Political economy : Marxist study courses.

Marxist study courses originally published in 1932-33 as a series of pamphlets under the auspices of the British Communist Party.

Includes bibliographical references.

First lesson: Marxist theory of value - I. Contradictions in the capitalist method of production -- II. The commodity and its value: an investigation -- III. Values as the special embodiment of socially necessary labour in commodity-producing society -- IV. Forms of value. Gold and price -- V. The fetishism of commodities -

Second lesson: Capital and surplus value - I. Capital and surplus value -- II. Criticism of the idea — "Value of labour" and the connected bourgeois and social-democratic conceptions of the economic relations between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie -- III. Constant and variable capital -- IV. Capital and surplus value as historical categories -

Third lesson: Capital and surplus value (continued) -- V. Rate of surplus value and degree of exploitation -- VI. Absolute surplus value -- VII. Relative surplus value -- VIII. The productive relations in the Soviet Union -

Fourth lesson: Wages and the accumulation of capital -- I. Wages as a transformation of the value of labour power -- II. Wages and capitalist relations in the process of simple reproduction -- III. Wages and capitalist relations in the process of extended reproduction -

Fifth lesson: Wages and the accumulation of capital (part II) -- IV. The general law of capitalist accumulation -- V. The general theoretical views on wages of the social fascists -- VI. High wages in theory and low wages in fact -- VII. From the theory of high wages to the theory of low wages -

Sixth lesson: The distribution of surplus value (part I) - I. Profit -- II. The law of the failing tendency of the rate of profit -- III. Commercial capital and commercial profit -- IV. Interest and interest-bearing capital -

Seventh lesson: The distribution of surplus-value (part II) - V. Ground-rent -- VI. The development of capitalism in agriculture -- VII. The fate of small peasant farms under capitalism -- VIII. Capitalism retards the development of the productive forces in agriculture -- IX. Socialism and agriculture -

Eighth lesson: Economic crises (part I) - I. What is the capitalist crisis -- II. Bourgeois theories of crises -- III. The social-democratic conception of crises -- IV. The Marxian crises theory -

Ninth lesson: Economic crises (part II) - IV. The Marxian theory of crises -- V. Crises in the period of monopoly capitalism -- VI. The present crisis in the light of Marxist-Leninist theory -- VII. The present crisis and the proletariat -- VIII. Social-democracy and the present crisis -- IX. Why there are not crises in the U.S.S.R. -

Tenth lesson: Imperialism (part I) - I. From free competition to monopoly -- II. Finance capital and the rule of the finance oligarchy -- III. Export of capital -- IV. Division of the world by international monopolies -- V. Division of the world by international monopolies among the imperialist powers -

Eleventh lesson: Imperialism (part II) - VI. Imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism -- VIII. Imperialism as the last state of capitalism -- VIII. Criticisms of bourgeois, social-fascist and other anti-Leninist theories of imperialism.

"These studies provide a basic outline of Marxist political economy. They give a sound and comprehensive critique of the capitalist system and sharply contrast the nature of the capitalist society with the construction of socialist society as it was carried out under Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union, when that country was a beacon for working class revolution... Political Economy is a good general exposure and explanation of the laws governing capitalism and its basic contradictions. In addition, the Marxist analysis of political economy exposes the pseudo-socialists, especially the exponents of Social Democracy ... and other false spokesmen who attempted to keep the working class chained to the rule of the bourgeoisie" -- From the introduction