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
What is ‘surplus value’?
The MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY explains one of the most fundamental concepts of Marxism
Karl Marx by Leonid W Koslow, 1968
NEIRLAY ANDRADE, a member of the Communist Party of Venezuela’s political committee, outlines her party’s position on the crisis facing the country
A look at Taylor Wimpey’s accounts shows why Labour’s market-led housing strategy won’t deliver more, cheaper homes, as promised, says SOLOMON HUGHES
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
LABOUR (work, the production of useful goods and services) is a characteristic of our species. And in all types of class society, exploited workers produce more use values than they consume themselves.
They are exploited because the difference — the “surplus” — is appropriated by the ruling class, whether slave-owners, feudal lords or capitalists.
In pre-capitalist societies exploitation is open and direct; the surplus is extracted by the compulsions of ownership (slaves) or feudal law (serfs).
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Class struggle is the motor of history but the direction and detail of change at any time and place is the outcome of many factors, suggests the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
Dignity is important to all humans, argues the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School, but it does not come about automatically. In a less than perfect world, dignity can accompany suffering, but the collective dignity of working people is achieved through acting together to change the world.
Elon Musk says AI will make work optional. The world of abundance he predicts actually spells the end of the capitalist system, argues FAWZI IBRAHIM
Nature as well as society works dialectically, asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School