Theoretical

How do we understand and analyze this? What concepts and frameworks help us see what is happening?

See the pedagogy document for what this lens does across all themes.

The core concepts this lens builds are the commodity, value, labor power, surplus value, exploitation, and capital as a social relation rather than a thing. The reading can be hard. We do it together, slowly, and we do not pretend to understand more than we do.

Anchor questions

What is the difference between something’s usefulness and its price? Why do the two come apart?
When you take a job, what exactly are you selling? What does the employer buy?
If workers are paid for their work, where does the employer’s profit come from?
What does it mean to call capital a relationship between people rather than a pile of money or machines?
Why does the drive for profit push capitalism to grow without end?

Materials

Free unless marked otherwise. Read the short popular texts first, then approach Capital with a companion.

If you have never read economics

Marx is the spine of this lens, and the texts below him are short but they are not gentle. If the room wants the ground under its feet first, start here instead and come back.

Jim Stanford, Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism (2008, 2nd ed. 2015). Written for trade unionists by a union economist: profit, investment, labour, finance, and the state, explained without assuming you know any economics and without pretending to be neutral about whose side it is on. Built for exactly this kind of school. Its companion site gives away a glossary, slides, course outlines, and guides to reading economic data, free: economicsforeveryone.ca. The book itself is free to borrow: archive.org

Start here (short, by Marx, written for workers)

Karl Marx (1818 to 1883), Wage-Labour and Capital (1847). The best free on-ramp: Marx explaining wages, labor power, and where profit comes from, in language meant to be spoken to workers. Each text on the archive carries a built-in study guide. Free: marxists.org
Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit (1865). A talk Marx gave to trade unionists, laying out value and surplus value against the claim that wage rises are futile. The single clearest short statement of the theory of exploitation. Free: marxists.org
Ernest Mandel (1923 to 1995), An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory (1967). A short, lucid pamphlet on value, surplus value, capital, and crisis, designed for worker-education courses. A strong first session. Free: marxists.org

Foundational text

Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), especially Chapter 1, “The Commodity.” The source text for every concept in this lens. Dense, and best read a few pages at a time with a companion and a group. Free: marxists.org

Companion guides and study aids

David Harvey (b. 1935), Reading Marx’s Capital. Free, complete video and audio lecture courses walking line by line through Capital Volumes I and II, from a scholar who has taught the text for over fifty years. The go-to accompaniment for a reading group. The opening class of Volume I has about 1.14 million views. Course home: davidharvey.org — Class 1 video: youtube.com/watch?v=gBazR59SZXk
Michael Heinrich (b. 1957), An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital (2004, English 2012). The current standard study companion, reflecting the “new reading of Marx.” Concise and rigorous, and it corrects common misunderstandings of value and money. In copyright but freely hosted. Free PDF: files.libcom.org
Ben Fine (b. 1948) and Alfredo Saad-Filho (b. 1964), Marx’s Capital (Pluto Press). A compact, widely assigned textbook walking through Marx’s core categories chapter by chapter, the most efficient print companion for a study group. In copyright but posted in full. No borrowable copy exists. Paywalled: monthlyreview.org, and see the note on access for how to get it. Heinrich’s own essay is free on his publisher’s site: monthlyreview.org
Marxists Internet Archive, “Marx and Engels on Political Economy” subject index and the Capital Volume I study guide. Gathers the primary economic writings with study guides, useful for building a syllabus. Free: marxists.org
Marxists Internet Archive glossary / Encyclopedia of Marxism. Short, reliable definitions of surplus value, commodity, alienation, and the rest, for settling terms as they come up in the room. Free: marxists.org/glossary

Capitalism in its present form

Marx wrote about factories. Most people in the room work for a platform, pay rent to an asset manager, and owe someone money. The machinery is the same; the shape has changed, and a lens that stops in 1867 leaves the room unable to name what it is actually living in.

Nick Srnicek (b. 1982), Platform Capitalism (2016). Ninety pages on Google, Amazon, Uber, and Airbnb as a distinct capitalist form built on data extraction and network effects, and, crucially, as a response to the long downturn rather than a story about clever technology. The most teachable thing here: free, short, and readable in one sitting. No borrowable copy exists. Paywalled: politybooks.com, and see the note on access for how to get it. Srnicek on the book, free but niche at about 20,000 views: youtube.com

How capitalism defends itself

The room will meet these arguments in the world, so it should meet them here first, where there is time to take them apart. Neither of these is a case for capitalism. They are anatomies of how the case gets made and why it feels so hard to answer.

Mark Fisher (1968 to 2017), Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009). Why capitalism now feels less like a system someone built than like the weather, and how “there is no alternative” gets installed as a mood rather than argued as a claim. Ninety pages, working through films, call centres, and mental health rather than economics. Free PDF: libcom.org
Ha-Joon Chang (b. 1963), 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism (2010). Built as twenty-three “they tell you X, actually Y” chapters, which means it states each free-market claim at its strongest before dismantling it. Heterodox rather than Marxist, and the most useful thing in the theme for a room that keeps losing arguments to a confident relative. No borrowable copy exists. Paywalled: penguin.co.uk, and see the note on access for how to get it. Chang’s RSA lecture on this exact book is free, at about 215,000 views: youtube.com

Lectures and video

“Reading Marx’s Capital,” Class 1 (David Harvey, 2007). Roughly two hours. About 1.14 million views. The flagship free lecture course, listed above under companions and worth naming again as the anchor video for this lens. youtube.com/watch?v=gBazR59SZXk
“Crises of Capitalism,” RSA Animate (David Harvey / The RSA, 2010). Roughly 11 minutes. About 3.3 million views. A whiteboard-animated Marxist diagnosis of the 2008 crash. An ideal short opener before the longer Harvey lectures. youtube.com/watch?v=qOP2V_np2c0
“Marxism 101: How Capitalism is Killing Itself” with Richard Wolff (Empire Files, Abby Martin, 2015). Roughly 58 minutes, more than 2 million views. An interview-format introduction to surplus value, historical materialism, and capitalism’s contradictions. A strong Wolff primer. youtube.com/watch?v=6P97r9Ci5Kg
“Marx: A Complete Guide to Capitalism” (Philosophy Tube, Abigail Thorn, 2024). Roughly 50 minutes, about 1.04 million views. A recent, production-rich single-video walkthrough of Marx’s critique. youtube.com/watch?v=0bmX0hZoiJM
“Marx’s Theory of Capitalism,” Lecture 10 (Ian Shapiro, Open Yale Courses PLSC 118, 2011). Roughly 51 minutes, about 321,000 views. A university lecture on the labor theory of value and the rate of exploitation, freely licensed by Yale, for a more academic register. youtube.com/watch?v=rS3-_s-ghbk
“POLITICAL THEORY – Karl Marx” (The School of Life, c. 2014). Roughly 8 minutes, about 10.2 million views, the most-viewed Marx explainer on YouTube. A gentle intro to alienation and exploitation, though its liberal-humanist framing is best used as a starting point that the group then complicates. youtube.com/watch?v=fSQgCy_iIcc

Podcasts

“Upstream Podcast - Marx’s Capital Vol. 1 w/ David Smith” (Robert Raymin and David Smith, 2025). Roughly two hours and 47 minutes. Conversation with David Smith on his book Marx’s Capital Illustrated, an accessible guide to Capital Volume I.” https://www.upstreampodcast.org/conversations

A note on method

Do not try to master Capital in one sitting or one session. The point of the theoretical lens is to build a shared vocabulary the group can use, not to produce experts. Read short, read together, and let people say what they do not yet understand. A facilitator who names their own questions gives the room permission to do the same.

Status

First pass, and it may be a while before there is a second. Contributions welcome.

The People's Free School

Explorer