Karl Marx turned 200 years old this year. And everyone is talking about him. Not just on the political left, but also in the bourgeois press. »Was Marx right after all?,« DIE ZEIT asked on the occasion of his birthday, and referred to him as »the prophet of crises.« Meanwhile, DER SPIEGEL rand the headline: »A spectre has returned.« And the leading bourgeois newspapers in the anglo-Saxon world went even further. The Financial Times‘ Marx anniversary article ran under the headline »Why Marx is more relevant than ever«, and the New York Times headlined: »Happy Birthday, Karl Marx! You Were Right«.

The session will introduce Marxism as the foundation of Critical Psychology. The focus is on those particular Marxist categories which are essential for it: First of all, the notion of the general, phylogenetical freedom of humankind which is derived from its specific evolutionary development and the (second) »qualitative leap« (Klaus Holzkamp) it embodies in evolutionary history. Secondly, the dialectical anthropology, i.e. an understanding of humans as the »ensemble of all social relations« (Karl Marx) whose collective good or bad behavior (also) depends on the social circumstances in which they live. And thirdly, the analysis and critique of the political economy of historic and contemporary capitalism, understood as the objective, foundational social structure for all human emotions, cognition, motivations and actions.

The session is open to beginners with little foreknowledge in Marxist theory as well as those already more familiar with it.