Intro to Marx, an Annotated Bibliography

As someone who grew up in the United States, educated in schools by people who lived through the McCarthy era witch hunts against communists, I was grossly uneducated about critiques of capitalism as an economic system.As the housing market collapsed in the U.S., as economies faltered in Greece and Spain, as banks were deemed “too big to fail,” my limited understanding of economic systems left me feeling scared about what was happening and confusion about how to fix it. As the Occupy movement brought forward critiques not just of consumer culture, but of the economic system of capitalism itself, I found myself curious to learn more about these critiques so I could be part of discussions, analysis, and smart action.Again and again, critiques of capitalism come back to the writings of Karl Marx, who was entirely erased from my public education about economics. While there are plenty of critiques about Marx (particularly how Marxist theory has been implemented in the real world), I’m finding it useful to dig in to Marxist analysis as a way to understand the workings of capitalism.Whether you’d like to throw capitalism on the bonfire or think it’s possible we could redeem capitalism with modifications to how it operates, you might find some of these resources helpful to understand the principles of waged labor and capital that Marx wrote about, and that many critiques of capitalism are built on. These were some resources that were recommended to us by folks who think a lot about Marxist critique. I’ve just scratched the surface of these myself, so am curious to find out more about what gems are in here, and what problems exist in this way of framing the world.~Dawn HaneyFor purposes of this study guide, two important concepts in Marx’s critique of “bourgeois” political economy relate to stolen land and stolen time.  Stolen land (and people) is part and parcel of capitalism through the process known as “primitive accumulation.”  Marx describes it as a process beginning with the enclosure of commons in Europe, and then expanding to include slavery and land conquest throughout the world.

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black-skins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation.  

Primitive accumulation continues today through war and colonialism, enclosures and treaty violations.  As BPFer Stephen Crooms has discussed in his review of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, one could also argue that the massive profits generated by the rise of the Prison Industrial Complex, fueled by the War On Drugs, also represents a kind of social theft of primary resources (prisoners and taxpayer money) to create new cycles of productive capital.As for stolen time, a basic principle of Marx’s critique concerns unpaid labor or “surplus labor.”  The cartoon below illustrates the basic idea: that in order to realize profits, workers have to produce more value than what they are paid in wages.  If someone other than workers themselves is appropriating that surplus value (i.e. a company owner), Marx argues that this is a basic form of exploitation at the root of capitalist social relations.  If workers themselves reaped the surplus value of their labor (the production that goes above and beyond what they need to survive), it would no longer be exploitative.  But even in a worker-owned co-operative, the rate of production and scale of wages has to compete with other companies in the industry, who might pay extremely low wages, use extra profit to buy faster machines, or use it to generate enormous economies of scale.We are by no means experts in Marxist theories, but we hope that these resources might be helpful to those other BPFers who, like us, are trying to study and learn.~Katie Loncke “He is paying you $75 to tell him to work faster!” Cartoon by Fred Wrighthttp://i.imgur.com/bp0Nq.jpgPolitical cartoons provide sharp analysis, getting to the heart of a matter with a mix of images and words. Only got a minute to understand a Marxist critique of waged labor? Read this.Crises of Capitalism videoBy David Harvey with RSA Animatehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0While BPFers don’t necessarily agree about whether capitalism can be redeemed or not, I haven’t yet met a BPFer who doesn’t think capitalism as currently practiced is a serious problem. This 11-minute video moves quickly, but packs in a lot of information. Much explanation of our current economic crisis is based on “outside” forces (human fraility, institutional failures, obsessed with a false theory, cultural origins, or failure of policy). While all of them have a partial truth, from a Marxist perspective, this kind of crisis is also built in to the system of capitalism (what Harvey calls “the internal contradictions of capital accumulation”). He names excessive power of finance capital as the root of the problem, and explains how financiers got so much power since the 1970s. As he says, “I don’t have the solutions, but I think I understand the nature of the problem.” He encourages debate and discussion (and joining anti-capitalist organizing groups) to come up with solutions together.~ Dawn HaneyThe Law of Value seriesBy Kapitalism101http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/law-of-value-the-series/This video series (with text transcripts!) breaks down important Marxist terminology like:

• The difference between use-value, exchange value and value
• The relation of supply, demand and price to value
• Abstract labor
• Socially necessary labor time

The introduction explains that capitalism is a different organization of society - instead of making things for our own use, we sell our own labor and then buy things for our own use in the market. “Economically, people can only relate to each other through money prices, through value. This world of commodity relations takes an independent form, outside of the control of individuals, that acts back upon and directs the flow of human affairs.” ~ Dawn HaneyHistorical Capitalism with Capitalist Civilisationby Immanuel Maurice Wallensteinhttp://books.google.com/books/about/Capistalist_Civilisation.html?id=50xny_8ML9kCFrom Google Books: “In this short, highly readable book, Immanuel Wallerstein provides a condensation of the central ideas of The Modern World-System, his monumental study of capitalism as an integrated, historical entity. In developing an anatomy of capitalism over the past five centuries, Wallerstein provides one of the most coherent and succinct introductions to the genesis of a global system of exploitation.Particular attention is focused on the emergence and development of a unified world market, and the concomitant international division of labor. Wallerstein argues forcefully, against the grain of much current opinion, that capitalism has brought about an actual, not merely relative, immiseration in the countries of the Third World. The economic and social problems of underdeveloped countries will remain unresolved as long as they remain located within a framework of world capitalism.”Night-Vision: Illuminating War and Class on the Neo-Colonial Terrainby Butch Lee, Red Roverhttps://secure.leftwingbooks.net/index.php?l=product_detail&p=86 An in-depth, yet accessible look at neo-colonialism as the latest stage of capitalism. What does a critique of capitalism look like in our world reorganized into a “borderless world economy”? From the introduction: “The dispossessed and semi-slave proletariat of early european industry have never disappeared at all, but have merely been displaced out of sight into the Third World and the migrant Fourth World, multiplying a thousand times and becoming the fastest growing class. Capitalism’s economic dependence on genocide and slavery, which determined the content of its character during the colonial era, still continues as the unseen foundation of the neo-imperial economy.”Socialist-Feminist Strategy Todayby Johanna Brenner and Nancy Holmstrom Socialist Register 2013: The Question of Strategy, Leo Panitch, Greg Albo, Vivek Chibber eds., Available at http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/18821#.UYFLnsqfx05 for $25.Abstract: Women have entered the global political stage in an astonishing array of movements. Sparked by the current capitalist war on the working class as well as the ongoing struggle around patriarchal relations, these movements provide an important arena for socialist-feminist politics. Today, unlike the past, feminist ideas are part of many anti-capitalist movements, although bringing those ideas to the centre of anti-capitalist politics is still an uphill struggle. In this essay we discuss how socialist feminist activists are shaping demands and campaigns, how they organize on the ground, how they build the leadership of working-class, indigenous and rural women, how they work within mixed gender groups and movements.The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to Chinaby John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney Introduction:  http://monthlyreview.org/2012/05/01/the-endless-crisisFull text for $24.95:  http://monthlyreview.org/press/books/cl3133/“'The normal state of the monopoly capitalist economy,” [Baran and Sweezy] declared [in their 1966 classic Monopoly Capital], “is stagnation.' According to this argument, the rise of the giant monopolistic (or oligopolistic) corporations...led to a tendency for the actual and potential investment-seeking surplus in society to rise. The very conditions of exploitation (or high price markups on unit labor costs) meant both that inequality in society increased and that more and more surplus capital tended to accumulate actually and potentially within the giant firms and in the hands of wealthy investors, who were unable to find profitable investment outlets sufficient to absorb all of the investment-seeking surplus. Hence, the economy became increasingly dependent on external stimuli such as higher government spending (particularly on the military), a rising sales effort, and financial expansion to maintain growth." [From the Introduction]Foster and McChesney show that monopoly ownership, financial concentration, and increased exploitation worldwide have led to and sustain our economy's current "stagnation-financialization trap." People are thrown on the scrap-heap (long term unemployment, prison, addictions of various kinds), while those who are working generate more and more output while real wages hardly rise at all. The increasing irrationality, especially in the safety valve of financial speculation, is bound to erupt in further crises -- ultimately challenging the earth's ability to sustain life. It's a devastating and compelling critique rooted in current real-world conditions. ~ Chip SmithBeyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Classby Michael A. Lebowitzespecially Chapter 8, "The One-Sidedness of Wage-Labour"http://us.macmillan.com/beyondcapitalsecondedition/MichaelLebowitzWhat's striking about this chapter is the way it takes up workers' lives outside the workplace, including relations in the home, and shows how the multiple relations of exploitation work to capital's advantage. Beyond Capital emphasizes the full complexity of human beings, as contrasted to the system's stripping people down to bearers of labor power (of various skill levels) in the workplace. It also describes how a path of solidarity and struggle can move us beyond today's stunted conditions to a future where people shape fully both themselves and their world. ~Chip SmithHave your own favorite readings that are critical of capitalism, particularly how theft of land and time are built into the economy? Have something to say about the readings we’ve highlighted here? Love ‘em or hate ‘em, we’d love to hear what you are thinking.