AWOL -- Resources to Supplement Sessions on Marx's Critique of Capitalism

To supplement your learning of Marx's critique of capitalism I list here several resources. The first helpful secondary sources (people simplifying and presenting in easier-to-understand prose) precede several more challenging primary texts from Marx himself which precede critical texts that attempt to draw on Marx's theories for contemporary analysis.

Clarifying Basic Ideas:

• Mark Ruppert - A leftist professor of political science at Syracuse University has posted these helpful lecture notes regarding Marx's theory of how capital expands.
• The introduction, "theory", and "definition" section of this Wikipedia article might also help you understand Marx's labor theory of value.

Primary Texts:

• I have already recommended "Wage Labor & Capital" as a relatively accessible simplification (as a pamphlet) of Marx's analysis of capitalism. The accessible and relevant concluding chapter from that text can be found here.
• The first chapter of the Communist Manifesto advocates a workers movement to overthrow capitalism. It argues many of the theories we've been examining but with a more fist-in-the-air rhetorical style. The dialectic underlies the argument but not explicitly (see especially the final paragraph of the chapter for a good example of thesis --> antithesis --> aufhebung/synthesis). The interest of this chapter emanates not only from its analysis of our historical situation but also from its attempt to build a grand theory of the past, present, and future.
  

Modern Marxist Analysis:

• This pamphlet - The Reproduction of Daily Life - emphasizes that basic capitalist processes - commodification, capital accumulation, alienation - dominate our daily lives.
• This pamphlet extends the analysis of capitalism's domination of all that we can see - all that we feel.

Optional HW Assignment: Read one or more of the above (or another Marxist text you've found), connect it to the lectures, and weave it together with your own experiences and insights on the topic in a 1-2 page essay to post on your blog.