Professor Richard Wolff’s co-author, colleague, and friend, the late Stephen Resnick, would tell his students about his discussion, as a student at MIT, with Paul Samuelson. He asked Samuelson: “What is there in Marx that is both valid and absent in neoclassical theory”? To this, Samuelson responded: “Class analysis.” In this episode, Shahram and Professor Wolff use the dialectic to explore how Marx’s magnum opus, Das Kapital, is understood and its connection to class and class analysis. It begins by examining the overall project of Capital and discussing why beginners should read this essential text. Professor Wolff explains the importance of the three volumes in Marx’s theoretical scheme, the main differences between the first two volumes, and how they individually contribute to our understanding of the ‘capitalist totality’.
