- What is primitive accumulation?
- Explain the difference between use-value and exchange-value.
- What is a commodity?
- Describe the labour theory of value.
- How did Marx further develop this theory?
- What is socially necessary labour-time?
- What governs the price of commodities? Can you explain how this made capitalism a progressive system at first?
- What is the relationship between prices and values?
- What is the ‘utility theory’ understanding of value and how is it flawed?
- How are workers exploited under capitalism? Where do profits come from?
- How are the wages of workers determined?
- What is constant and variable capital?
- What makes labour productive or unproductive?
- What is money and what is its function?
- What is the role of credit in the capitalist economy?
- Can you explain how free competition is transformed into monopoly?
- What is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall? What can be done by the capitalists to counteract this tendency?
- Can you explain the crisis of overproduction? How does this differ from ‘underconsumption’?
- How does Marxist economics explain the class struggle?
- How would a socialist planned economy function?
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Level 1
Wage-labour and Capital, Karl Marx
Value, Price and Profit, Karl Marx
‘In Defence of the Labour Theory of Value’, Rob Sewell
‘What is Money?’, Adam Booth
‘Marxism, Money and Inflation’, Adam Booth
‘Monopoly Capitalism, Imperialism and the World Economy’, Adam Booth
Level 2
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, VI Lenin
Anti-Dühring, Part Two, Friedrich Engels
‘The Curve of Capitalist Development’, Leon Trotsky
‘Will There Be a Slump?’, Ted Grant
‘The Truth Behind Inflation’, Ted Grant
Understanding Marx’s Capital: A Readers’ Guide, Adam Booth and Rob Sewell
‘The Capitalist Crisis and the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall’, Rob Sewell
‘Marxism Versus Libertarianism’, Adam Booth
Level 3
Capital, Volumes 1-3, Karl Marx
Theories of Surplus Value, Volumes 1-3, Karl Marx