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The idea of the economics first model is that just as feudal economics gave way to capitalist economics long before feudal politics was overturned, capitalist economics would fall to communist economics, before the communist political revolution. Here is one way of developing this idea. At a time o…

[...] Marx suggests that social classes do not develop until there is a possibility of productive surplus; that is, not until an individual human being, on average, can produce more than he or she needs in order to survive. Once surplus is possible, this also opens up the possibility of one group, …

The account of the ‘employment cycle’ is worth thinking about. Marx’s theory is that the Industrial Reserve Army of the Unemployed is essential to the functioning of capitalism. It acts as a ‘dead-weight’ to the aspirations of those in employment. Their wages will always be held down for as long as…

Surplus labour creates surplus value, and on Marx’s analysis, surplus value is the source of all profit. It is this that makes the difference between the money advanced and the money received. The process of ‘extracting’ surplus value is called ‘exploitation’. Finally we have arrived at the point o…

[...] Adam Smith had been so impressed with the miracle of the division of labour that he opens The Wealth of Nations with an unlikely peon to a pin factory. [...]