Abstract
This article addresses the evolving challenges in teaching radical political economy in contemporary economics curricula, where traditional Marxist perspectives are increasingly marginalized. I propose a pedagogical framework centered on multimedia integration to revitalize the teaching of topics in radical political economy. Through an exploration of popular movies and documentaries, this article elucidates how innovative approaches can be used to engage students and foster critical thinking. By leveraging multimedia resources, educators can effectively convey Marxian concepts, provoke meaningful discussions, and inspire students to critically examine economic systems and envision alternative socioeconomic models.
1. Introduction
Topics in radical political economy have increasingly shifted out of the core course curriculum in economics in many prominent universities across the globe. Many courses that include the term “political economy” in their name contain a range of research articles as part of the syllabus that highlights contemporary econometric techniques and game-theoretic models used in explaining issues in political economy. Although these innovative techniques are useful, references to the original writings of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx, who are often considered the three most important figures in political economy, are rarely included in the course content of many leading universities. 1 This has also affected the teaching of radical political economy, especially the works of Karl Marx and other Marxian scholars. As efforts to teach heterodox perspectives face increasing challenges from academics and administrators, tools and strategies for presenting alternative viewpoints must also adapt to the rapidly evolving teaching landscape. These challenges include adapting to a more inquiry-based pedagogical approach, designing questions that develop critical thinking skills, transitioning to hybrid and online courses, and utilizing resources beyond textbooks and research articles to pique students’ interests. There is a reasonable consensus that nontraditional interactive teaching videos and discussions promote active learning as opposed to lecture-based teaching (Brame 2017). In this article, I discuss specifically the latter issue and explore how the use of popular media (especially movies and documentaries) can aid in teaching subjects that are concerned with radical political economy. 2 I discuss these applications with reference to two upper-level undergraduate courses, namely, Marxian Economics and Capitalism and Socialism taught at the University of Utah. Both these courses were provided as 3-credit upper-level courses for students pursuing undergraduate programs at the University of Utah and offered as an elective for students pursuing a master’s degree at the University of Utah. As upper-level courses, most of the students enrolled in “Marxian Economics” and/or “Capitalism and Socialism” were familiar with the basic concepts and economic jargon used in “Principles of Microeconomics” and “Principles of Macroeconomics,” although these are not prerequisites for the course. Both courses had approximately 40 students majoring in Economics and other interdisciplinary fields such as Environmental Studies, Health Sciences, History, and Mathematics. The Marxian Economics course was an in-person course with two 80-minute lectures every week, whereas the Capitalism and Socialism course was an asynchronous online course where a combination of online recorded lecture videos, movies, and documentaries were posted every week.
Some critiques of Marxian economics have pointed out that Marxian writings are only popular because of historical accidents, they do not have real economic value, and hence lose any instrumental value in terms of training students for their future careers (Bailey 1992; Magness and Makovi 2023). Furthermore, there are concerns that the teachings of Marx are only journalistic and promote student radicalization (Lindsay 2022). Apart from the opposition of academics, bureaucratic structures, governmental pressure, and the market’s needs are some of the other reasons why such a move toward deradicalization of economics has taken place (Clarke and Mearman 2003; Thorpe 2009; Weisskopf 2014). As a response, many academics who have focused on providing a more diverse economics curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate levels have highlighted relevant issues and teaching frameworks concerning teaching radical political economy. This includes discussions on the issue of faculty and administrative opposition to including such courses, the importance of discussion-based assignments to keep room for contending perspectives, and highlighting how students respond to such courses (Barone 1991; McIntyre and Van Horn 2011; Mavroudeas 2013; Sculos and Walsh 2015). In agreement with this literature, I argue that the impetus toward deradicalization deskills the students by limiting critical appraisal, diluting the history of economic thought, and promoting a narrow research approach. While academic research in microeconomics and macroeconomics has expanded beyond simplistic assumptions laid out in foundational textbooks, the undergraduate textbooks used for teaching (especially in Principles courses) still retain unrealistic assumptions such as perfect competition in product and labor markets and provide less scope for the discussion of social classes as a fundamental unit of analysis. 3 Radical political economics thus offers fundamental, contending views that are essential to the philosophy of economics, just as differing perspectives, such as Classical Mechanics and Quantum Mechanics, and Frequentists and Bayesian statistical inference, are important in other fields. Contending perspectives in economics also offers more than just a critique of the neoclassical system. Differing perspectives teach students relevant skills such as improving writing with a critical approach, discussing “big-think questions,” and promoting research skills (McIntyre and Van Horn 2011; Lavoie 2015). These skills are not just useful for a career as an academic researcher but also for industry jobs as the future of work changes rapidly (Dumitru and Halpern 2023). Moreover, strictly adhering to neoclassical perspectives as the workhorse model of a standard economy is both unscientific and exclusionary (Stilwell 2005). Despite the existence of textbooks that provide alternative approaches to economic foundations, such as Bowles (2003) and Lee and Jo (2017), most introductory textbooks utilize a very standard pattern. 4 Similarly, for certain upper-level courses such as “Comparative Economic Systems” and “International Political Economy,” which are also taught in fewer universities, there are scant references to the work of Marxian scholars in the syllabi. Quite a few textbooks in this arena of Comparative Economic Systems, such as Rosser and Rosser (2018), provide a balanced approach to studying capitalism, whereas many other textbooks, such as Gregory and Stuart (2014), primarily suggest how capitalism has worked in raising incomes and surviving as an economic system while socialism has failed or has always given rise to the dictatorship of the totalitarian form. 5 In the few universities and colleges that teach courses such as “Marxian Economics,” “Radical Political Economy,” “History of Economic Thought,” and “Capitalism and Socialism,” considerable variation exists in terms of the resources that are used. 6
In this article, I provide some ways in which courses dealing with topics in radical political economy can utilize popular media to complement existing textbooks and research papers. A major thrust of teaching these courses was to improve students’ critical writing skills and research skills. An additional component of these courses is to deconstruct the existing models and applications that students have learned in Principles of Microeconomics and Principles of Macroeconomics. 7 Using available multimedia tools, such as documentaries, movies, interviews, and audio clips, I discuss how to motivate issues at the beginning of each week’s lecture, design specific assignment questions, and encourage class discussions on topics in radical political economy. Only selective multimedia references are discussed in this article, and an extended list of such videos is provided in table 1. Some selected assessment questions and student responses are provided in table 2, which shows how students provided constructive criticism on many topics. I discuss the clips in roughly the order I would present them in class and summarize the context and interpretation that I provide the students for each clip. I also provide some details on specific learning outcomes that can be outlined and achieved based on the shared media. In the context of radicalizing teaching pedagogy, this article aims to speak to the broader audience interested in developing nontraditional teaching pedagogy but also speaks to the specific interests of educators who teach subjects that are centered around radical political economy.
Selected Topics and Videos.
Selected Assignment Questions and Responses.
The article is divided into four sections. Sections 2, 3, and 4 highlight the topics that were covered in teaching the course Marxian Economics. Section 2 discusses the videos used first to create a historiography of Karl Marx and discusses the working conditions in Britain during industrialization. In section 3, I describe some videos that can be used to understand key concepts such as absolute and relative surplus value and the nature of work during the mass production era. Section 4 provides a discussion of multimedia that can be useful in teaching extensions of Marxism, especially applied to issues in the Global South, such as the agrarian question in India. Section 5 discusses the topics of radical political economy explored in teaching the course Capitalism and Socialism. Finally, in section 6, I provide some concluding remarks highlighting the need to utilize innovative teaching pedagogies and provide a rich and detailed list of videos that can be used to design and implement such courses.
2. Motivating the Young Marx
In teaching courses in economics, I have often found that a brief introduction to the lives of economists makes a huge impact in raising students’ curiosity about the subject. In this context, courses such as Marxian Economics can be introduced through a biographical sketch of Karl Marx. I have found this to be especially helpful when the class consists of students from various disciplines. 8 In the first week of lectures, the students were thus familiarized with the origin of the Heretic, who played such an important role in analyzing the capitalist mode of production. Most modern textbooks characterize Marx’s method as stemming from three related aspects: French politics, German philosophy, and English political economy. However, when we proceed with teaching, the theoretical concepts often overshadow the historical and political-economic context of Marx’s writings. An ahistorical teaching of Marxist concepts, especially for an undergraduate course, runs the risk of being both dry and, at the same time, ignorant of Marx’s dialectical understanding. It is at the beginning of a Marxian economics course itself that a more realistic depiction is espoused. Thus, in teaching the first few weeks of such a course, a useful movie that I shared with the students was The Young Karl Marx directed by Raoul Peck, which is based on Karl Marx’s life (Peck 2017). The movie provides a succinct depiction of Karl Marx’s journey, and, being a two-hour movie, it provides a good assignment topic for students, which can be further discussed during class hours in two classes in a week. However, before introducing students to this movie, I simply define two important concepts: the means of production and the relations of production using the standard textbook definitions. These terms are then used during the discussion of the movie to highlight how the relations of production and the means of production are specific to the historical context and, in turn, define what social classes mean within the Marxist dialectic. I provide certain examples of how the ownership of means of production and the existing relations of production played a role in feudal societies and how they can be used to discuss more contemporary capitalist society. 9 There are a few scenes in the movie that were especially useful in creating topics for discussion. The first five minutes of the movie are about the issue of wood theft in the former Rhineland. Before starting off the discussion, I provide a simplistic view of the different social classes that could be found in nineteenth-century Rhineland. Going with the focus of the scene, we discuss three social classes of the time: Moselle peasants, Rhenish landowners, and the Nobility in Düsseldorf. 10 By focusing on these main players and their motivations, we can better understand the dynamics of the wood theft issue in the context of the broader social and economic tensions of the time. I found it quite useful to start a discussion with the question “What determines theft?” The usual discussion answers proceed toward suggesting that it is the laws laid down by the legal system that determine the ownership of property, the recognition of theft, and the degree of punishment. Here, however, is why this piece of the video is important: Marx is not talking about commodities sold at supermarkets, but about a natural resource, that is, wood. As the discussion continues, students present their opinions about natural resources as a different form of property compared to other private property. The next step of the discussion moves to a much more critical question, which is left unexplored in the movie: “Is stealing from standing timber or fruits from someone’s garden the same as picking up fallen wood?” The answer to this is a resounding “No” in the classroom. It is possible that if this discussion was followed, most of the students would agree that it should not be a crime to use fallen wood. Why then did the peasants in the former Rhineland receive punishment? The direct answer to that is simply the fact that the law prohibiting the collection of fallen wood was determined by who owned the land on which the forests grew and what the definition of property theft was. Finally, the discussion transitions into questioning what happens when essential means of production, such as arable land or water sources, are owned by a particular social class, allowing them to control who has access to these resources, employ others to work on them, and profit from their sale in the market. This ownership structure highlights the difference between private property, which can be used to generate wealth and exert control, and personal possessions, which are primarily for individual use. In class discussions based on this module, one of the questions was to test this simple concept (see quiz question 1 and discussion question 1 in table 2).
There are other relevant scenes from The Young Karl Marx that were used as discussion topics. One of the scenes in the movie highlights the condition of the working class, especially in a Manchester cotton-spinning mill. This is the first video in the series of provided multimedia that discusses Industrial capitalism in the United Kingdom during the colonization period in the nineteenth century and examines the production of commodities, specifically cotton. Before discussing this scene, I provide some background on the different social classes in this setting as compared to the previous scenario involving the Moselle peasants. Simple geographical maps are provided of how cotton product manufacturing in the colonial period in the United Kingdom was carried out with imports of raw cotton from the colonies. I also provide some background information about the availability of cheap labor, the impact of power looms on the cotton industry, and the use of steam power in running cotton mills and textile-producing industries. Focusing on the scene, I discuss the altercation between the mill worker and the mill owner in the Ermen and Engels Mill, which was functional in nineteenth-century England. The scene starts with the factory owner reprimanding workers who disrupted production by cutting off the belts of the steam looms. Following this, a worker asserts that the machines created inhumane working conditions and that many workers have faced injuries while working on these machines. Although the entire scene is about five minutes long, it brings out the important topic of class antagonism and the inhumane working conditions in the early phases of British industrialization. Discussions about the length of the working day provide an important introduction to understanding absolute surplus value extraction that is taken up in the later part of the course. The confrontation between the factory owner and the worker primarily informs the audience about how cheap labor is easily disposable as compared to relatively expensive machinery that is owned or rented by the capitalist. This is evident from the discussion between the mill owners and the workers. It is here that the division of social classes into the bourgeoisie and proletariat is discussed. Concerning the proletariat or the working class, I provide students with the names of some contemporary occupations, such as healthcare workers, educators, Hollywood actors, and financial data analysts, and ask them to suggest which of these occupations they believe count as part of the working class. The most common student responses include healthcare workers and educators as part of the working class while providing mixed views about how they perceive Hollywood actors and financial data analysts. 11 The key definition of social classes is then discussed further to suggest the link between class and functional income distribution. Furthermore, through this short clip, students are also informed of the important role played by Friedrich Engels in publishing many of Marx’s works that examined the conditions of the working class. This scene also introduces students to the way Marx’s work evolved historically. While initially, the issue of wood theft in Rhineland brought out the discussions about the power of the state, the nobility, and the exercise of law, in discussing labor relations in the cotton mills of Manchester, Marx was taking on two major social classes and the antagonism between these classes.
In concluding the introduction to Marx’s work, I discuss one more scene from The Young Karl Marx that captures how Marx viewed the role of labor in production. This scene depicts Marx and Engels meeting a British industrialist, Thomas Naylor. When asked about the usage of child labor in his factories, Naylor suggests that “without child labor, we would price ourselves out of the market,” to which Marx replies “No, Sir, this is how the existing relations of production work.” Previously, when discussing the altercation between the mill worker and the mill owner in the Ermen and Engels Mill, the students had already been exposed to how human labor was mostly seen as easily replaceable and the health and working conditions of the mill worker were secondary to the interests of the bourgeoisie. The current scene depicts the stark reasoning provided by an industrialist for employing children as workers in a factory which is seen as a rational decision on the part of an industrialist who does not want to be outcompeted by the market (if all industries employed children as workers and paid a lower cost than the industry which did not undertake the same approach would lose out). The conversation between Thomas Naylor (an imaginary character in the movie) and Karl Marx provides a deeper understanding of capitalism from the point of view of the two social classes. This scene is also relevant in showing the extent to which capitalist interests can go. To provide some background to this discussion, I reiterate how the existing relations of production allowed industrialists to employ children without any legal barriers. Many useful discussions can be framed around this scene. The one particular discussion in the class that was taken up in relation to this scene was about examining the use of child labor in factories. Providing some more background, I first discuss how the advent of machinery allowed factory owners to employ workers regardless of age and sex. Furthermore, the existing Factory Act of the 1830s allowed children under the age of 13 years to be employed for no longer than 6 hours a day. To circumvent this issue, certified surgeons were often coaxed into overstating children’s age (this is discussed in volume 1, chapter 15 of Das Kapital on the “Appropriation of Supplementary Labor Power by Capital: The Employment of Women and Children”). Transitioning from this, the class discussion moved toward a brief dialogue on how child labor came to an end. Students provided their own opinions, which ranged from how it was immoral to employ children to the effect of organized labor unions and labor laws in addressing this issue. Good questions that can be raised in discussions concern “Why is ‘property’ such an important concept in the Marxist framework?” and then refer to the issues of the wood theft laws and the Moselle peasants in Rhineland. A critical assessment of the movie would also serve as a good assessment question for weekly quizzes covering the origins of Marx’s ideas and the historical context in which Marx’s work arose. Such questions would also be useful in teaching students how to write without depending on Artificial Intelligence tools and constructing their interpretations from a movie.
The Young Karl Marx provides a great introduction to a class on Marxian economics. This movie can be coupled with existing introductory chapters from textbooks to illustrate some key concepts (chapter 2 of Basu [2022] was used along with this movie in the first week of the course). The wood theft issue lays bare the key concept that capitalism was born out of theft and coercion, rather than a somewhat presupposed natural evolution. Transitioning to the cotton mill scene provides the students with a closer view of what the social classes looked like in the nineteenth century in Manchester, England, and highlights the class antagonism within an industry. Examining this allows students to clarify key concepts such as the availability of cheap labor and how the general interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat differed, all of which are key to understanding class antagonism. The issue of employing child labor is a useful way of examining the extent to which capitalist greed can go to ensure the cheapening of costs and maintain a steady stream of profits. The latter discussion also provides students with a good introduction to labor laws, especially the Factory Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act and helps them understand the impact of labor organizations. In addition to the discussion questions, there are relevant short-answer or multiple-choice questions that were used in the weekly quizzes for this module. In table 2 (see question 2 and question 3), I provide the details of average class responses to some of these questions.
3. Introducing Marxian Terminologies
With some introduction to key Marxist concepts, such as understanding social classes, the impact of technology on factory production, class antagonism, and the impact of labor laws, students are now provided with videos that depict the mass production system that pervaded US markets starting in the early 1900s. My teaching objective through these videos is to discuss the impact of technological change on workers, the appropriation of surplus value, and the response of workers to inhumane working conditions during the mass production era. It is crucial to first provide some background of Marxian concepts and use multimedia as a complement to provide a justification and intuition behind these underlying concepts. More importantly, many of these scenes can also be used as materials for discussions, quizzes, and examinations.
To start with this, I used chapter 3 of Understanding Capital by Duncan Foley (1986) to lay out the differences between the different types of labor and provide a definition of abstract, simple, social, and necessary labor time. I also provide some examples of how the Marxian surplus approach differs from the Neoclassical approach toward examining the value of certain commodities. For instance, a classic example that I use is based on the Diamond-Water paradox. 12 In the course of this discussion, students are also provided with simple Excel-based numerical examples to understand the Marxian labor theory of value and the appropriation of surplus. Of course, the teaching of the three ratios (the rate of surplus value, the organic composition of capital, and the rate of profit) is something that every textbook representation of Marxian analysis describes, but the addition of multimedia complements the theory and provides a more lucid understanding of these concepts. After using standard textbook materials, I used a series of videos from the movie Modern Times directed by Charlie Chaplin (1936) and the movie Norma Rae directed by Martin Ritt (1985) to complement the textbook. Modern Times is well known as a movie that describes the alienation of workers and the commodification of labor during the peak of mass assembly line production. But beyond that, it can also be used effectively in introducing the concepts of relative surplus value extraction and absolute surplus value extraction. Three important scenes were shared with the class, followed by discussions about how these scenes cater to the concepts studied in class.
The first scene I discuss is the “Factory” scene, which lays out the nature of assembly line work. Charlie Chaplin’s hilarious act shows him employed in a factory to tighten bolts. True to the description provided in Das Kapital of workers in a mechanized factory working as “cogs in a wheel,” this scene depicts the nature of atomized and uniform work that every worker in the factory performs. This essential quality of the work makes workers easily replaceable. Moreover, the nature of the work itself is not highly skilled. While tightening the bolts, Charlie Chaplin is shown to be so engrossed that he ultimately becomes a part of the machine. The scene then goes on to show a frenzied Charlie Chaplin, who continues his repetitive act of tightening bolts on everything that he comes across, including people in the factory and a fire hydrant on the road. The second clip from this movie is the “Feeding Machine” scene, where the factory owners install a machine that takes care of feeding workers and cleaning after to prevent factory workers from spending too much time on lunch during work hours. This scene highlights how factory owners can increase the amount of labor time invested by a worker each day simply by increasing the limit of the working day.
After watching these two scenes, the discussion kicked off by first asking students to illustrate the things that they saw entering the production process in this factory. Students’ answers included the use of the screwdriver, the conveyor belt, and the oil used to lubricate the belts. Students also suggest that the workers’ labor (understood as the task of tightening the bolts) is also seen as part of the production process but not as of the same kind as the conveyor belt or the screwdriver. With this distinction in mind, at least two of the components of total surplus value, that is, means of production and productive labor, can be elucidated. Furthermore, the discussion is extended by examining the issue of “de-skilling” of labor that is employed in repetitive tasks such as tightening the bolt. I provide links to Harry Braverman’s work on the deskilling hypothesis (especially, Braverman 1998), which is optional for students to explore. Discussions were also taken up about whether any contemporary industrial work is similar to the nature of the work shown in this clip, that is, fundamentally atomized work that is less skill-intensive and where workers can be easily replaced. This resulted in discussions about contemporary forms of work in different sectors. Finally, between the two scenes (the Factory scene and the Feeding Machine scene), the two concepts of increasing surplus value through an increase in absolute surplus value versus an increase in relative surplus value were described. 13 While the Feeding Machine scene is a relatively simple explanation of increasing the length of the working day and absolute surplus value extraction, the mechanization of the workforce, as depicted in the Factory scene, depicts the effect of increased mechanization and therefore is explored further during the discussion.
A key question that has spurred a good debate in the past is how mechanization of work would affect surplus value extraction when the working day is fixed. With some more background in understanding the creation of surplus and the distinction between constant capital (c), variable capital (v), and surplus value (s), students also had the tools to analyze the effects of increased mechanization on the three ratios as a first step. Specifically, the discussion of mechanization from this scene can be used to illustrate how mechanization yields a threefold change: increasing the rate of surplus value extraction via increasing the organic composition of capital, increasing the productivity of the workers, and in some instances, deskilling workers. 14
A crucial part of understanding the labor process is also to discuss the issue of labor agency. While many videos that I have discussed thus far inform students about the importance of worker organization, none of these videos explore the creation or the workings of a union. This is critical since the bargaining arrangements between the union and the employer are important concepts in labor economics, labor studies, and human resource management, which are important for students’ professional growth. From this perspective, in teaching the Marxian Economics course, one of the modules concentrated on the working of unions, examining briefly the history of American labor movements and the work of early unions. To pique students’ interest, I used clips from the movie Norma Rae. This movie depicts the real story of union organizer and activist Crystal Lee Sutton (played by Sally Field as the character Norma Rae), who worked as a textile mill worker. In the early 1970s, textile mill workers were one of the few non-unionized segments of the working class. The movie showcases the issues faced by workers in a particular factory and how attempts to unionize were met with management retaliation and opposition. During the discussions, key questions regarding the role of labor unions, the impact they have had on fair working conditions, and the impact of the post-1980s Thatcher-Reagan era on unionization were discussed. 15 There are a few video clips from this movie that can set the tone for good discussions. The first clip that we discussed in class showed the attempts by labor activist Reuben (played by Ron Leibman) to create a Textile Workers’ Union (which eventually became part of the Textile Workers Union of America). One of the scenes also depicts how the management would use tactics such as hanging the union flyers too high on the notice board or removing the flyers to prevent their workers from joining unions. In class discussions, we engaged in talking about other ways by which businesses might act to prevent organized workers’ unions. This is important, not only because every student in the Marxian economics course was also inevitably a student of labor history but also because some of these students worked in part-time jobs in the service sector themselves, making it essential for them to be aware of such practices. Eventually, these discussions also highlight the challenge of achieving solidarity among workers. 16
In popular media, many movies show the working of unions but in a very monolithic way. In that respect, Norma Rae provides a more realistic description that cuts through the intersectionality between class, gender, and race. In a limited way, I discussed these issues with the students, highlighting that while one of the fundamental motives of a union is to ensure benefits to the working class, there could be issues such as sexism, racism, and discrimination toward immigrants, which themselves transformed the responsibilities of labor unions. As shown in the movie, Norma Rae’s character faces blatant sexism and character assassination from the management as she tries to organize workers into a union. Another video clip shows Norma Rae retaliating against the management’s attempt to crush unionization. The management tries to provoke white workers by posting letters that suggest that Black workers would sabotage the entire factory by leading the union’s leadership and dominating the White workers. Through the complex interplay of racism and classism, this video clip provides a realistic description of issues in labor history. 17 The final scene, with the workers shutting down the machines in solidarity with Norma Rae as she is fired from the job, showcases the issue of work stoppages, which is one of the forms of worker resistance. While the class discussions did not entirely go into the details of the effects of work stoppages and the contemporary shift in the bargaining power of unions, these could be areas in which multiple discussions can be initiated.
4. Extensions of the Marxian Method and Issues in the Global South
While the foundations of Marxian economics coming from Das Kapital are a significant part of teaching radical political economy, teaching the extensions of the Marxist method is as important, if not more important. These extensions can be in many fields, such as understanding Marxian ecology, agrarian political economy, and Marxist feminist literature. In all these extensions, a key focus is to highlight the need to develop an alternative framework that is grounded in history and provides an analytically different point of view. However, stories of the Global South are often understudied in traditional undergraduate textbooks. 18 Thus, from a historically grounded and decolonization point of view, covering topics from the global south is imperative to a course dealing with Marxian concepts. In order to cover these topics, a three-week module on extensions of Marxian analysis was part of the Marxian Economics course. I primarily concentrated on introducing students to issues such as the agrarian question in India, global North-South trade, financialization, and social reproduction theory. These topics were handled with the use of selected research articles and chapters from textbooks. Students were also asked to present some of these papers as part of graded class presentations. In addition to these papers, two documentaries were shared with the class, namely, Nero’s Guests directed by Deepa Bhatia (2017) and The Dark Secret Behind Your Favorite Makeup Products produced by a creative global platform called Refinery29 (2017), the latter being shown in the class, followed by a discussion, while the former was shared online.
One of the topics covered in the extensions of the Marxist method examines a critical issue in the agrarian political economy of India. Because agrarian class relations in India are unique and different from agriculture in the Global North, I provide a background of some of the existing issues in Indian agriculture. Some of this information pertains to the ownership of marginal landholdings, the caste and class dominance of landlords, the prevalence of child labor, and the issue of indebtedness. Following this, an excellent documentary that I have shown in classrooms to examine the issue of indebtedness is Nero’s Guests. This documentary is approximately fifty-six minutes long and can be shown during the class duration or provided as an online assignment. 19 I have used this as a documentary for another class as well and have often heard back from students who appreciated the documentary, especially in terms of the hard-hitting truths that it discusses. This documentary takes us through the plight of cotton farmers in Vidarbha in the state of Maharashtra, India. It is narrated by renowned columnist and author P. Sainath. The documentary explores the role played by landlords, middlemen, and the state in abetting the issues of indebtedness among marginalized farmers and touches upon sensitive topics such as bonded labor and farmer suicides. 20 There are a few important elements within this documentary that deserve to be highlighted. First, this documentary serves the purpose of informing students that the distinction between classes is not just unique to the development of industry, especially manufacturing, but also prevalent in agriculture. Moreover, this also showcases to students that using class as a concept to study economic transformation and contemporary issues such as income inequality is a significant tool that is often missing from many undergraduate Principles textbooks. Second, the documentary not only serves the purpose of diversifying students’ viewpoints and knowledge of the Global South but also introduces them to key Marxian concepts such as caste-class interrelationship and structural transformation.
The documentary starts with a dialogue between P. Sainath and an agrarian household who recently lost their primary breadwinner. We discussed how the social mobility of a family can be linked to their class position and the difficulty of moving outside agriculture. To keep the story simple, I highlighted how agricultural profits are highly erratic, and yet agriculture forms the sole occupation for many families in India. The key discussion questions in class were taken up, such as “What makes agricultural income so volatile?” and “What are the crops that India grows and exports?” The divide between agricultural subsidies and technology in the Global North and the Global South is an area that can be expanded further. Part of the documentary also highlights the response of popular media and state government officials to the issue of bonded labor and the impoverishment of families who primarily rely on agriculture. For instance, in the documentary, P. Sainath speaks about an article from a popular media news outlet that says, “Government must help the strong to help the weak because attempts at strengthening the poor have failed.” This could be a great point for introducing group discussions on the differing views on trickle-down theory. The documentary also introduced students to the effects of forced commercialization of rural agriculture, which is a point that I emphasized in the discussions post this module. In passing, we also discussed, very briefly, the possible solutions to such a low-income trap situation where the creation of the informal sector as a complement to commercialization, and the need for governmental support programs was highlighted. Since agrarian political economy often receives little to no attention and is often erroneously assumed as taught in the course curriculum in the Agricultural Economics departments rather than Economics departments, it becomes even more problematic as students do not learn about a major population of the world that still works in the agrarian sector. In this regard, Nero’s Guests revisits the issue of class struggle that was covered in earlier parts of the lectures on The Young Karl Marx and during industrial capitalism but now presents a contemporary problem from the Global South. Another video I utilize to teach the extension of Marxist analysis in understanding the ecological crisis and the dependence of businesses in the Global North on cheaper labor inputs in the Global South is called The Dark Secret Behind Your Favorite Makeup Products. This is a ten-minute documentary that I showed in class. The video discusses the issues related to mining mica, an important ingredient used in producing cosmetics-related products. The video takes us through the darker aspects of mica mining, focusing on one of the largest mining regions in Koderma, Jharkhand, in eastern India. I briefly touch upon the important concept of the natural resource curse. In this discussion, I asked students if, from the Marxian perspective, such a paradox of having an abundance of natural resources and yet being relatively poor is manufactured by the economic system rather than being just a natural outcome. After having seen the documentary, students responded by challenging the notion of such an iron law of natural resource curse. Other important parts of the documentary led to discussions about how production can become globalized, but issues such as child labor, informal labor, and lax labor protection are still internal to the exporting country. This can also provide important assignment questions, such as “How does globalization feed off existing inequities?” The video also raised important questions, such as “Who should be responsible for unethical business practices—the businesses involved in it or the government’s labor laws?” Overall, this documentary serves as an interesting discussion for many students who would become future entrepreneurs as well since it touches upon ethical business practices and how the environment is a crucial aspect of economics rather than separate from economics.
5. Marxian Economics and Comparative Economic Analysis
An upper-level undergraduate course in Marxian economics serves as a great foundation for discussing Marxist concepts. However, usually, such courses do not leave much room for comparing and contrasting countries that followed different trajectories to sustainable growth. Moreover, in traditional Marxian economics textbooks, topics such as the socialist calculation debate, the evaluation of economic outcomes in former socialist countries, and the transition from socialism to capitalism are almost always toward the end of the textbook. Moreover, most of the chapters dedicated to such topics do not provide a case study of capitalism and socialism across countries. For example, in Understanding Capital (Foley 1986), the chapter on Socialism is the last chapter and provides a very minimal discussion of socialist countries. Similarly, The Logic of Capital (Basu 2022) has no particular chapter dedicated to understanding what socialist policies looked like as practiced in countries. 21
In specific courses such as Comparative Economic Systems or International Development, such a compare and contrast approach is possible. I taught one such course, Capitalism and Socialism in an online format at the University of Utah. There were two primary textbooks used for this course, namely, The Global Economy and Its Economic Systems (Rosser and Rosser 2018) and Comparative Economic Systems in a Transforming World (Gregory and Stuart 2014). Being an asynchronous online course, face-to-face interactions were limited, so class discussions were mostly based on online discussion posts, some of which were graded discussions. The first half of this course provided an outline of various economic thoughts that differ in their approach, methodology, and conclusions regarding efficiency and equity under a capitalist economic system. We also looked at the key debates on efficiency and inequality within contemporary capitalism and the New Institutionalist perspective on capitalism, which set the stage for the second half of the course, which was designed to be country-specific case studies. In this second half, we discussed the case of the United States, China, India, the former Soviet Union, Japan, and Chile, and each week was dedicated to studying these countries. A mix of book chapters, online lecture videos, and documentaries was used as teaching material for this module. In discussing Chile, we dove deep into the history of Chile’s pre- and post-Pinochet regime. This included a discussion of rising copper prices leading to inflation, the issue of unstable governments, and public spending under Allende’s government as compared to privatization under Pinochet’s regime. There were two videos that I shared to discuss the implementation and impact of neoliberal policies in Chile. Both videos were part of the required course material for students and were also used in designing assignment questions.
The first video clip I used is from an online documentary, The Shock Doctrine, based on the book The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007; Whitecross and Winterbottom 2007). In this video, Klein discusses the implantation of neoliberal policies in Chile as a form of “shock therapy.” Important discussion points in class, such as “How did the use of neoliberal economic methodology or philosophy impact the austerity measures for Chile?” were posted online as discussion questions. This discussion topic was followed up with more information on monetarist economic thought and the impact of Chicago school boys on Chilean economic policy, both of which were discussed through online lecture videos. Within the applications of radical political economy, there are some important concepts covered in this eighty-minute video. First, the video informs students about countries where applications of transplanting capitalist economic policies have gone terribly wrong. However, my focus was on drawing attention to Chile, which is part of the first thirty minutes of the documentary. Second, while discussing the case of Chile, two key concepts, austerity measures and privatization, were highlighted. To study the response of the Chilean people to the autocratic Pinochet regime, the students watched documentaries about the Arpillera movement, which was one of the ways in which art was used as a medium of protest. Two short documentaries that were helpful with this discussion were based on the documentary Exposici’on Arpilleras de Chile and the documentary Las Arpillera: A Thread of Protest, which highlights the Arpillera movement in Chile and records an interview with an Arpillera artist Violeta Morales (Holub 2007; Gambardella and Valdivia 2017). 22 Arpillera workshops in Chile employed women to earn a livelihood if the male breadwinner of the family had been unemployed or captured by the state. The Arpilleras were an artistic voice of protest against the dictatorial regime. This video served as an important reminder about labor agencies and art as a medium of resistance. I used this documentary primarily at the end of the discussion about Chile. Students were also asked to provide their own views about the Arpillera movement based on quiz questions (see discussion question 4 in table 2). These videos offered invaluable insights into the forms that political resistance takes and broadened students’ understanding of neoliberal policies.
6. Concluding Remarks
Teaching radical political economics in the current era faces challenges not just from bureaucratic structures, governmental pressures, and questions about its value in the market but also from the challenges of teaching a course that stems from traditional teaching methods solely relying on textbooks and research articles. In this article, I have attempted to outline ways in which multimedia integration can be implemented to support teaching and create interactive discussions and assignments to teach about the origins of Marxian theory and its extensions toward understanding capitalism and socialism. Popular media, including movies, music, and documentaries, are inevitably themselves cultural expressions of underlying social relations, albeit in a reified manner. However, using mass-produced popular media itself, it is possible to find movies and documentaries that bring in a diverse and radical point of view. Many other examples and videos that can be used to teach core concepts in Marxian Economics exist, and it would be a fruitful avenue to gauge how students benefit from audiovisual learning of radical political economy vis-á-vis a purely traditional teaching method, which is beyond the scope of this article. However, based on my pedagogical experience in teaching two courses, Marxian Economics and Capitalism and Socialism, informational documentaries and movies are useful in creating active discourse and encouraging critical research. While this article is a self-reflection of my experience in teaching topics in radical political economy, it also tries to extend a teaching pedagogy that can complement traditional teaching methods in other courses. Indeed, rather than serving as substitutes for core textbooks and reading materials, movies and documentaries can dynamically supplement existing course materials, foster critical thinking, and revitalize the teaching of topics in radical political economy.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I extend my sincere thanks to the referees at the Review of Radical Political Economics, Surbhi Kesar and Mike Meeropol, and to the editor, Enid Arvidson, for their thorough review of this work and for their valuable suggestions, which have significantly contributed to improving this article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
1
Examining course syllabi for Introduction to Political Economy and Political Economy of Institutions and Development from Massachusetts Institute of Technology show that in the syllabi not a single original reading of Marx or writings from heterodox scholars are used. Of course, in introductory economics courses, such as Principles of Microeconomics, students do come across theories that refer to the works of some classical political economists, e.g., the reference to David Ricardo when discussing the principle of comparative advantage.
2
Using audiovisual representation and multimedia to teach economic concepts is not new and such pedagogical approaches have been highlighted in prior literature such as Stanford (2008) and 
. In addition, many teaching resources for the implementation of audiovisual presentations are also provided in ECON 1101 Economics through Film taught by Dr. Richard Langlois at the University of Connecticut. But none of these works explicitly speaks to teaching concepts in radical political economy.
3
Issues of imperfect competition, chronic unemployment, and differential bargaining power are often provided as mere extensions or special cases. Similarly, any alternatives to the neoclassical value theory, such as the labor theory of value, are also limited in most undergraduate textbooks.
4
This is not to argue that instructors cannot include topics that deconstruct these theories. But in most cases, such an introductory course often has less time and space for carefully presenting critiques of a given model.
5
For example, statements such as “planned socialist systems grossly underperformed their market capitalist counterparts” or “Recessions, financial crises, and bubbles do not prove the failure of capitalism. They are a part of capitalism, and they always will be” are common in . While a reform within capitalism is part of the discussions in the book, any form of critique about the capitalist mode of production is avoided.
6
7
For instance, the first few lectures that describe the Marxian concepts of use value and exchange value are discussed with reference to what students have studied in Principles courses that emphasize scarcity.
8
I had students in this course who majored in Economics, Mathematics, History, Political science, Environmental studies, and Health sciences. For such a diverse group, a good introduction to the life and times of Karl Marx is important in creating an initial interest in the subject.
9
I also emphasize that while in most developed nations today, feudal relations of production, such as serfdom, are less popular, there are still some elements of feudal relations evident in the agrarian class structure functions in the Global South.
10
I deliberately do not use the word bourgeoisie or proletariat in this context at the beginning of this example since there is a consensus that Moselle peasants constituted a peasantry class rather than a proletariat class.
11
Many students also suggest that the class-based distinction is too simplistic to capture the current occupational categories.
12
Here, first, I mention to the students the different uses of water and diamonds and then ask them if they think water has a higher use value than an exchange value. Following this discussion, students are then asked if they think it takes more labor time to mine diamonds than to draw water. The more important concept of socially necessary labor time within Marxian analysis is then explored. These value comparisons are, of course, done in terms of prices, without getting into the entire issue of the transformation of value into prices. However, even without relying on the transformation problem, the point I make is that the fundamental approach of Marxian analysis is different from the neoclassical analysis. This allows students to develop a critique of the neoclassical system.
13
This can also be done by simply contrasting the Feeding machine scene in Modern Times with the clipping from the cotton mill scene in The Young Karl Marx. In the cotton mill scene, students know that the extant labor laws did not limit the working day; therefore, a mill owner could employ people to work for exorbitant hours.
14
A relevant classroom exercise that I did not implement but could be useful for future courses would be to enact discussions about mechanization by dividing students across groups.
15
I have found it useful to begin the discussions with questions such as “Has anybody in this class been a part of a union or know anyone who has been a part of a union?” In response, I have had students mention specific student organizations that work with other unions or have mentioned how some of their family members have previously been members of unions. However, the majority of the class agreed that they had never met or known someone who was an active member of an existing labor union. To further illustrate the decline in unionization in the United States, I provide graphs and numbers from the Union Coverage and Membership database.
16
A potential discussion topic about why the coordination of capital is easier than the coordination of workers would be a fruitful addition to this topic.
17
18
I believe this is largely because theoretical concepts in Marxian economics often take up the entirety of a book, leaving less applied Marxian economics to be discussed (see, e.g., the chapters in Foley [1986] and that leave less room for discussion about extensions of the Marxist method).
19
Since the class duration for this specific course was eighty minutes, showing the documentary in class, followed by a twenty-minute discussion, is useful.
20
I provide a sufficient disclaimer to students when sharing this documentary that it deals with such sensitive topics. Transcriptions of the video can also serve as a better mode of sharing this documentary.
21
Both in Foley (1986) and , however, the authors do suggest an extended list of readings and essential caveats about the content of the book and its primary focus, which is the three volumes of Das Kapital.