What is it about Marxism that provides us with a different way of understanding society and analyzing our reality? This session is a chance to examine directly some of the Marxist concepts that underlie much of the analysis presented in this Intensive. We’ll briefly revisit Marx’s take on labor and the labor process, and how the growth of capitalism necessitates technological innovation, unemployment, depressions and speculation. While reviewing the dynamics of capital accumulation that Marx laid out, we’ll also examine how these dynamics operate somewhat differently in current reality. For example, we’ll look at the class structure of the U.S. today and some key techniques that capitalists are currently using to accrue surplus value, such as accumulation by dispossession and technological rents.