Introduction Although Marx himself only mentioned the “base” and “superstructure” in (by my count) two of his works, the base-superstructure “problem” remains a source of serious contention for Marxists, our sympathizers, and our critics. Despite its outsized role in...
Introduction Toward the end of our earlier introduction to surplus value, the heart and motor of the class struggle, we wrote that: “The rate of surplus value for the capitalist is the rate of exploitation for the worker. By merely prolonging the working day, the...
Class description: In chapter 15, we look at why machinery provides the technical foundations on which the capitalist mode of production--which has to do with the transferring of the worker's skill and knowledge to...
In the last few decades, technological developments--particularly concerning automation--have transformed the economy in such a profound way that many are comparing this era to the Industrial Revolution. Some capitalist economists downplay the resulting loss of jobs,...
While the lifeblood of capitalism—the pursuit of profit—remains the same, the specific ways capitalist’s pursue profit and protect their rule are constantly changing. Marx and Engels identified this trend in their 1848 Communist Manifesto, writing that “the...