Reading Capital With Comrades

Our eleventh episode concentrates on chapter 25, where Marx synthesizes his findings so far to articulate some general laws (or tendencies) of capitalist accumulation. We cover the different compositions of capital before turning to the two models of accumulation Marx proposes, the difference between concentration and centralization, and how the centralization of capital provides the material foundation for communism. We clarify the general law of capitalist accumulation and the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation before examining the impacts they have on the working class, including the production of an industrial reserve army. After examining how the reserve army serves as a lever of capitalist accumulation, we go next to reviewing some of the layers of the industrial reserve army--including the “dangerous classes”--and relating them to our contemporary condition. We draw out that here Marx is insisting that the working class includes all of those who are oppressed and exploited by capitalism and what this means for organizing. Finally, we spend some time on the colonization of Ireland and how Marx’s thought about the relationship between anti-colonial and socialist revolution developed over time. Articles mentioned in this chapter US gov’t jobs report: The reality behind the fakery https://www.liberationnews.org/us-govt-jobs-report-the-reality-behind-the-fakery/ Contact us with questions or feedback at [email protected]

Our tenth episode marks a transition from examining the production of capital on an individual scale to capitalism as a totality that continually reproduces and expands. We begin with the introduction to Part 7 of the book (the only part that has one), where Marx defines the circulation of capital and articulates the assumptions he makes in the following 3 chapters. Then in chapter 23, we define simple reproduction, a logical schema Marx uses to set the the stage for the next two chapters on reproduction on an expanding scale. Simple reproduction allows us to see that the reproduction of capital is the reproduction of the class relation--of the command of capital over labor--and that it is the working class that reproduces the totality of capital. Next, we return to Marx’s concept of productive labor in light of this analysis, because here Marx shows that workers--even those who are unemployed or engaged in non-waged forms of work--are still crucial to reproducing capitalism. With chapter 24, we move from simple reproduction to reproduction on an expanding scale--or the accumulation of capital--where Marx corrects some erroneous assumptions of bourgeois political economy, attends to the relationship between economic production, the legal system, and ideology, and explains how the logic of capital requires the constant revolutionizing of the means of production. We again draw out his mention of communism and consider its relationship to his earlier remarks. Article mentioned in this episode: Social reproduction: A theoretical framework with organizing potential https://liberationschool.org/social-reproduction-a-theoretical-framework-with-organizing-potential/ Contact us with questions or feedback at [email protected]

Our seventh episode covers chapters 11-14. After covering the rate and mass of surplus value, we examine how capitalists can increase surplus value (and therefore exploitation) without making the working day longer, which leads to the distinction between absolute and relative surplus value. Absolute surplus value is produced by prolonging the working day, but given the political and natural limits of the working day, how can capital increase surplus value? By shortening necessary labor time (the value of labor power and variable capital) and therefore lengthening surplus labor time. The last half of the episode considers some of the ways capitalists pursue relative surplus value, specifically through cooperation and the division of labor. Through cooperation, we see how capital begins producing the social collective worker--and the potential for class unity against capital--at the same time as it produces new forms of exploitation. By examining the division of labor in handicraft and manufacture, we see how capital individualizes workers at the same time as it unites them. At the end, we observe how manufacture--because the worker is the motive force--poses a limit to capitalism’s command, and how this is an example of the disjuncture between the forces of production and the relations of production. Contact us with questions or feedback at [email protected]

Our third episode takes up chapters 2 and 3 on exchange and money, where the C-M-C circuit makes its first appearance. After setting up the juridical conditions of market exchange, we look at how money arises out of and transforms the exchange process. Next, we examine some of the contradictions inherent in the money-form, including those between C-M and M-C, and how these are intensified forms of the general contradictions between exchange-value and use-value. We discuss the origins and value of money, the difference between price and value (and what this has to do with sanctions and tariffs), credit, and money’s role as a 1) measure of value, 2) medium of circulation, and 3) means of payment, and the contradictions between these functions. Articles mentioned in the episode: The myth of democracy and the rule of the banks (part one) https://liberationschool.org/rule-of-the-banks-pt-1/ The myth of democracy and the rule of the banks (part two) https://liberationschool.org/rule-of-the-banks-pt-2/ Contact us with questions or feedback at [email protected]

Our second episode covers the first chapter on “commodities,” where Marx begins laying the conceptual building blocks for his investigation. We cover use-value, exchange-value, and value, the two-fold character of labor and its correspondence with different forms of value, and the fetishism of commodities. Throughout, we emphasize the social relations embedded in commodities (relations that, in turn, commodity exchange helps proliferate), as well as how the reality of these relations differ markedly from bourgeois notions of independence, autonomy, and individual choice. In the last part of the episode, we spend time on the first brief sketch of communism Marx gives at the end of the chapter. Contact us with questions or feedback at [email protected]

We begin our study of Capital, vol. 1 by discussing what it means to read, study, and apply the book as comrades in the struggle for socialism in the U.S. today. We situate our reading within the struggle to not only popularize and give definition to socialism, but to establish Marxism as the guiding theory of struggles. Next, we cover some of the history and context of the book and finally examine the Prefaces and Afterwords by Marx and Engels, we introduce the form, content, methodology, and context of Capital, vol. 1, paying particular attention to Marx’s method of abstraction. Articles mentioned in the episode: Theory and revolution: Addressing the break of ideological continuity https://liberationschool.org/theory-and-revolution-addressing-the-break-of-ideological-continuity/ What is dialectical materialism? An introduction https://liberationschool.org/what-is-dialectical-materialism-an-introduction/ Contact us with questions or feedback at [email protected]