Guest speaker Nikolaos Chatzarakis, Professor of Economics at the New School for Social Research, joins the Oxford Communist Correspondence Society to explore the structural evolution of capitalism. Nikos examines the dynamic relationship between the "Law of Accumulation" and the "Falling Rate of Profit," arguing that these economic forces are the primary engines behind the major shifts in global history.

Key topics discussed:

- The Mechanics of Profit: How the rising "organic composition of capital" creates an inherent downward pressure on profitability.

- Long Cycles of Development: From the age of steam and railways to the emergence of digital networks and Artificial Intelligence.- Formal vs. Real Subsumption: How capital takes control of the labor process to squeeze out higher levels of productivity.

- Modern Crises: A look at how current trends - including the gig economy, "techno-feudalism," and the 2008 financial crisis - fit into Marx’s long-term predictions.

40 mins talk followed by ~1 hour of discussion.

We dive into the centuries-old controversy of economic value: is it determined by the objective difficulty of bringing goods to market or by the subjective preferences of consumers? The discussion frames this conflict using Adam Smith’s famous water-diamond paradox. We explore the 1870s marginal revolution, where economists like Menger, Jevons, and Walras developed subjective theories based on the principle of diminishing marginal utility. This analytical method also served an ideological purpose, directly undermining socialist critiques by denying any objective anchor for value. The talk explains how modern neoclassicism attempts to reconcile objective and subjective factors, but due to its obsession with equilibrium, exhibits value nihilism - the assertion that economic value does not really exist. Economics remains "half a science" due to its inability to analyze dynamics and movement over time.

A wide-ranging conversation among participants in the econophysics Discord server, featuring Ian Wright, Alex Creiner and Leone. The discussion primarily centers on Wright's provocative idea of "capital as a real god," a concept suggesting that capital functions as an emergent control system with its own primitive intentionality, goals, and representations, quasi-independent of human will. The participants also explore the concept of "occult magic" in politics and economics, likening it to a reality-driven fantasy where narratives obscure underlying mechanisms, and real possibilities for change. Further topics include the role of dialectical thinking in science, the challenges of socialist planning, and modernization of Marxist value theory.The conversation is animated by the desire to understand and transform social structures through both scientific rigor and conscious collective action.

Econophysics Discord server: https://discord.gg/9jZYkRYYWAIan Wright: https://ianwrightsite.wordpress.com/Leone: https://www.indep.network/Alex Creiner: https://www.youtube.com/@TexTalksSometimes https://alexcreiner.com/docs/about/