In our inaugural episode on Marx’s Capital, we took a deep dive into Capital Vol. 1, the first of three volumes on political economy written by Karl Marx in the late 19th century. Capital Vol. 1, though, is just the beginning—and unfortunately most people stop there. But Vol. 1 really just looks at one aspect of capitalism—how surplus value is produced. It doesn’t dive into the entire circulation process—or what we refer to as the circuits of capital. Vol. 2 provides the full picture of how capitalism functions—and we’ve brought on two terrific guests to help us make sense of it all.  

Richard Wolff is an economist, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School in New York, host of the Economic Update and The Dialectic at Work podcasts, and founder of Democracy at Work. 

Shahram Azhar is a political economicst, musician, Associate Professor of Economics at Bucknell University and host of The Dialectic at Work podcast. 

In this episode, we talk about the process that went into writing and compiling Marx’s Capital Vol. 2. We talk about how Capital Vol. 2 builds off of Vol. 1, going from an analysis of how surplus is produced in the productive circuit of capital to really looking at the whole process of capital circulation. We talk about capital as a process as opposed to a thing, the various stages it passes through, what the implications are for the concept of the working class, the different antagonisms between the various kinds of capitalists—industrial, merchant, banking—and much more. 

Further resources:

• Democracy at Work
• The Dialectic at Work
• Capital Volume Two (marxism.org)
• Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian, by Richard D. Wolff and Stephen A. Resnickolff 
• On the Question of Free Trade

Related episodes:

• Marx's Capital Vol. 1 w/ David Smith
• Trade Wars and Tariffs w/ Richard Wolf
• Inflation with Richard Wolff and Dean Baker
• Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes

Intermission music: Ultrabonus

Covert art: Berwyn Mure

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