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Resources

Hans G. Ehrbar’s Notes on Capital

A good re-translation (better than the Penguin translation) and detailed notes on Volume 1.

Kittens

We claim that modern misery ultimately is the result of capitalism and the nation state. The purpose of this journal is to prove this claim by explaining manifestations such as those listed above. The ideological conclusions people draw from this world make matters worse. We therefore criticise especially those theories that blur or even idealise the conditions we are forced to live under – whatever the well-meaning intentions behind them. In other words, with this journal we aim to criticise those conditions which ensure that wine and cheese are not available to everyone and to criticise everyone who justifies this.

Since we refer to Marx quite a bit, a few clarifications. Capitalism does not vanish by itself. Its crises are nothing but crises of its valorisation. On the other hand, the fact that it causes people harm is an inevitable part of its package in crisis and in boom. Modern democracies, where politicians generally care about nothing except the well-being of the country, are the adequate form of government for the capitalist mode of production. The emancipation of politics from individual capitalist enterprises is a necessary condition for the existence of general capitalist relations. Nation states are not capitalist players on the market – they rather make markets possible.

Critisticuffs

New group based in London engaging in anti-capitalist and anti-nationlist critique. We are working on producing texts and holding public meetings.

They might be able to point you to good Capital reading groups in London.

GegenStandpunkt

The Marxist critique of political economy, “scientific socialism,” explains how and why the social evils the whole world deplores — unemployment and neglect, lousy wages and poverty, violence and war — are not accidental malfunctions. Rather, they are damned necessary given ‘our’ social system of private property; and given states that found their continued existence on the success of private enrichment, and compete with all their economic, political and military might against each other to acquire global, capitalistic wealth. Every article and book from GegenStandpunkt Publishers furnishes yet another proof.

  • “Finance Capital” I, II, and III are a systematic account of finance capital (part five of Volume 3).
  • “Currency and its Value” explains modern credit money (cf. chapter 3 of Volume 1 which assumes gold money).

Ruthless Criticism

For us, discussions are not an end in itself, but the means to clarify all questions of politics, economics and ideology, such as: __

  • what do “our interests” really have to do with presidents and politicians all over the world,
  • why is force the means of politics and why do we need to bless its purposes at all,
  • how are wealth and poverty produced in the “centers” of imperialism and
  • to what extent is popular morality incorrect in propagating good reasons for the ruling purposes of this world.

We are not fans of discussions as mere occasions for contemplation or developing our own ideas; of accusing the economy and politics of failure, of neglecting their noble purposes and principles; of developing alternatives which are supposed to be practical because they accept the methods of state and capital; or of demanding tolerance and understanding, thus immunizing our opinions from criticism.

Andrew Kliman

Andrew Kliman is a professor of economics at Pace University and author of several publications on Marxian economics, including the book Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital”, which defends the Temporal Single System Interpretation of Marx’s labor theory against various claims of its inconsistency from neoclassical, neo-Ricardian and other economists.