![]() Even when matters appear to be more complex because of the emergence of subcontracting and the “gig economy”, this underlying social relation is still critical. It requires workers to be “free” in a double sense: “free” to sell their own labour power (not bound by other socioeconomic ties and constraints) and “free” of any ownership of the means of production, so that they have no choice but to sell their labour power for their own material survival. ![]() ![]() The social relation between employer and worker is what enables capitalist production to take place at all. First is the central point about capital: for Marx, it is not just a resource in itself, a simple factor of production analogous to land and labour, but an expression of very specific social relations of production. So why do so many people all over the world still read (or try to read) Karl Marx’s Capital today? Obviously, it must have something going for it – and, in fact, it does indeed still provide a useful framework for understanding the essential features of capitalism, no matter how different its contemporary manifestations may be.Ĭonsider only a few of these insights. This is a book that has been pronounced dead or obsolete many times, but it keeps bouncing back, with the latest recovery in interest and sales just after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. UPFRONT: Does income inequality help or hurt the US? (12:26) ![]()
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