Wednesday 2 to Sunday 6 January 2019, Forest of Dean
This week school will help students equip themselves to inspire and lead Capital reading groups, using Otto Rühle's abridgement, in the months to come.
The writer Edmund Wilson, never a Marxist but for a time a socialist and a fascinated admirer of Trotsky, called Marx the "Poet of Commodities", and wrote: "there went into the creation of Das Kapital as much of art as of science. The book is a welding-together of several quite diverse points of view, of several quite distinct techniques of thought. It contains a treatise on economics, a history of industrial development and an inspired tract for the times..."
To study Capital thoroughly, to understand it, and to equip oneself to help others to understand it, is to understand the fundamental logic of capitalism as a developing system and the passions and forces generated within which provide the basis for a new society.
"In competing with the pundits of economics, Marx has written something in the nature of a parody ; and, once we have read Das Kapital, the conventional works on economics never seem the same to us again: we can always see through their arguments and figures the realities of the crude human relations which it is their purpose or effect to mask".
Session 1, Wed 2nd 1 to 3 - The value problem
Chapter 1 sections 1 and 2.
Session 2, Thu 3rd 10 to 12 - Commodity fetishism
Chapter 1, section 4
Session 3, Thu 3rd 1 to 3 - Value-forms and money
Chapter 1, section 3, and chapters 2 and 3
Session 4, Thu 3rd 4 to 6 - Capital and labour-power
Chapters 4 to 6
Session 5, Friday 4th 10 to 12 - Interlude: Wages, Price, and Profit
Session 6, Friday 4th 1 to 3 - The working day
Capital chapters 7-11
Session 7, Friday 4th 4 to 6 - The capitalist workplace
Capital chapters 12-14
Session 8, Saturday 5th 10 to 12 - Developed capitalist industry
Capital chapter 15
Session 9, Saturday 5th 1 to 3 - Productive and unproductive labour. Forms of wages.
Chapters 16-23
Session 10, Saturday 5th 4 to 6 - How capitalist production reproduces capitalist class relations
Chapters 24-25 and 32
Session 11, Sunday 6th 10 to 12 - The origins of capitalism
Chapters 26-31 and 33
Session 12, Sunday 6th 1 to 3 - Marx's political economy vs orthodox economics
The introductions and prefaces
You are asked to bring a copy of Otto Rühle's abridged edition of Capital. Preferably also a copy of the full book: copies are available cheap second-hand on the web, and any of the current English translations will do. And preferably also a copy of Marx's small pamphlet Wages, Price, and Profit, which dates from the same time as Capital.
Click here for an audiobook of Capital
As far as I know, there is no audiobook of "Wages, Price, and Profit", but if you like audiobooks you would do well to listen to:
the audiobook of "Wage Labour and Capital".
Marx's Capital in 19 short videos:
https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2018-04-24/marxs-capital-martin-th…
Cheap food will be available at the school at lunchtime and at 6pm each day, and tea, coffee, and snacks in the afternoon break and before the start of each day's session.
Please bring a sleeping bag.
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To book, please email the information requested below to office@workersliberty.org, and click on the button below to pay £5 as a contribution to the costs of organising the school.
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