The UK Prime Minister may have the regal touch in northern England, but he’s been wrong-footed on the constitutional challenges posed by the Celtic Alliance of first ministers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, argues KENNY MacASKILL
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NEIRLAY ANDRADE, a member of the Communist Party of Venezuela’s political committee, outlines her party’s position on the crisis facing the country
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DAVID HORSLEY remembers the remarkable life and death of US black revolutionary George Jackson, whose politically passionate prison letters were published as Soledad Brother
Cuban trade union federation CTC leader OSNAY MIGUEL COLINA speaks to Ben Chacko about life and work under a crippling US siege
A part of the British empire’s network of slavery, today the Caribbean island of Nevis faces a new form of exploitation in the form of crypto-colonialism, CLAUDIA WEBBE writes
Challenges from the unscrupulous misuse of AI to steal actors’ voice and physical likenesses is being met with a firm union response, writes LYNDA ROOKE
AT first glance perhaps just jargon to confuse the uninitiated and demonstrate the assumed superiority of those who know the answers, particularly because they involve measures and ratios. However, they are useful terms for understanding capital and capitalism.
First, the “organic composition of capital” (OCC). Capital is the means whereby production takes place and (for the capitalists, who own it) enables profit to be made. At its simplest, it consists of two elements, which Marx labelled “constant” and “variable.” The distinction is important, because ultimately only human labour can create new value.
In Capital, Marx illustrates the distinction in terms of a factory producing a particular commodity. Constant capital is the monetary value of components and materials, together with the fixed assets (such as plant and buildings) “used up” (as measured by depreciation or maintenance costs) during production and effectively embodied in the product when it is sold.
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MARTIN GRAHAM welcomes, with reservations, a scholarly addition to the unfinished business of understanding how capital works on a world scale