Class 2: Capitalist Exploitation and Crisis

This session covers the chapter “Class 2: Capitalist Exploitation and Crisis” of the Introducing Marxism booklet.

Video intro

Discussion Questions

1. How do employers seek to (a) intensify and (b) disguise exploitation at work, and how can their efforts be challenged?
2. Why and how does capitalism divide different categories of the working classand how can this be countered?
3. Suggest examples of where capitalism holds back the full development of modern society’s productive forces.
4. Why does monopoly lead to imperialism?
5. Why is trade union militancy on wages, pensions and working conditions (a) vital and (b) not enough?

Further Reading

Capitalism and Exploitation

1. K Marx, ‘Value, Price and Profit’ (1865), Collected Works Vol.20 (available from the Communist Party’s Classics of Communism range as Wages, Price and Profit, 2006)
2. Ben Fine, Marx’s Capital (Macmillan, 1989)
3. K Marx, Capital Vol. I (1867), Collected Works Vol.35
4. VI Lenin, Imperialism—the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Collected Works Vol.22
5. EK Hunt & Howard J. Sherman, Economics—An Introduction to Traditional and Radical Views (HarperCollins, 1990)
6. John Kelly, Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism and Long Waves (Routledge, 1998)
7. Robert Griffiths, Marx’s Das Kapital and capitalism today (Manifesto Press, 2018 edn)
8. Jonathan White ed., Building an Economy for the People: An Alternative Economic and Political Strategy for 21st Century Britain (Manifesto Press, 2012)
9. G Binus, B Landefeld & A Wehr, State Monopoly Capitalism (Manifesto Press, 2017)

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