Saturday, January 31
2:00 – 4:00 pm
Indianapolis Liberation Center
Interested in hosting a study group at the Indy Liberation Store? Email Bridget at bridget@indyliberationcenterstore.com!
It’s not too late to join the Indy Liberation Store‘s first book study of 2026: Marx’s Capital (Vol. 1). In this session, we’ll cover chapters 10-14.
Chapter 10 is when we finally get to the daily realities and experiences of the class struggle as the motor of capitalism and that which determines the rate of exploitation and value of labor power. By examining how the “normal working day” is established–in theory and in historical practice–Marx emphasizes how the command over time is central to the class struggle. We spend some time on his theorization of the state in this chapter, which takes on the dual function of managing inter- and intra-class conflict, which introduces the contradiction between individual and collective capitalists and the role of reform in the class struggle. We also broach the fundamental role that slavery and colonialism played in the development of capitalism, and how the latter transformed the former.
Chapters 11-14 cover the rate and mass of surplus-value, and we begin examining how capitalists can increase surplus-value (and therefore exploitation) without making the working day longer, which leads to the distinction between absolute and relative surplus-value. Absolute surplus-value is produced by prolonging the working day, but given the political and natural limits of the working day, how can capital increase surplus-value? By shortening necessary labor time (the value of labor power and variable capital) and therefore lengthening surplus labor time. The latter chapters consider some of the ways capitalists pursue relative surplus-value, specifically through cooperation and the division of labor. Through cooperation, we see how capital begins producing the social collective worker–and the potential for class unity against capital–at the same time as it produces new forms of exploitation. By examining the division of labor in handicraft and manufacture, we see how capital individualizes workers at the same time as it unites them. At the end, we observe how manufacture–because the worker is the motive force–poses a limit to capitalism’s command, and how this is an example of the disjuncture between the forces of production and the relations of production. After this section, we’ll be ready for chapter 15 on machinery–when the capitalist mode of production is finally able to come into its own.
Readings and resources
While you can use any complete edition of the first volume of Capital, we recommend the International Publishers edition, which is the original English translation of the book. This is the preferred edition for political and and literary reasons, which we’ll cover in class.
It’s also the edition available for free online here).
The other main version is the Penguin edition, which is perfectly fine. However, it’s easiest if we’re all on the same page (literally), although the facilitator will try to identify the key passages in both versions.
Reading guide for ch. 10-14: PDF.
Reading Capital with Comrades
Episode 6 (ch. 10): Class struggle
Episode 7 (ch. 11-14): Dis-uniting class