Dear comrades and friends,

DYFI CUC organised the fifteenth study circle of the year yesterday, and we had the most intense discussions we’ve had in a while. We continued reading Value, Price and Profit and completed Chapters 8-11. 

The chapters elaborate on the difference between labour and labouring power, and on how the appropriation of surplus value reproduces the capitalist as a capitalist, and the worker as a worker.

Marx explains that the entirety of profit is the unpaid part of the labourer’s value addition. Industrial profit, rent, and interest are only ways to distribute surplus value amongst employing capitalists, landlords and moneylenders. Importantly, wages and profit change in opposite ways: when general wages increase, the general rate of profit declines, and vice versa.

In other words, profit exists because wages are less than value addition; and so, commodities are sold at prices equivalent to their value, not above it. 
We discussed the value added by management, and whether capitalists add value to production by taking risks – we talked about how they are able to take the risk only because they have the capital, and this capital has been accumulated through enclosure and capture of resources.

We also spoke of how digital platforms, along with venture capital, fit into this analysis, and from whom the surplus value is extracted in these businesses. 
Next week we will finish the remaining chapters.

Revolutionary Greetings,

Central Unit Committee,

Democratic Youth Federation of India – Delhi