The ABCs of Capitalism

Source: Jacobin, 2.12.21

The ABCs of Capitalism by Vivek Chibber, a political education series

Solidarity price: get three full-length pamphlets for $10 with free shipping. Order now to get your copies before the holidays.

Political organizing is hard — political education shouldn’t have to be. In the best tradition of socialist pedagogy, Catalyst journal and Jacobin partnered up for a series of pamphlets, called The ABCs of Capitalism. Written by Catalyst editor Vivek Chibber, each one is self-contained, and can be read on its own.

Pamphlet one: “Understanding Capitalism.” A forty-page text explaining clearly why capitalism isn’t just a collection of individuals, but individuals grouped in social classes with very different interests. Capitalists aren’t necessarily “greedy,” but motivated by market pressures and those pressures create enormous wealth but also great misery for the majority. Because of the nature of the system workers can only advance if they act collectively.

Pamphlet two: “Capitalism and the State.” We are living in a new Gilded Age, in which an immense concentration of wealth has grown together with the concentration of political power. This pamphlet analyzes the sources of state bias. We need to understand why, far from counteracting the power of capital, states tend to reinforce it. We need to recognize the structural forces that bind it to capitalist interests, even though capitalists’ small numbers should be a disadvantage in a democratic system.

Pamphlet three: “Capitalism and Class Struggle.” The reason working-class struggles are central to Left politics is that they are the enabling condition for everything else. They create the power and the political leverage that enables us to act on our morals and ideological beliefs — whereas the morals and values without the leverage remain little more than pipedreams. In this third pamphlet, we develop the classic rationale for a class-based political strategy. We examine how it works and also why, even though it deserves to be at the heart of progressive politics, it is so hard to organize and sustain.

Intended for students, organizers, and militants, we hope that they will help in the task of building a new generation of radicals in these heady times. We start with three — but there are more on the way from a host of authors.

The pamphlets are being sold at cost — bundles of 3 for just $10 with free domestic shipping and handling.