Readings for July Marxist Forum

The next meeting, on monopoly capitalism and
imperialism, will be on Saturday, July 22nd,
1:30-3:30pm at the Chapel Hill Public Library (near
University Mall), in the conference room.

It might be helpful to read the rest of Marx's Value, Price, and
Profit, though it might not come up directly (the
first 7 sections were suggested for the last meeting).

Imperialism:  The Highest Stage of Capitalism, is a
major work on this subject.  My edition has 123 pages,
but unless we have more than one meeting on this,
reading the entire book (but the most important chapters for this
meeting are probably chapters 1-5, 7, and the last
chapter) will be useful for this meeting.  We will
probably focus on the economics of imperialism at the
July meeting and look more at the superstructure and politics of
imperialism later.  It is probably still in print from
International Publishers and it is online at
www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/index.htm.
The Marx reading is also available at
www.marxists.org .

Monopoly Capital, by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, is
about American monopoly capitalism and was written in
1966.  I haven't read it, but it looks informative and is

recommended by a member, so it is something we might

want to read later and regarding other subjects.  The chapter on
"The Giant Corporation" would be useful for the July
meeting.

As practical example of monopoly we could look at
short article from a few years ago on how
Smithfield Foods is an example of monopoly capitalism.
Smithfield Foods is a mainly pork producing company
and is illegally and violently opposing unionization
of its huge pork processing plant in Tar Heel, North
Carolina.  The article is available online at
www.allianceml.com/paper/2004/carolinas .  For more
recent updates, covering the labor and environmental
situations, see
www.allianceml.com/indexpages/whatisnew.html and the
links are under the current issue, labeled as a series
on monopoly and agriculture.  There is also an article
on the unionization struggle at Case Farms, a chicken
processor, in western North Carolina.

Imperialist capitalism will come up again in future
meetings, such as on the national question and the
origins of capitalist wars, so we could look at other

parts of these readings then.

I'll send out updates by email and at
durhamspark.blogspot.com .  You can participate without
reading everything, and we can decide by email if the
readings should be reduced.  Feel free to publicize
the meeting, and I will make a flyer and notify some
calendars and media.  Maybe we can have 6 or more
people come in July.