THE WEBINAR SERIES ON CAPITALISM

The  WEBINAR SERIES ON CAPITALISM

The Department of Multi Media and Mass Communication, in collaboration with IQAC of the College, organised a Webinar Series on Capitalism from May 20, 2020 to June 30, 2020.

Dr. Shubhda Chaudhary was the resource person for this webinar series, which received 280 registrations and attendance of 148 participants in the first lecture. Over the time frame of the webinar series, participation of minimum 85 students was recorded throughout. The Webinar focussed on the inter-disciplinary merging of Philosophy with Economics to understand and critique capitalism and communism.

The participants hailed from students of the College, along with students from Miranda House, LSR, Jamia Milia Islamia, JNU, TISS and other universities. Due to the very context of fluid-learning, the webinar also witnessed the participation of engineers who are working in technical field as well as doctors and Assistant Professors from different parts of the country. Along with the one-and-a-half hour designated for the lecture, the Question/Answer round for every lecture went for two hours, thereby explaining the commitment of both the resource person and the participants. A Twitter Account by the name of Fluid Learning was set-up to upload readings regularly.

Along with the respective lectures, 15 minutes of every class was designated for Current Affairs like the George Floyd Protests, India-China political tension, Windrush Scandal, Grenfell Tower injustice, etc.

The topics covered in the Webinar Series dealt with discussing the philosophies of Kant over Hegel, in order to understand the difference between Idealism and Materialism. In the context of different kind of Enlightenment philosophers, the era of Adam Smith was explained to bestow understanding of what he meant by Capitalism. The Labour Theory of Value of David Ricardo was also discussed to give an idea about the theory of rent and dead labour concepts while discussing capitalism.

The Webinar gave special emphasis on understanding the idealist Dialectics as explained by Hegel to further teach the concepts of Historical Materialism and Dialectical Materialism in Marxist theory. The life and contribution of both Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx were discussed in detail, that helped the students to understand them as living philosophers instead of redundant theorists. This kind of storytelling format was massively appreciated by the students.

Few core concepts related to alienation, family structure in Marxism and religious critique by Marxism were also discussed. Towards the end, the webinar series also focussed on the critique of Marxism in itself by scholars such as Noam Chomsky, Karl Popper and others.

This webinar series which started as an experiment by Dr. Shubhda Chaudhary received wider appreciation from the student community at all-India-level. 110 participants gave their valuable feedback for the webinar course.