In my note I made some critical comments about my students. So I think it is only fair that I report on a great classroom experience I had today. In my seminar on Marx's Capital, I began last week to assign pages for specific students to read and then lead the discussion based upon what they had read. Today a student led a discusion on the chapter titled, "Cooperation." In this chapter, Marx explains that capitalism requires that capitalists hire a certain mass of workers before they can extract themselves from the labor process and focus their attention on superintending the labor process so that they can, in turn, expand and systematize the extraction of surplus value. Once a large number of workers are brought together under a single roof, the very fact that they work together raises the relative surplus value. Marx give a number of examples of this, then points out that while the cooperation of laborers and the attendant rise in productivity are remarkable human achievements, in capitalism, this cooperation is imposed by the capitalist and is therefore experienced by the workers in an alienating way. Marx hints that cooperation can be achieved without the capitalist, and he provides some examples.
My student came to class in a coat and tie! He brought two friends to hear him. He is a business major, and as a group, business majors here are distinguished by thier general lack of enthusiasm for things intellectual and their dislike of and poor performance in economic classes. This particular student is an exception. He was initially antagonistic to Marx, but he has been impressed by Marx's remarkable brilliance and insight into the nature of capitalism. He gave an excellent presentation, complete with a good outline of the chapter, clear and concise explanations, and very concrete and interesting examples (though he did refer to a couple of movies I had not seen but the students had. Made me feel a little old! And I was a little envious too.). We had a good discussion afterwards, including discussion of the Rochdale cooperative movement, the so-called tragedy of the commons, the possibility of socialism in one country, the propagandistic attacks on indigenous peoples accused of trashing their environments, etc.
I felt very good after this class. I congratulated my student for a job well done. I should have hugged him. At the same time, I regretted that this does not happen more often, that I and all too many teachers have to deal with too many classes, too many students, and all the other problems besetting academe. But, today for a moment or two, I felt like shouting like James Cagney White Heat, "Look at me now, ma, [I'm on] top of the world."
Michael Yates