How Capitalism Works

What is capitalism, where did it come from, how does it organize human life, and what are its consequences? This is the foundational theme. Other themes build on the analysis developed here, though no theme has to be studied first. The aim is not to learn capitalism as a system in the abstract, but to understand the specific ways it shapes the lives of the people in the room.

How to use this theme

This folder organizes resources by lens. See the Pedagogy document for what the lenses do and why they are structured this way.

• Experiential: What is your experience with this? What does the room already know?
• Historical: How did this come to be?
• Theoretical: How do we understand and analyze it?
• Practical: What is happening on the ground and what are people doing about it?
• Liberatory: What would it mean to overcome or transform this?

A session does not need to use all five lenses. A study circle may move across them. Use what serves the room.

Anchor questions

These questions have proven useful for opening up this theme. They are starting points, not a script. Take the ones that fit the room and leave the rest.

• When you hear the word “capitalism,” what comes to mind? Where did that picture come from?
• Who owns the place where you work? Who decides what happens there, and who does the work?
• Where does profit come from? When a company makes money, whose labor made it?
• What do you have to sell in order to live? What happens to someone who has nothing to sell?
• What in your economic life feels permanent and natural, as though it could not be otherwise? What if it was made, and recently?
• Who does the unpaid work that keeps your household and community running? Why is that work unpaid?
• What would it take for you to stop working for a wage? What stands in the way?

Recommended sequences

Suggested arcs for groups new to this theme. Adapt freely. Every session opens with a check-in and closes with reflection (see the pedagogy document).

Single-session entry point (2 hours). Start experiential: the “who owns your workplace / where does profit come from” prompts. Watch a short explainer together (the Gravel Institute’s four-minute How You Are Being Exploited is designed for exactly this). Read a few pages of Marx’s Wage-Labour and Capital aloud. Close by returning to the opening question with what has shifted. See the single-session template.

Six-week study circle. Week 1 experiential and framing (what do we already know; what are we studying and why). Week 2 historical: how capitalism was made, using Huberman or Ellen Meiksins Wood. Weeks 3 to 4 theoretical: the commodity, value, and surplus value, reading Wage-Labour and Capital and Value, Price and Profit with a David Harvey lecture as companion. Week 5 practical: capitalism on the ground today, using a podcast episode or Amazon Empire. Week 6 liberatory: what could replace it, opening the debates. See the six-week template.

Weekend intensive. Compress the arc above into a Friday-evening-through-Sunday structure, with the historical and theoretical work on Saturday and the practical and liberatory work on Sunday. See the weekend-intensive template.

Related themes

This theme is the foundation the others build on. The closest connections:

• Labor, Work, and Organizing takes up the wage relation introduced here and turns to what workers do about it.
• Race and Racial Capitalism develops the link between capitalism and racial slavery that the historical lens opens (Williams, Linebaugh and Rediker).
• Gender, Reproduction, and the Household extends the analysis of unpaid and reproductive labor (Federici) that primitive accumulation depended on.
• Imperialism and the Global System scales the analysis up from the workplace to the world market.

Status

This theme has a developed first pass across all five lenses. Resources continue to be added as the project grows. If you have run a session on this theme, consider contributing back what you used and what you learned.