POLS W3912

A lot of reading and writing with little to no feedback.

A moderate amount of reading you won't do because there's no reason to. Grading is based soley on a 25 pg paper at the end, which has no foundation in any of the readings. He doesn't take attendence either, so you will be very, very tempted just to skip. Also, one response paper you defend to the class (although he probably won't let you get two words in).

reading, three papers, kind of silly high school level final.

To start off, I've studied Marx passionately for about 6 years before this class. I studied Marx under multiple scholars of the subject, including the previous US vice-presidential candidate for the Communist Part of the United States. And let me start by saying I NEVER expect, as you can imagine, for anyone to share my affinity for the subject. In fact, I expect quite the opposite. I'm just shocked that a seminar at such an esteemed university would be so unprofessional and biased against the subject matter. Elster started the class by saying this: "I just wrote an article on whether the world would have been a better place if Marx was never born, I won't get into it, but pretty much I conclude that YES, the world would have been better without him." After the pronouncement, it became exhausting to go in for every class for this man to give us the most skewed, uncharitable, and precocious lectures I have ever witness. Again, I don't expect anyone here to be a fan of Marx, but at least be honest. At the end of the day, I guess all my training didn't really pay off. I got a C where the two finance bros I tutored and helped with virtually every essay got As. And when I emailed him confused he just ignored me. Maybe his other classes aren't that bad, but do yourself a favor, instead learning about Marx from Elster, just turn on Fox news or scroll through the Victims of Communism…

The worst class I have ever taken at Columbia. Barry, though at the front of the political theory field, is old and boring, droning on about tangential issues for 2 straight hours. It was the worst part of my week all semester -- I had to waste my time and money listening to him mutter about something or the other. Horrible.

This was easily the worst political theory class I have ever taken. The professor was nice enough (at least in person) but the syllabus content was uninspired and bland, and her grading made no sense to me. She seemed to bracket me in one grade band-- I received the same grade on all three papers, with obscure comments at the end such as 'I think this is good but you can do more' without suggesting what it was that I might do to improve my performance. I also recall feeling she was uncomfortable around me from her body language, something I didn't understand given that I respected her as a teacher and felt the first few lessons were valuable. I recall her blatantly ignoring my hand in class once despite the fact that it was raised for a full minute during a period of absolute silence in the class. Not sure why she just wouldn't take my comment and refute it. I wish I had spoken to her about it in retrospect to clarify the misunderstanding. Regardless, avoid any of her classes at all costs.

Actually not that much for a seminar, 5 or 6 books. The only grade is the final, which is four 5-page questions. After a semester of work, and a weekend spent on the final, the only comment on the paper was: "Uneven, but good. A-".

First, Elster is clearly brilliant, is a nice guy, and has written a number of facinating books. However, this has little bearing on his teaching ability. The Marx Seminar was a weekly two-hour lecture with almost no discussion. Elster introduced the four or five main points he thought should be taken from Marx in the first two lectures and we spent the rest of the semester hearing them repeated in relation to different texts. It became hopelessly boring after a couple of weeks and I'm really not sure how I made it to all of the classes. In addition, Marx, though interesting enough in small doses, gets incredibly difficult to wade through after 2000 pages. I've heard that any course devoted to only one person is generally subpar, and this seminar was definitely no exception. Overall, if you're interested in Marx or Elster's take on him, I would recommend checking out his "Making Sense of Marx" from Butler and signing up for a more interesting seminar.

i dont think its possible to not get an A. 3 6 page papers and all you have to really do is take a stab at answering the questions

every session was a 2 hour lecture. it didnt really matter if you showed up, i think he didnt really notice or care. BUT, the guy is absolutely brilliant and undergrads have no real chance of understanding how deep his knowledge of marx and tocqueville is without already having extensively studied both. id say your best for learning is to take his option of a tocq-marx combination fall/spring seminar series.