Virgin Territory?

 “A People’s Guide to Capitalism,” by Hadas Their, 2020

For a recent issue in the Marxist Discussion Group on Facebook, participants tried to come up with a good ‘first’ written introduction to Marxism.  Some suggested the Communist Manifesto, a few Quotations from Chairman Mao or State and Revolution by Lenin, others the Beginner’s guides to Capital or to Marx and Engels, while one suggested you need to read all the classics on your own - and get to it!  All of these suggestions are marred by age or complexity or infantilism for a beginner, though ‘beginners’ begin at different places.  I think the Communist Manifesto is still a good place to start.  (All these books are available at May Day.)

However this book might also be a place to start for some – a freshman 101 college course on Marxism, with modern examples, clear, grounded writing that avoids archaic verbiage, using current Marxists and updating Marxism regarding the current state of the world economy.  It could also serve as a refresher course.  She cites many past Marxists, among them – Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Maksakovsky, Hilferding and current ones – Bhattacharya, McNally, Foster, Harvey, Henwood, Mandel, Moody, Vogel and Zweig.   

Their is an ‘economics’ specialist and has published in Jacobin.  She was/is a member of the International Socialist Organization, publishing in their journal International Socialist Review.  Issues like the nature of the capitalist state, election participation, revolutionary organizations, class collaboration, the definition of socialism, how to deal with fascism or the nature of the USSR/China are not covered in this volume.  It intends to only describe capital – not what to do about capital, except pointing out the inevitability of class struggle due to the existence of classes. As she understands, the ‘gravediggers’ are increasing each day and may turn from a ‘class in itself’ to a ‘class for itself.’

She discusses almost every main economic Marxist concept, among them:   

        1.   Primitive accumulation, mercantilism and colonialism;

         2.   the enclosure of the commons

         3.   the commodity as key to capitalist production;

         4.   Money as the easiest solution to sell commodities; the fact that prices do not reflect value

         5.   the difference between the use-value and exchange-value of a commodity; the false balance between supply and demand

         6.   the labor theory of value, which shows labor to be the key to production; socially necessary labor; labor-power; reproductive labor; surplus labor

         7.   the creation of surplus value from the exploitation of labor; machinery as dead labor; the ownership and role of the means of production; labor exploitation rates

         8.   the inevitable logic of competition results in oligopolistic concentration and centralization of capital; benefiting from economies of their scale.

         9.   Variable capital (labor) and constant/fixed capital / the organic composition of capital

10. the tendency of the rate of profit to fall due to an increase in machinery and technology investments, i.e. from increasing the organic composition of capital

11. Profit rates equalize across a capitalist economy in normal times

12. Capitalists are a “band of hostile brothers.” (Marx)

13. Overproduction and credit freezes are inevitable signs of an underlying economic profit crisis, not the cause

14. Overaccumulation and related financial  or ‘fictitious’ capital

15.  the falsity of the Keynesian underconsumption theory of economic crisis

16.  the essential role of credit / debt / loans in the circulation of idle capital

17.  Financial capital leads directly to speculation and unstable financial products, i.e. as seen in the 2008 financial / housing crash

18.  Financialization is a result of capital fleeing the stagnant productive economy for higher profits, where money 'makes' money, but nothing is created.  Both parts of the economy are still intimately inter-connected and cannot be separated, as some like Michael Hudson claim.

19.  Capital works on a global scale, aka imperialism.

She also takes up issues like why the market cannot save the planet; why mainstream economists are clueless; the environmental trap of 'growth', mega-capitalism, Taylorism and the like. 

The book uses clear modern examples, from the individual wage relation, the small household to the national and international, to explain each concept.  A reader needs a grasp of simple formulas and math, befitting the fact she is talking about economics, not the latest two-horse-race commentary from the corporate nightly news, or the latest hot-button Facebook take.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 14 year archive, using these terms:  “The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles” (Harvey); “The Robbery of Nature” and “Ecological Revolution” (both by JB Foster); “Old Gods, New Enigmas” (M Davis); “The Young Karl Marx” (Peck); “The Civil War in the United States” (Marx); “Patriarchy of the Wage” (Federici); “Marxism and the Oppression of Women” (Vogel); “Monsters of the Market” (McNally); “The Long Depression” (Roberts).

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

November 11, 2021 

Celebrate Red November!