Basics,
Part 2a
Historical
Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation
In support of “The Prince” we now go straight to the most
famous work of the Communist canon: Karl Marx’s “Capital”, in full strength.
The short Chapter 32 (attached) is the second last chapter
in Volume 1 of “Capital”. It is a broad-brush summary of the first volume.
This chapter is only about 1000 words long - roughly the
same length as a newspaper “feature” article. It is one of several passages in
the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin that compress world history into a single
sweep, in this case from the time of slaves and serfs, through the stages of
the development of capitalism, to the anticipated proletarian revolution.
Other such passages in the “classics” include Chapter 9 of
“The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” by Frederick Engels,
which will be posted as the next item, and the first few pages of “The
Communist Manifesto”, by Marx and Engels, which is the main text in the next
part of this “Basics” course.
The “Basics”
course is partly an attempt to answer the frequently-expressed desire for a
“simple” explanation of the politics of the working class and of the
intellectual partisans of the working class.
In attempting this task, some texts have been chosen that
exemplify the various original authors’ own attempts to respond to, and to
satisfy, the manifest popular craving for a brief and easily-absorbed overall
explanation of how politics works.
This chapter from Marx, wrapping up his master-work,
"Capital, Volume 1", is one of those.
- The above is to
introduce the original reading-text: Capital, V1,
C32, Historical Tendency of Capital, Marx
