Capital: A Critique of Political Economy by Karl Marx Volume 1

Marx’s Capital remains the fundamental text for understanding how capitalism works. By unraveling the commoditized forms of our interactions with nature and each other, it provides tools to understand capitalism’s astounding innovativeness and productivity, intertwined with growing inequality and misery, alienation, stunting of human potential, and ecological destruction all over the globe. In this way, Capital offers the reader a methodology for doing our own analysis of current developments.

On top of that, many (though not all) sections of Volume I are surprisingly accessible and beautifully written. The class will aim to cover major sections of Volume I by the holiday break, with its pace to be determined by participants’ needs, and may continue after that to finish Volume I. Along with our own intensive reading of the text, we’ll use new on-line and visual aids and current articles that illustrate capitalism’s developmental tendencies or what Marx calls its laws of motion. Participants will be encouraged to be as active as they desire through reports and presentations.

Juliet Ucelli has taught Capital at the New York Marxist School and labor economics for labor unions, as well as adult basic education and GED preparation. Currently a high school social worker, she has written on Eurocentrism in Marxist theory, the politics of inner city public schooling and other topics.

Her “Introduction to Capital, Volume I” can be accessed at http://thecommonsbrooklyn.org/intensive-readings-2014.

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