 Sita, I must thank Sehmat for inviting me to deliver these four lectures, and I'm particularly delighted that Sita Ram is chairing this first session. Besides being the general secretary, he's an old friend in classmate, and I'm privileged to have him here. I'm also thankful to all of you all for taking time off on a Saturday evening and being here to join the discussion, which I would try and begin today. There's two things I'd like to say. One, of course, is that I would be, since there's a lot of, by way of quotations, references from Marx itself, from capital itself, I would be going back to this text as often as I can, because I think it's better to be though there are many translations and I've used only one. I think it would be better that I try to be correct in terms of what I'm quoting, whichever the translation is. Well, to start with, if we, when we get together to mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first German edition of Das Kapital, and of course we know that the other two volumes came much later, many years later, and despite the fact that tangles did say that volume three was done by the time volume one was published, we know that a lot of it was in the form of quotations which Marx had from the literature which he was analyzing, and there was a lot of it, and interspersed it particularly in volume three with commons, but we essentially have these three volumes and when we meet to discuss these volumes of the work in capital, this is not obviously only because this is a seminal text of great historical interest, which of course it is, but we meet to celebrate a treatise that is in some sense influenced all those who over the last 150 years have actually tried to understand the nature and dynamics of capitalism. This of course includes a large number of workers and peasants movements to which capital and of course a lot more writings of Marx and Engels, but capital in particular was the equivalent as Engels put it of the Bible to the devout Christian as it was to the working class in continental Europe that's the way in which Engels described capital, but it's also true that this is a text which provides us with the essentials of a method that helps us to a certain extent to extend and contemporize the analysis and the analysis in capital, and some it's a living text with their abiding influence. I must just correct that my third lecture is not revising capital, but resisting capital in the age of finance. I wouldn't be trying to revise this. So for these reasons in the 150 years since the publication of capital, we know there's been a number of attempts on a number of people have attempted to read this and interpret it in very different ways with each reading being influenced by the social political and economic conditions of the time. That of course must be the way that that's the way it should be given the fact that this is not just an economic treatise, but also a political testament as Sitaram mentioned, but it's also important because of the fact that Marx himself in some sense believed that well theorization in general, but political economy in particular is influenced by substantially by the social and political conditions of the time in which new ideas emerge including those of course of the classical economists, and that in some sense the nature of the society and the contradictions which characterize it at the relevant point of time influence the nature of thought which emerges out of that context. So when we return to capital today, it's not merely to understand its method and substance which of course is important, but to use Marx's method to assess the transformation of capitalism over these 150 years and to try and see that while recognizing this transformation how it influences our own reading and analysis of the substance of capital and how we apply it to the understanding of contemporary capitalism or current day capitalism. In fact if we look at many of the writings of Marx and Engels in these sort of decades between the communist manifesto and the first volume of capital, it would appear that they would have considered it odd that they would at all be an occasion 150 years after the publication of the first volume where we would be considering capital as being anything more than a text of historical interest because their idea they clearly believed that the rapid development of the productive forces evidenced by capitalism in England, the process by which this rapid development of the productive forces came into conflict with the social relations of production, the crisis that the anarchy of capitalism results in which I'll be looking at in the next lecture and of course the fact that the emergence and growth of capitalism produces its own great vigours in the form of the working class that all of this would result very soon at that point of time that seems to have been the expectation in the transcendence of capitalism itself. In fact if the revolutions of 1847, 1848 were missed opportunities that did not mean that they didn't expect that if not in the last quarter of the 19th century at least in the first half of the 20th century or later we would see the transcendence of capital and therefore it was unlikely I think that they would be expecting that we would 150 years after the first volume be sitting here examining this text and its relevance for capitalism as it exists today. The perception implicit in this idea that we're going to see this transcendence in what was to a certain extent perceived as a revolutionary time part of the reason Engels was sort of pressurizing Marx we know to complete a capital was that he felt that this text was needed given what was happening in terms of the movements of the working people and working class in particular which he thought was occurring already in England in Europe. So therefore when we look at this perception the implicit idea is that the progressive character of capitalism would be its own undoing with technological changes turning the social relations that unleash them into into into their own fetters. So a consequence of that perception was that alongside the discussion of the ways in which the antagonistic relationship between capital and labor shaped the form and intensity of exploitation and determine the distribution of income under capitalism that associated with that was Marx's emphasis on the transformative nature of capitalist development. Once the process of primitive accumulation had created the conditions for the extraction of surplus value in a system with equivalent exchange that is where commodities were being exchanged at their full value accumulation in the quintessentially capitalist form begins and crudely coercive primitive accumulation moves into the shadows. This is in my view in Marx's view and once the force of capitalist accumulation unleashes the productive forces productivity increases cheapens the cheapen the means of subsistence leading to surplus being extracted in the form of relative surplus value rather than absolute surplus value that is rather than largely through an extension of the working day or through an increase in the intensity of labor but rather it comes because of changes in the in the in the means of production which results in the cheapening in particular of the elements of subsistence or the means of subsistence subsistence which enter into the workers consumption basket. This is at times interpreted as an almost linear shift from primitive to normal modes of capital accumulation and from absolute to relative surplus value extraction that linearity is also read by many into this idea that there is to a certain extent an inevitability that at a certain stage of development the material productive forces of society would come into conflict with the existing relations of production which begins an era of social revolution. Now this was indeed the process which in Marx's view gave rise to capitalism, rendered it transient and prepared the ground for the abolition of private property. Marx built we know into his analysis three tendencies that made capitalism like previous modes of production almost inevitably transient. The first as already discussed is the logic of accumulation under capitalism that results in the rapid development of the productive forces and brings it into conflict with the social relations of production. In fact, Marx went even further and saw new forms under capitalism as pointing to a socialization of production necessitated by the concentration and centralization of capital and preparing the grounds for socialism within the womb of capitalism itself. One such form the role and impact of which has since proved substantially different which I would refer to in the third of these lectures is the joint stock company which Marx described as reflective of the complete separation of capital ownership and the actual production process. The sort of shift to ownership by social capital and in his words the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself. The second of these tendencies which was to lead to the inevitable transcendence of capitalism was the conflict between capital and labor that cannot be resolved under capitalism and provides the ground for the overthrow of the system based on private property and wage labor by the working class itself. And the third of course is the inevitably inevitability of crisis under capitalist accumulation which I discuss in the next lecture that provides the trigger for intensification of class conflict and unleashes revolutionary movements. Marx framed his discussion in capital we know as a critique of political economy especially the works of the classical economists from the physiocats through Adam Smith and Ricardo and in constant opposition to the vulgar economists of that period who saw whom he saw as conscious or unconscious apologists for the bourgeoisie. Marx himself dates the beginning of his study of political economy diverting as was mentioned from his study of jurisprudence that he pursued as a subject subordinated to philosophy and history to 1842-43. In that year as editor of the Reynicher Zeitung he found himself in the embarrassing position of having to discuss what are known what he describes as material interests referring here to discussions in the reynish parliament on forest theft and division of landed property the condition of the peasant tree in the Moselle valley and the debates on free trade and protective tariffs. Marx then did find some answers to some of his questions in the work of the classical economists while appreciative of that work he found it inadequate to the purpose and intense an intense study that to his purpose an intense study led him to an explanation why classical political economy in his view while associated with and the ideological accompaniment of a rising capitalism belong to the period in which class struggle in capitalism was yet underdeveloped this gave it its scientific perspective which allowed the classical economists to individually contribute many important insights regarding the nature and dynamics of capitalism these included the identification of productive labor with activity that yielded the surplus product and contributed to accumulation tracing the source of surplus to production rather than circulation identifying labor time as the ultimate source of value Ricardo and recognizing that missionary while enhancing productivity and profits can displace labor which of course went on to the formulation of the idea of the reserve army of labor this of course inevitably led among the classical economists and Ricardo in particular to the recognition of the antagonism embedded in the system in the capitalist system however the reason this analysis proved inadequate to Marx was that that political economy remaining within the bourgeois horizon in so far you know remaining the bourgeois horizon in so far as it looked at that capitalism not as a historical phase in the evolution of social production but as something which which was was sort of near eternal that it was such that according to to Marx even its last great representative David Ricardo in the end consistently made the antagonism of class interests of wages and profits of profits and rent the starting point of the investigation but then naively take took the antagonism for a social law of nature hence in so far as political economy remains within this bourgeois horizon it can only remain a science while the class struggle is latent or manifests itself only in isolated or sporadic phenomena and even then it was in essence a science of enrichment which saw such processes of enrichment as a natural order before this turn to political economy Marx had already made the transition inspired by his early engagement with the young Hegelians to a radical republican position with a social dimension he contrasted the christian state which was an association of believers and a system that legitimized and protected feudal privileges with the rational state which convinced which converted the aims of the individual into general aims crude instinct into moral inclination natural independence into spiritual freedom by the individual finding is good in the life of the whole and the whole in the frame of mind of the individual so therefore he was soon convinced that legal relations and political forms originate in the material conditions of life the totality of which Hegel as as Sitaram mentions embraces within the term civil society and that the anatomy of this civil society had to be found in political economy seen in this light Marx's extended engagement with political economy which began at this time was part of an effort to combine the application of the Hegelian dialectic now of course turned on on its head and the revolutionary ideas derived from the french revolution and the early socialists with an understanding and critique of English political economy English political economy because it was a progressive science representing as it did the still progressive capitalism in conflict with the dying feudal order critique because with Ricardo having recognized the conflict between the different class interests the science of bourgeois economy in Marx's words had reached the limits beyond which it cannot pass nevertheless nevertheless Marx clearly believed that its insights that is the insights of classical political economy combined with an critique of its inadequate and faulty analysis and its limited vision could take the science in a direction where it became a weapon for the working class the working class needed this weapon because that class was the instrument in Marx's view through which history would ensure transcendence of capitalism a process that bourgeois political economy which saw capitalism as the end of history could not contemplate this perception was in keeping with Marx's adherence to and use of Hegel's dialectic which in its rational form he argued includes in its comprehensive and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things at the same time also the recognition of the negation of its state of its inevitable breaking up because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement movement and therefore takes into account its transitional nature not less than its momentary existence because it lets nothing impose upon it and in some sense is critical is critical and revolutionary so it was the combination of political economy with this this larger perspective which I really am not competent to go into in great detail which led up to what we see in these three volumes while classical political economy was his point of departure Marx's discussion in capital made a substantial marked a substantial leap forward in a number of ways there was the obvious factor of method where he starts with the elementary form in which wealth appears under capitalism commodities to first identify the substance the substance of value which is abstract labour time that in turn gives the magnitude magnitudes that define the proportions in which commodities exchange in the market or their exchange values while commodities may be produced and exchanged in different contexts starting at the borders separating tribal communities and moving on to the thriving urban centers of feudal regimes commodity under production under capitalism he saw as different for two reasons as we as we know first only such products are best suited to serve as commodities as as a result from different kinds of labour each being carried out independently and for the own account of private individuals so the developed division of labour associated with capitalism universalizes commodity production and second labour power itself appears as a commodity where the labour labourer alienates the use value of his capacity to labour and earns the exchange value of that capacity to labour the recognition of the distinction between the labourer and his labour power and between the value of labour power which is socially and historically determined and the value that the labourer contributes in the form of living labour during the working day was the most significant contribution that Marx made to the advance of political economy the idea that surplus value emanates from the fact that the worker is paid a wage which is equal to the value of reproducing labour power which of course is short of the amount he contributes when the capitalist chooses to use his capacity to labour as he used value in production along with the means of means of production the capitalist who has brought the brought the right to use the value of labour power which he has paid for at its value acquires the right to the surplus value that is congealed in the new commodity produced when he combines labour power with the material forms of capital he owns in the process of production the surplus value acquired allows for the continuous self expansion or as some others describe it valorization of capital even when all exchanges occur at the full values of the commodities involved this was the fundamental conceptual advance made in Marx's enunciation of the of the labour theory of value one consequence of these defining features of capitalism is that the circuit of capital relevant the circuit of capital relevant to the capitalist is the circuit of money and productive commodity capital money M as the ultimate expression of exchange value is deployed to acquire commodities that embody surplus value I mean it took commodities in the form of means of production and labour power to produce commodities that embody surplus value which are then converted in the sphere of circulation to a larger sum of money M prime the circuit MC M prime is no more the result of accidental price variations or unequal exchange realized through the manipulations of merchant capitalists but the generation of surplus value that allows for the constant self expansion of value that is the form of existence of capital this makes the production of use value incidental to the necessary for the capitalist who has capital personified is focused on the extraction of surplus value for accumulation in so far as the capitalist is capital personified his motivating force is not the acquisition and enjoyment of use values but the acquisition and augmentation of exchange values he's fanatically intent on the valorization of value consequently he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production sake in the process however and I return to this he plays a progressive role and spurs on the development of society's productive forces and the creation of those material conditions of production which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle it should be clear therefore that what makes a commodity producing system quintessentially capitalist is not the universalization of exchange but the generalization of commodity production in the sense that labor part two is a commodity unlike under slavery of feudalism where the slave owner or feudal lord controls the laborer and has access to his or her labor time because of bondage and coercive power the capitalist confronts the worker as the owner of labor power with the freedom to work for whom server she or he chooses since labor power is the capacity to labor the laborer must also be in a position and willing to alienate this capacity and offer it for sale to the capitalist for these choices to be made she or he must be free in a double sense free to disperse of her has his labor labor power as a commodity and free off or separated from all commodities that would allow her or him to use and realize the value of this capacity to labor marks did at times present the realization of this dual freedom as the first step and I'd like to repeat that the first step in the development of capitalism through a process of so-called primitive accumulation in which peasants and pretty producers are separated through expropriation from procession control or ownership of the means means of production such expropriation was defended by bourgeois political economy as being the result of wealth accumulated by an elite that was diligent intelligent and above all frugal however it was in actual history as marks documented the result of conquest enslavement robbery murder in short force which produces producers from safe with which which uh divorce producers from the means of production while emancipating these producers from serfdom and the fetters of the gills it also left them with nothing to sell but their labor power there were also other forms in which mon non-market processes were used to accumulate capital as part of the process of primitive accumulation to quote marks the rising bourgeoisie needs the power of the state and uses it to regulate wages that is to force them into the limits suitable for making profit to lengthen the working day and to keep the worker himself at his normal level of dependence this is an essential part of so-called primitive accumulation in fact at the end of the 17th century in england it took the form marks argues of a combination of moments that embraces the colonies the national debt the modern tax system and the system of protection that is his understanding of primitive accumulation extended substantially in in in directions which brought in not merely the fact that there was the separation of the of the of the worker from the means of production the expropriation of acids the concentration of capital in a few hands but also the use of the state in multiple multiple ways including colonialism in order to be able to engage in the task of primitive accumulation once this first step was complete capital accumulated at one pole confronts the w free worker and capital accumulation based on surplus value extraction in production proceeds i would come back to why i have underlined this idea of the interpretation that this was in marks a first step accompanying and following this process is another transition that marks presented as reflective of the development of capitalism proper since the magnitude of surplus value depends on the total length of the working day and the value of labor power it can be increased as we all know either by lengthening the working day and which is the extraction of absolute surplus value or by reducing the value of labor power through productivity in sex increases in sectors that produce the goods entering into the worker subsistence pocket basket as i mentioned which is the extraction of relative surplus value in either case since the ratio of surplus value to the to variable capital rises that is the s by v ratio rises so does the rate of exploitation and and and and the ratio of surplus labor to necessary labor but in marx's view it is the extraction of relative surplus value through productivity enhancing investments that was characteristic of capitalism in its fully developed form since capital must confront doubly free labor in the market for capital accumulation in its full fledged form to occur the fact that labor power in that form must emerge through a process of primitive accumulation affects the ability of the system to extract relative surplus value in the first instance when money capital first seeks to realize the circuit mcm dies mm prime it does not have ready at hand enough doubly free workers it extracts surplus by bringing the existing world world of peasants and pretty producers operating with pre-existing techniques of production under its way or through what marx identifies as the formal subsumption of labor to capital in those conditions only absolute surplus value can be extracted since the technical conditions of production are given it is only when workers who have nothing to sell but their labor power confront capital accumulated in the hands of a few that the conditions where the owners of capital can transform the process of production and enhance surplus value extraction in the form of relative surplus value are created this is the face of the real subsumption of labor by capital hence at many points in his analysis marx appears to suggest that the extraction of relative surplus value based on the real subsumption of labor by capital inevitably displaces the extraction of absolute surplus value through the formal subsumption of labor by capital in marx's view the production of surplus value and i'm quoting him requires a specifically capitalist mode of production a mode of production which along with its methods means and conditions arises and develops spontaneously on the basis of the formal subsumption of labor under capital this formal subsumption he argues is then replaced and that's his word by a real subsumption these these suggestions that primitive accumulation is only a first step in capitalist evolution and that absolute surplus value extraction will be displaced by relative surplus value extraction could be interpreted as resulting from marx's reading of the dynamism that post-industrial revolution capitalism displayed it could also be seen as reflective of the view that a combination of workers movements and legislation in the form of the factory acts which she discussed in detail in capital they led to in england the factory acts they led to in england would force capital to limit the working day and to accelerate technical change so that accumulation depends largely on relative surplus value these features where the even then were of course typical only of the empirical ground for marx's analysis of capitalism as marx noted in his preface to the first german edition his intention was to examine the capitalist mode of production and the conditions of production in exchange corresponding to that mode by analyzing the capitalism of england of that time which was its classic ground the fact that other countries including germany were not characterized by the dynamism that england displayed did not undermine the generality of that analysis because in marx's view the country that is more developed industrially only shows to the less developed the image of their own future in marx's understanding though by the time capital volume one was completed more than a century had passed since the emergence of industrial capitalism in england and elsewhere the capitalist mode was not present in its pure form even in germany where the first edition was launched in practice in most contexts including germany alongside of modern evils of capitalism a whole series of inherited evils oppressed the people this primacy of the english case with an emphasis on its more progressive features mattered in two ways for marx's assessment of capitalism during the years when he worked on capital first the technological achievements of the industrial revolution in england made him conclude that while in time capitalist relations would prove a feta on the development of the productive forces capitalism was a system which he saw even in his most cynical writings as having contributed in his words to a wondrous development of the social productive forces second marx saw in this progressive character of capitalism to to to an ability to ensure in time and perhaps inexorably the displacement and demise of primitive methods of production and backward relations relations of production this kind of reading of the nature of actually existing capitalism was also encouraged by the fact that in capital as it came to be published marx neither undertook an extensive analysis of the role of the state in supporting capitalist accumulation of course there are discussions but not an extensive analysis and providing a site for the persisting primitive accumulation of capital which he had noted that the state was an important instrument in agency for the primitive accumulation of capital but the analysis was not yet detailed enough because of of the fact that the work remained incomplete nor did he in fact in in in earlier sort of chapterization of what capital was going to be the state was an important segment which was going to be or agency which is going to be analyzed nor did he analyze the impact that capital expansion had on the peripheral countries and the colonies where its modernizing influence did not include exclude coercive extraction of surplus subordination of petty producers operating with primitive techniques and reproduction of backward relations of production so as to maximize the extraction of absolute surplus value the resulting optimism about the transformative potential of capitalism and the increasing assertion of the collective will of the working class possibly explains the fact that marx one considered primitive accumulation as being confined to the early stages of capitalism before the capital wage labor relation is to a substantial extent universalized to saw a sequential movement away from the formal to the real subsumption of labor by capital and from the abstraction from the extraction of absolute surplus value to the extraction of relative surplus value and three argued that this transition would be hastened by the ability of the working class to both limit the length of the working day and raise the level of wages any reading of world history over the last hundred and fifty years would indicate that the first two of these features which is the fact that primitive accumulation occurs and that this that this both a combination of of of extraction of absolute and relative surplus value with a combination of both the formal subsumption of labor by capital and the real subsumption of labor by capital that the first two of these features have not been confined to specific phases of capitalism but have persisted to differing degrees in different contexts across capitalist history even to the extent that marx in different marx's analysis was true of the class classic ground of cap of capitalism he analyzed namely england it was by no means overwhelmingly the rule and even though the expectation that capitalism would not survive through the nineteenth or first part of the twentieth century not that they named those dates has been belied capitalism's persistence has not been accompanied by a transit transformation in which the end of primitive accumulation the shift away from absolute surplus value extraction to relative surplus value extraction and the strengthening of the of the power of collective labor to win concessions from capital have been unambiguously visible at all points in time indeed marx too did recognize that capital focused on maximizing the enhancement of surplus value and accelerating capital accumulation would continue to seek ways of extracting absolute surplus value and the workers effort to limit that may be only partially successful as is detailed discussion on the failure of the factories act the constant struggle to limit the working day the tendency to increase the intensity of work within within a given working day and the resort to payment of time and peace wages to chapters make clear capital is constantly aiming to maximize surplus value through what could be identified as primitive means within this discourse so while a merely formal subsumption of labor under capital suffices for the production of absolute surplus value marx himself said the unrestricted prolongation of the working day turned out to be a very characteristic product of large scale industry even long after relative surplus value extraction had begun in some it is completely possible that the generation of absolute and relative surplus value can go hand in hand throughout the capitalist epoch and independent of the level of capitalist development this also occurs by ensuring the worker is not paid the full value of labor power as was assumed in order to be able to bring out the true and source of surplus value even in a context in which we have an exchange of equivalence so this also occurs by ensuring that the worker is not paid the full value of his labor power as happens under the assumption that all commodities including labor power are exchanged as equivalence since wages are paid in money and take various forms such as time and peace wages it is possible to reduce the wage per unit of time say an hour to such a level where the commodities that the wage can buy are not enough to replenish the capacity to labor and workers are forced to work long hours or more intensively in order even to earn a miserable wage is so if surplus value is enhanced by paying workers less than the full value of labor power it is being expanded through the expropriation of a part of what does the workers do in any given social and historical context and a due in the sense of paying the equivalent of the exchange value of that labor power the point is that this remains true even 150 years after the publication of capital the growing presence of casual temporary and self-employed workers and the unleashing of competition between the reserve army of cheap labor constantly reproduced in the colonies earlier in the peripheral countries today and workers in the metropolitan countries the competition between these peripheral workers and the workers in metropolitan countries only aggravates this tendency they create conditions where workers are forced to self exploit themselves create opportunities for the extraction of absolute surplus value even when technological advance helps enhance relative surplus value moreover in as much as these conditions and the proliferation of finance result in indebtedness that leads to the loss of ownership or control over as assets on the part of workers the middle classes and the peasantry the expropriation of assets that can be sold or used later in surplus value generating productive activity becomes the means to extract surplus without the mediation of productive activity in the first instance finally any study of actually existing capitalism must treat it as a world system and not just as an english phenomenon marx's discussion of imperialism outside of capital in his new york tribune articles for example did recognize the role of surplus transfer and market access in the colonies and sustaining capital accumulation in capitalism's classic ground and two the role of the subordination of the petty peasant the petty producer and peasantry and capture of the state by capital in extracting the surplus that was transferred to england such transfers and market innovation continue to play a role through the 20th century and does so even today now under the ages of finance as well so the transformation that marx took for granted though visible and significant has not been taken to completion even in the developed capitalist world and definitely not in the large underdeveloped or less developed periphery of capitalism it is clear that the period of the second world war when unemployment in the developed world was low and welfare state measures were in place was an exception rather than the rule a feature of contemporary capitalism is the large size of the so-called informal sector and high proportion of informal employment this is obvious in the less developed countries where the informal economy we know accounts were between half and three quarters of all non-agricultural employment with poor employment conditions involving lack of protection when wages are not paid compulsory overtime layoffs without notice or compensation and the absence of benefits such as pensions and insurance but with unemployment in the developed countries soaring and remaining high after the 2008 crisis descriptions of the labour market point to precarious conditions there as well this has affected the young in particular who are experiencing long spells of joblessness suffer from large exposure to temporary and precarious jobs and are forced to accept reductions in working time but with even lower wages than before so the dominant conclusion from the 150 years that have passed is the persistence in changed forms of the extremely intensive exploitation of workers and producers especially in the periphery through primitive forms of subsumption and the persistent reliance and absolute surplus value extraction and the realization of all of these at the expense of weakened labour with help from the state the intensity of these means of exploitation increases when the correlation of power favours capital in society does not restrain it even partially moreover ever since the onset of the monopoly phase of capitalism in the quarter of century after volume one was published the role of the state as a means and site for primitive accumulation has hugely increased among the reasons for the resilience of capitalism and this ability to find new avenues to extract surpluses using old means I'm sorry I mean among the reasons for the resilience of capitalism are this ability to find new avenues to extract surpluses using old means even in context where the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is operative and those contexts we know are limited for a number of reasons which I should discuss it can be counteracted by raising the rate of surplus value by means such as this as we shall discuss in a later lecture however the fact that capitalism has proved to be more resilient than Marx and Engels expected is a call not for dropping the analysis on which it was based but for taking forward what I think is the open ended in the discussion in the still incomplete capital and for creating creatively applying the method that Marx and Engels developed such creative application must take into account the changes in capitalism at the end of the prolonged of that of that prolonged history and the implications this has for the nature of capitalism and its dynamics by the 1840s which is when Marx's engagement with political economy began England having experienced the rise to dominance of capitalism was in the midst of the transformation wrought by the industrial revolution and it all already emerged as the words leading imperial power at the beginning of the 19th century the majority of the workforce was engaged in agriculture and related sectors and the non-agricultural sector had the characteristics of a handicraft economy by the late 19th century however factory production was common and according to the 1851 census itself 47 percent of the workforce was employed in the secondary sector which is manufacturing or industry and construction this was the classic ground which provided the empirical basis on which Marx built his critique of the of the classical economists compared with that circumstances are vastly different in the age of finance in today's united kingdom industry and construction account for a fifth of total value added and agriculture and and related activities for less than one percent the figures are similar for the u.s in germany services clearly dominate economic activity by a wide margin within services finance insurance and real estate account for a fifth of total value added in the u.s in the uk in the u.s and finally in the u.s the share of domestic corporate profits accruing to financial companies increased from about seven percent in 1947 to 29 percent in 2000 which is where it stands today the proliferation of finance has meant that financial assets have become an important mode of acquiring wealth and that own ownership of financial assets is an important means of capital accumulation associated with these features of the age of finance is the evidence that over long periods not only are the wages workers slow to rise or even stagnant contributing to rising inequality when productivity rises but that underlying this tendency is the fact that increasingly regular work is the exception with a growing role for self-employment and casual short-term employment to the extent that across a stagnant average wage wage rates per hour of work vary workers are required if the market permits to extend their number of hours of work to achieve some historically given target wage that allows for the reproduction of labor power and an important factor underlying this tendency is the internationalization of capitalist production as I noted through which the large reserve army of cheap labor and less developed countries is used as a weapon to tame the demands of workers in the developed countries for decent working conditions and a decent wage in a fragmented and segmented labor market the role of capital in this form of extraction of absolute surplus value may be missed but these features of contemporary capitalism must influence the analysis of capitalism deriving directly from marxist capital written while examining england's more dynamic industrial capitalism this is what is going to be the dominant concern in the lectures that follow in the first of which I would be looking at what was still an incomplete description of the determinants of crisis under capitalism and the implications of that in the context of current conditions of capitalism in the third I would like to turn to revisit capital in the age of finance in which we need to look at one factor and I just flag it today which is that if we look at marxist analysis of fictitious capital which arises as a result of the coming of credit money he basically recognized the fact that you can have a situation where there's an increasing divergence between real wealth in the system and the possibilities of extracting surplus value through the mediation of production and the accumulation of financial wealth including an accumulation which occurs because of the trading of credit money itself but this divergence he argued in large measure would in some sense disappear because of the fact that it leads up to crisis which devalues financial assets in substantial measure the problem we face today is that it is true firstly that the divergence between the value of financial assets and the value of real wealth has increased hugely beyond what marx might have contemplated at that point of time because of the nature of current contemporary finance and when crises occur while there is some loss of value of this illusion this illusory financial asset it never goes back to the level at which it was and the possession of financial assets so long as the value of money is stable is adequate enough to command not merely real assets but also labor power so how do we understand in the current context the way in which the process of extraction of surplus value would occur in which accumulation of finance outside the realm which is mediated through production influences the dynamics of capitalism and finally i will make an attempt to try and use these to understand the current crisis and the inability of capitalism as yet close to a decade to be able to transcend that crisis and get back to the normals to the normal which it had prior to the 2007 period thank you