1. Capitalist contradictions and revolutionary struggle: An introduction
The reason Marx dedicated so much time to studying and analyzing capital was not because it was “interesting” but because its contradictions were and are opportunities for working and oppressed people to advance and create the world the Earth and its inhabitants need and deserve.
The Liberation School examines some of the primary contradictions of capitalism, including those between use and exchange values, private ownership and social production, and the interests of individual capitalists and capital as a whole. Each entry will break the contradictions down in an accessible manner, explaining some of their more intricate details, and showing how they relate to other contradictions. We provide some general and concrete examples of how they enhance our understanding of capitalism and our struggle to overthrow that system and replace it with a new one.
To access the full text in the Liberation School
2. Relative Surplus Values
Absolute surplus value, Marx says, is “produced by prolongation of the working-day” . In other words, if the ratio between necessary and surplus labor is fixed, then prolonging the working day will result in more surplus value for the capitalist and a greater degree of exploitation for the worker.
Capital’s entire reason for being is to produce surplus value, to increase the exploitation of the working class. As a result, there’s a logical impulse for each capitalist to extend the working day as much as possible. Yet not only might this produce problems for capitalism as a whole (in that it could exhaust the supply of labor-power available), but the working class fights back against exploitation, and at times is able to force limits to the length of the working day.
Full text accessible HERE.
3. IMPERIALISM
V.I. Lenin, “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline” in Lenin: Selected Works: Two Volume Edition (Vol. 1) (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1916/1963), 634-731 is accesible in the Internet Archive HERE.
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