Our twelfth episode studies the last part of the book, chapters 26-33, which Marx begins by critiquing bourgeois political economy’s concept of “primitive accumulation.” Throughout the book so far, Marx has assumed that the conditions of capitalism already exist: a class of those with nothing to sell but their labor power and a class that owns the means of production (while noting they are not “natural” conditions). Now we discover how these conditions–and the legal and ideological structure...

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...

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...

Our ninth episode reviews chapters 16-22, starting with a discussion of the commonly misunderstood concept of “productive labor.” We clarify Marx’s use of this concept and the role it plays in Marxist theory and organizing. We then reconsider the relationship between relative and absolute surplus value, viewing them as a contradictory unity and as strategies capital pursues to exploit workers. In the second part, we turn from the value of labor to its money expression: the wage. In addition...

Reading chapter 15 on machinery and modern industry, episode 8 focuses on the relationship between technology, capital, and class struggle. After examining Marx’s method of approaching technological transformation, we show how machinery provides the adequate technical foundations for the capitalist mode of production because it displaces and objectifies the knowledge and skills that were formerly held in the living body of the worker. Going through the different sections of the chapter and...

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...

Focusing on chapter 10, our sixth episode locates class struggle as the motor of capitalism and as that which determines the rate of exploitation and the value of labor power. By examining how the “normal working day” is established--in theory and in historical practice--Marx emphasizes how the command over time is central to the class struggle. We spend some time on his theorization of the state in this chapter, which takes on the dual function of managing inter- and intra-class conflict,...

Our fifth episode covers chapters 7-9, which move us deeper into (absolute) surplus-value and the exploitation of labor power. We begin by distinguishing labor in general from labor power as a commodity, before uncovering the roots of surplus value in the exploitation of the latter. Surplus value and exploitation arise from the contradiction between the value and use-value of labor power. To explain this, Marx introduces the distinction between necessary labor and surplus labor, as well as...

Our fourth episode covers chapters 4-6, where Marx offers the first definitions of capital, surplus-value, labor power, as well as the relationship between the legal superstructure and the economic base. Picking up on the introduction of money into the exchange process and the contradictions between use-value and exchange-value, we begin by distinguishing C-M-C from M-C-M’, before questioning where the increase in M (or surplus-value) comes from. The answer? Labor power! The end of the...

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...

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...

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,...