Accumulation of Capital
Events
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Book Talk: On the History of Capitalist ‘Reforms’
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeGiampaolo Conte presents 'A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms', just published by Routledge. Conte's historical research demonstrates that the chief purpose of such reforms has been to integrate semi-peripheral states into the capitalist world-economy.
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Studies in Marx’s Capital
Online Event - Zoom MeetingFollowing up on the MEP's long-running study group on Karl Marx's Grundrisse, we have been reading closely and discussing Marx's 'Theories of Surplus Value' and related works. At present we are completing a study of capitalist landholding and ground rent. Future readings may include Soren Mau's 'Mute Compulsion' and Beverley Best's 'The Automatic Fetish.'
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The Circulation of Capital: Volume II of Marx’s Capital
Online Event - Zoom MeetingA weekly study group covering Marx's Capital, Volume II, The Process of Circulation of Capital. In this volume, Marx addresses the question: How can the reproduction of society as a whole take place, if there is no conscious social planning that ensures that all needs are met, in the necessary proportions, such that life can persist and the capitalist relations of production be sustained? We discover the answer, but we also learn of new contradictions and sources of crisis inherent to capitalist society.
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A Prime Competitor: Understanding Amazon’s Market Power
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeStephen Maher and Scott Aquanno present an innovative analysis of Amazon's market power, drawing on major themes from Marx's Capital, volume 2. In a recent contribution published by Canada's Socialist Project, they challenge understandings of "monopoly" common in mainstream economics as well as among sections of the left.
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AI versus Labor: Luddism and Beyond
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading Group8 weekly sessions starting Oct 1. Is Artificial Intelligence (AI, sic) really the dire threat to the future of humanity as even some of its proponents claim, or is it a more mundane and familiar threat to working people who face loss of their livelihoods and/or further speed-up and alienation? The entire history of industrial capitalism is punctuated by recurring waves of automation to reduce labor costs and turnover time, each time provoking strong resistance by the affected workforce. This reading group will probe the history both of AI and computer technology specifically and of working-class resistance to capitalist automation in general.
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Translating ‘Capital’ for the 21st Century
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeThe appearance of a new English-language edition of Marx's Capital, Volume I, translated and edited by Paul Reitter and Paul North, has been a momentous occasion. Join a conversation with Reitter, North, and noted Marx scholar Michael Heinrich on the challenges of translating Marx for 21st century readers, the weaknesses and strengths of earlier translations, and the ways the new edition can help us understand Marx's analyses of capital and value.
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Marx Miniseries: The ‘Resultate’
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupThe MEP's Capital Studies Group presents a miniseries on the chapter Marx omitted from published editions of Capital. Titled "Results of the Immediate Process of Production" and often referred to by the German 'Resultate', this long chapter can be read as a bridge between volumes 1 and 2 of Capital.
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Reading Capital in an Age of Climate Change
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeMatt Huber highlights the relevance to the climate crisis of key concepts from Marx's 'Capital' such as value, the hidden abode of production, surplus-value, the accumulation of capital, primitive accumulation, and the expropriation of the expropriators.
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Trump, the State, and Global Capital
Recording available on YouTubeLooking at the early weeks of the Trump regime through a Marxists lens presents a major challenge, but who better to meet it than Steve Maher and Clara Mattei, whose historical analyses of finance capital and the capitalist state have garnered well-deserved praise. Join us as we engage Steve and Clara in an open-ended conversation aimed at bringing some clarity to the burgeoning chaos that is shaking up U.S. and global capitalism and the imperialist state system.
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Capitalism and the Politics of Nature with Alyssa Battistoni
Recording available on YouTubeRescheduled to November 16 / In her new book 'Free Gifts,' Alyssa Battistoni explores capitalism’s persistent failure to place value on nature. But the key question is not the moral issue of why some kinds of nature shouldn’t be commodified, but the economic puzzle of why they haven’t been. Recovering and reinterpreting classical economists' idea of "free gifts of nature," Battistoni builds on Karl Marx’s critique of political economy to show how capitalism fundamentally treats nature as free for the taking.
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Reading Marx’s Capital, Volume III
Reading GroupA weekly study group covering Marx's Capital, Volume III, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. This work integrates and completes Marx's analysis, enabling us to understand and make sense of how the phenomena we see occurring on the surface of society are related to the underlying system of capitalism.
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Slavery and Capitalism: A Reading Group
Online Event - Zoom MeetingJoin us for a nine-session reading group on David McNally's recently published Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History. McNally's book presents a systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery to support the provocative claim that enslaved labor in the plantation system is a form of capitalist commodity production. Weaving together history, ... Read more
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Marx’s Capital, Vol. II – On the Circulation of Capital
Online Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupA ten-session study group covering Marx's Capital, Volume II, The Process of Circulation of Capital. Marx addresses the question: How can the reproduction of society as a whole take place, if there is no conscious social planning that ensures that all needs are met, in the necessary proportions, such that life can persist and the capitalist relations of production be sustained? We discover the answer, but we also learn of new contradictions and sources of crisis inherent to capitalist society.
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Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins
FeaturedRecording available on YouTubeA panel celebrating the 2026 edition of Socialist Register. The newly published 2026 volume of Socialist Register - entitled "Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins" - interrogates anew the notion that global capitalism is in its end time (a recurring theme among Marxists since 1848). At the heart of this concept are indications that capital accumulation is running up against some inherent limits. just as the hucksters of private capital are crowing that so-called Artificial Intelligence will usher in a capitalist utopia of unlimited prosperity (for whom?).
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A People’s Guide to Capitalism
FeaturedOnline Event - Zoom MeetingReading GroupSummer introductory sessions on the political economy of capitalism: In ten weekly sessions starting June 8, we will read and discuss Hadas Thier's A People's Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics. This work offers a lively, accessible, and timely guide for those who want to understand, dismantle, and replace the world of the 1%.