulness and origins? So which is the real Durkheim? Function/utility vs. origin/cause

2. (124): “If it lacks utility…return.” What would be some examples of social facts that have continued to have utility versus one that no longer has utility but has persisted?

3. For Durkheim what kind of explanatory work can function do? What would make utility genuinely explanatory of persistence rather than merely correlated with it?

4. (124-125): Seems as though survival overlaps with harmony. Is harmony something presupposed here? Is it a principle? Is it inferred? Esp. compared to a Darwinian account of evolution. 

5. (104): Durkheim analogizes the role of the statesman to the doctor. If we want to pursue the intersection of sociology and social philosophy, ought we emulate the doctor?

6. What is a collective sentiment?

7. (99): Individual v. common consciousness: What is common consciousness? Common goal? Are there things common amongst people? How does this common consciousness influence the individual?

8. Is “function” a normative concept or descriptive? Clarify relationship between descriptive and normative.

Discussion:

• Beginning with social theory question (#8), what is the standard reading of Durkheim?

• Must be descriptive, but doesn't the language of pathology imply a normative failing?

• May help to place Durkheim on a spectrum, where Parsons is more functionalist. Yes, D is interested in utility and function, but he doesn’t think everything is working as it “should” or functioning “correctly”

• Functional theory v. conflict theory

• Clearly, D doesn’t want to be teleological, but nevertheless there is a presumption of something harmonious. So, he is definitely in some sense interested in preservation of social life. 

• Related to the question of disciplinary boundaries, p.104.

• When D says he wants to maintain a sense of the norm as externally imposed (104), is D trying to get away from normativity?

• Seems that function has an evaluative connotation. So clearly functions are dynamic

• But Durkheim does seem to want to establish some objective normativity, especially in judging or deciding what to do given facts

• Example of crime. Given that D disagrees with Comte and Spencer, Durkheim is using crime or criminality to draw distinctions and rethink the place of punishment. 

• Society is not, for Durkheim, the sum of its individual parts (individualism or individual consciousnesses). Societal nature cannot be reduced to human nature (organism)

• Wonder if there is an analogy here, that when scientists or biologists explain organisms in terms of equilibrium, then sociology somehow needs to understand harmony/equilibrium as a principle of the social system. Further question: is equilibrium or social stability a minimum principle or presupposition or is it actually more complicated? I.e.: does society tend toward its function, equilibrium?

• Durkheim is still trying to address anomy and societal war or struggle. Has a commitment to understand why or how social forces create society to collapse

• Okay so what is an example of something whose function has been lost but its social fact does not exist.

• On 124, Durkheim seems to be making a strong claim, that if something is not useful, its actually harmful. Insofar as our appendices are not useful, they are harmful. What is a social version of this? 

• Definition of utility, something that contributes to social persistence, harmony. 

• If something disturbs the normal operation of social functions (90).

• Efficient cause is one thing, function is something else (123),

• Causation and function, keep these separate. But persistence and utility, these are the same, or persistence and origin.

• Durkheim is not explaining history, he’s explaining persistence (not origination). 

• Forward looking-backward looking question about method: page 135.

• Causality without origination? Causality of persistence vs Causality of origin?

Fall '26 Tentative Reading Plan

Listed by week number of term followed by reading:

 

3. Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Ch. 3 and Ch. 5 selections [~23 pages below]
     - Ch. 3 pages: 97-104 (plus optional: 86-87, 94-97)
     - Ch. 5 pages: 119-125, 127-129, 134-138, 142-144
     - Recommended: Durkheim, "Two Laws of Penal Evolution" (1900) [~25 pages]

4. Marx, Capital, volume 1 (1867), pp. 781-794 (Section 3 of Ch. 25 on capital accumulation: surplus population and the reserve army of the unemployed)
    - Cohen (on Marx), Karl Marx's Theory of History, pp. 278-280, 293-296
    - Marx, Capital, other selections TBD

5. Nietzsche, GM (1887), II.12 (and other sections of GM to be announced)

 

6. No meeting this week [or else meet without CK]

Then, with some methodological questions in view, we start on Foucault:

7. Foucault, Punitive Society (1973), Lecture one (3 Jan) and Lecture thirteen (28 Mar)

8. Foucault, D&P (1975), I.1, plus other selections

9. No meeting due to holiday

10. Foucault, "SMBD" (1976), selections on civil war from Lectures 1-3 (or all three lectures in turn)

11 (tbd). Foucault, HSv1/WtK/VdS (1976), selections on method, read IV.1 (Objective) and IV. 2 (Method); focus will be on postulates on power (p. 94ff.) and methodological rules (p. 98ff.), plus remind me to distribute a table tracking Foucault's transforming conception of the power across writings in the 1970s.