How Capitalism Works: 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.
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. Free PDF: digamo.free.fr
- 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
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
This lens has a developed first pass for this theme. Resources continue to be added as the project grows. Contributions welcome.