Join the Houston Communist Party for our monthly Progressive Movie Night! This month our feature film will be Sergei Eisenstein's classic, "Battleship Potemkin". When they are fed rancid meat, the sailors on the Potemkin revolt against their harsh conditions. Led by Vakulinchuk (Aleksandr Antonov), the sailors kill the officers of the ship to gain their […]
The essence of capitalism remains a deliberate hidden mystery. It is hard to justify the theft of value created by others - "surplus value". For this reason, euphemisms are used to put lipstick on the capitalist pig: "free enterprise", "free market", "entrepreneurship", etc.
In this discussion, we will focus on the Marxist Theory of Surplus Value. This theory provides the economic basis to understanding the basic contradiction of capitalism - social production and private appropriation, leading to overproduction and underconsumption.
Karl Marx has achieved a lasting global impact, one that is greater and wider than any other philosopher before or afterwards. The Smithsonian Magazine published an article titled "Karl Marx Is the World's Most Influential Scholar". The article is based on a study and paper in Nature. Several information scientists from Indiana University Bloomington came to that conclusion based on how often Marx's work was cited plus the number of works.
After the global financial crisis of capitalism in 2008, Marx was often cited to help explain the crisis. Marx is relevant because his work is based on science and an advanced method of critical analysis in philosophy and economics.
"The Battle of Algiers" is a 1966 Italian-Algerian historical war film co-written and directed by Gillo Pontecorvo and starring Jean Martin and Saadi Yacef. It is based on events during the Algerian War (1954–62) against the French government in North Africa; the most prominent being the titular Battle of Algiers, the capital of Algeria. It was shot on location and the film's score was composed by Ennio Morricone. The film, which was shot in a Roberto Rossellini-inspired newsreel style—in black and white with documentary-type editing—is often associated with Italian neorealism cinema.
The film has been critically celebrated and often taken, by insurgent groups and states alike, as an important commentary on urban guerrilla warfare. It occupies the 48th place on the Critics' Top 250 Films of the 2012 Sight & Sound poll as well as 120th place on Empire magazine's list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.
There is much current attention to social and economic inequality. The Occupy movement did much to highlight the inequality and framed the issues as the 1% versus the 99%. Unfortunately, the root cause of inequality is kept a deep secret - theft of surplus value created by workers.
