BodhiCommons

In this lecture, Dr. Vijay Prashad looks into the history and talks about why the COVID-19 pandemic has paralysed the world. He explains the dramatic transformation of capitalism from the 1970s to the current time, its implications, and the tasks for the global Left in the way forward.

In the second lecture of Marxian Political Economy, Prof. Venktesh Athreya examines Karl Marx’s analysis of the commodity and how the value of a commodity is determined in a capitalist society. A clear distinction is made between how Marx’s theory which highlighted the social relations involved in commodity production was distinct from bourgeois conceptualisation. These relations between people are mystified under capitalism as relations between things – which Marx referred to as commodity fetishism. Marxian political economy, therefore, becomes a scientific framework, for understanding society not just at its surface level of appearances, but also its underlying reality that determines these appearances and the contradictions that arise between essence and manifestation.

In the third episode of Marxian Political Economy lecture series, Prof. Venkatesh Athreya introduces the circuits of capital and the general production process under capitalism. As Marx notes, it is at the “abode of production” that bourgeois democratic ideals breaks down. This is explained in relation to surplus value that is fundamentally produced by the working class which is appropriated by the capitalist class that owns the means of production. The episode explains what constitutes surplus value and how converting labour power to a commodity alienates the worker from the process of labour as well as the product of labour.

Follow us for more updates:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/BodhiCommons

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/BodhiCommons

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BodhiCommons

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/BodhiCommons

Telegram: https://t.me/BodhiCommons

In the first lecture, Prof. Venktesh Athreya talks about Marx's approach to the study of society, which starts with the society as a whole. According to Marx, man's fundamental activity is production, which does not exist in isolation, but is essentially social production. As historical development occurs, production relations change to keep up with change, leading to contradictions with the existing production forces. The Marxist approach thus emphasises that every society is transitory and focuses on the use of historically specific analytical categories in the study of societies. Reading material for this lecture can be downloaded from https://drive.google.com/open?id=12_P4w2_dYfAC2Yv7jCh_KqS19okzDsz2