This week we will be reading the ninth chapter of Capital, "The Rate of Surplus Value." For our supplementary reading, rather than assigning a theoretical work by Lenin or Klaus Theleweit (who I both considered), I've decided to assign an eminently digestible and provocative piece I first read on the Revolutionary Ecology site. I chose this, in part, to combat the purposefully myopic liberal hot-takes on Trump as pure aberration, as ephemeral derangement of "our" "democracy" and economic system - an ahistorical take often seen in varying forms on the professionalized left as well. The author takes a broader approach and suggests that we may be witnessing a more lasting phase in capital, away from the borderless flow of neoliberalism to the tariff-choked protectionism of previous capitalist epochs. In this vision, the resurgent, revanchist Right is only going to get stronger, and it behooves the left to keep this is mind and work on strategies to combat it.

How to fight the Right when there is no real Left, after decades on decades of assassinations and infiltrations perpetrated by the capitalist state? What techniques of repressive statecraft and co-optation can we expect to face going forward in attempts to create popular movements? Is there more hope for change from inside the imperial core, or outside of it, in the global south/periphery?

Supplementary reading:

https://revolutionaryecology.com/2016/12/19/bromma-notes-on-trump/