Class description: In Part 8 of the book, Marx turns to a brief historical analysis and critique of bourgeois political-economy's "origin story" of capital. Throughout the book so far, Marx has assumed that the conditions of...
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Marx’s “Capital:” Class 8 (The general law of capitalist accumulation)
Class description: Looking at chapter 25, where Marx synthesizes the previous sections of the book to articulate the general laws (or tendencies) of capitalist accumulation, this class...
Marx’s “Capital:” Class 7 (Surplus-value, wages, and simple reproduction)
Class description: This class covers chapters 16-24. We begin with a discussion of "productive labor," highlighting the ways in which capitalism views and changes labor and clarifying the role that this concept plays in...
Marx’s “Capital:” Class 5 (The working day and relative surplus-value)
Class description: In this class we continue our investigation into exploitation (i.e., the production of surplus-value), beginning with the struggle over the commodity of labor-power and the contradiction between its...
Marx’s “Capital:” Class 4 (Capital and labor-power)
Class description: In this class we get at the first definitions of capital, labor-power, and surplus-value. Picking up on the introduction of money into the exchange process and the contradictions between use-value and...
Marx’s “Capital:” Class 3 (Exchange and money)
Class description: In class 3, we take up exchange and money, where the C-M-C circuit makes its first appearance. We look at how money transforms and arises out of the exchange process and some of the contradictions inherent...
Marx’s “Capital:” Class 2 (Commodities)
Class description: In our second class, we cover 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...
Marx’s “Capital:” Class 1
Class description: The first class in our course on Volume 1 of Marx's Capital provides an introduction to the structure of the course and the book overall. We discuss the various prefaces and afterwords, focusing in...
China class 5: China and the Global South
Class description: The fifth and final class in the course considers China's internationalist orientation and specifically its contemporary relationship with the Global South, and its struggle for territorial integrity. In...