If We Want to Beat Capitalism, We Have to Understand It
Capitalism won't be beat through vibes and tweets. I'm organizing a book club to help us read Capital by Karl Marx together.
One of the biggest weaknesses of the modern left is our tendency to talk about capitalism without studying how it works.
We critique capitalism constantly (myself included). We talk about exploitation, inequality, and imperialism, but too often our understanding stops at outrage rather than analysis. Karl Marx’s Capital remains one of the most important tools ever written for understanding the system we live under.
We need to understand how profit is created, why crisis under capitalism happens, and why this system repeatedly produces inequality and suffering.
The problem is that Capital is intimidating. It’s dense, historical, and difficult to approach alone.
That’s why I am helping to organize a book club with my comrade dennis talon to read Capital together with the goal of turning theory into something living, practical, and useful for understanding the world we’re trying to change.
Theory matters because it gives us clarity about the system we are fighting. Without it, our politics collapses into outrage, surface-level analysis, or endless cycles of reacting to the latest news cycle. Reading Capital can help us understand the mechanisms of capitalism so that we, as workers, understand the forces shaping our lives.
Learning theory helps us see patterns where others see isolated problems. It reveals how exploitation, imperialism, and inequality are not accidents or mere moral failings but structural features of the system itself.
When organizers understand these structures, they’re better able to build movements and organizations that address the causes rather than the symptoms.
Theory is never separate from practice; effective theory comes through practice.
The dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge places practice in the primary position, holding that human knowledge can in no way be separated from practice and repudiating all the erroneous theories which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from practice…
…The truth of any knowledge or theory is determined not by subjective feelings, but by objective results in social practice. Only social practice can be the criterion of truth. The standpoint of practice is the primary and basic standpoint in the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge.
On Practice by Mao Zedong
Throughout history, workers, organizers, and students have studied Marx in groups. They discussed passages, asked questions, and connected theory to the realities of their own lives.
This is what we shall be doing; that is the point of this book club.
The goal is not academic perfection or pretending to be experts. The goal is to learn together, break down complex ideas into something understandable, and build a deeper grasp of the system we are trying to change.
Over the coming weeks, we’ll work through the book.
dennis talon and I will be hosting chats within Substack for subscribers to discuss Capital. We will be posting questions, having discussions, and sharing what we thought was interesting in the text.
If you are interested in joining:
Subscribe to Jae Rose and dennis talon
Look out for Substack chats related to Capital.
Grab a copy of Capital Volume 1 along with the companion reader by David Harvey (Copies of the books can be provided via chat if you can’t grab them)
Things to keep in mind:
There are no scheduled chats; we will discuss each session asynchronously.
Each session will be two weeks long
This is a massive book, so do not expect it to be done in a weekend.
Each session will have discussion questions and focus areas to pay attention to.
Here is the schedule:
Session 1 (Weeks 1-2): Mandel’s Intro & Marx’s Prefaces
Session 2 (Weeks 3-4): Chapter 1 (The Commodity)
Session 3 (Weeks 5-6): Chapters 2-4 (Exchange, Money, and the General Formula)
Session 4 (Weeks 7-8): Chapters 5-9 (The Labour Process& Surplus Value)
Session 5 (Weeks 9-10): Chapter 10 (The Working Day)
Session 6 (Weeks 11-12): Chapters 11-14 (Relative Surplus Value & Co-operation)
Session 7 (Weeks 13-14): Chapter 15 (Machinery and Large-Scale Industry)
Session 8 (Weeks 15-16): Chapters 16-22 (Absolute/Relative Surplus Value & Wages)
Session 9 (Weeks 17-18): Chapters 23-25 (Accumulation &The General Law)
Session 10 (Weeks 19-20): Chapters 26-33 (Primitive Accumulation)
If you have any questions, feel free to comment them!
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Make sure you don't stop at Vol 1. Capital is a history book, and Lenin's Imperialism is essentially Vol 4 (Capital in the 20th century, it's "highest stage". If you skip 2 and 3, you won't understand why China's model (party control over the MoP and banks) is socialist construction. By preventing the development of monopoly capital, China has prevented itself from becoming trapped in imperialism while protecting itself from Western imperialists in ways that the USSR and Albania failed to do. If you don't get to this level of understanding, you'll end up like American "Maoists" who call China imperialist because of their efforts to protect infrastructure projects that are lifting up the Global South. Or you'll end up wondering why China doesn't overextend itself, which is what the US wants, in supporting revolutionary movements that it doesn't have the military means to protect because doing so would guarantee a direct confrontation with the US that would threaten China's stability. And that stability is growing more important by the day. Imperialists *want* a destabilized China because a stable China gives the Global South hope for an end to their subjugation.
Done and done! That book club's the right idea at the right time. I ordered Capital--I never thought I would slog through that thing again, but it's worth it.
It sticks with you. Helped keep me sane a few times because living in a capitalist world is so damned crazy sometimes.