The current global economic crisis has exposed many problems and contradictions of modern society, and has hit the welfare of the majority of workers. The most caring, deep-thinking people are increasingly thinking about the essence of this crisis, its roots and root causes. Attempts to understand the phenomena of our life encourage more and more people to turn to fundamental knowledge about society, to Marxism. Marxism as a science, worn out and dogmatized in the last years of the USSR, deceived and perverted in the years of the triumph of savage capitalism, remains, nevertheless, a coherent, integral and true system of knowledge about the development of human society, the state, the driving forces and contradictions of those phenomena that have for centuries agitated the minds of mankind. Reading the lines written by great scientists and philosophers fifty, a hundred, two hundred and more years ago, you can not help noticing in them a surprisingly clear description of today and modern problems, you begin to understand their origins, see ways to solve them.
The Riga Marxist club invites everyone to its lessons. Together we study the basics of Marxist theory, philosophical and historical questions, connect them with the present day and search for answers to pressing questions of our time, based on a solid Foundation of scientific knowledge.
We conduct conversations both in person on Fridays at 7pm, and by broadcasting them on the Internet using the Discord program. Visual AIDS and audio recordings of conversations will also be posted on our resources on the Internet.
Classes are voluntary, free of charge and, based on the experience of the previous year and a half, very useful for those who are not content with superficial knowledge, but intend to get to the bottom of the matter. Those who wish to attend them (in person or in absentia), please provide their phone numbers, which will be sent a message with information about the next lesson and an invitation in the Discord for remote participation.
Our email address: [email protected]
An approximate list of topics for classes for the new academic year, which can be changed and supplemented depending on current events and the wishes of students:
Topics that are studied in the Riga Marxist club
MARXISM
- Marxism is a science and worldview
- Theory and history of Marxism
- Marxism and modern bourgeois myths about it
POLITICAL ECONOMY
- Economic foundations of Marxism
- The origin of classes and class struggle
- Stages of development of capitalism
- The socio-economic formations
- Concept of private property
- Division of labor and private property
- The Political Economy of Capitalism
SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM
- Development of socialist and Communist ideas from utopia to science
- Marxist theory of the state
- Forms, essence and historical types of the state
- The dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxist theory
- Soviets as a form of dictatorship of the proletariat
- Soviets and the death of socialist democracy
- Marxism and the national question
- The moral foundations of Marxism
- Marxism and religion
- Bureaucracy-history, essence and modern problems
LABOR RELATIONS
- What is a salary and how to increase it
- Degree of exploitation in modern Latvia
- economy of Latvia
- Labour Code Of The Republic Of Latvia
HISTORY
- The great French revolution
- Paris commune
- Lenin’s works “Where to Begin” and “What Is to Be Done?”
- II Congress of the RSDLP
- III Congress of the RSDLP
- 1917 in Russia and Latvia
- VI Congress of the RSDLP(b)
- II Congress of Soviets and the first decrees of Soviet power
- Lenin’s work “The Great Beginning”
- International situation and adoption of the USSR Constitution of 1936
- Nazism, fascism and class struggle
- Causes of World War II, “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”
PHILOSOPHY
(also studied in more depth in the Riga club of lovers of Hegelian dialectics)
- Relationships of categories of being in Hegel’s Science of logic
- The philosophical doctrine of the essence of phenomena
- The philosophical doctrine of the concept
- Dialectics of the individual and universal
- Dialectics of the necessary and the accidental, evolution and revolution
- Truth and knowledge
- Categories of abstract and concrete
- Marxist philosophy and the meaning of life
Questions for the Studies of the Riga Marxist Circle
Date: January 14, 2022
Topic: Marxism and the National Question
Link to lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPW0RS20Pg0
- Why are the English and Irish not one nation?
- Can a nation have more than one national language?
- Is it correct to say that every nationality has a nation?
- Is there a Jewish nation?
- To what nation does America belong?
- When is it permissible for one nation to infringe on the rights of another nation?
- What is the real operative force of the International?
- Why do nations “erode” under capitalism?
- How do nations prosper under internationalism?
- Poll: Who do you see yourself as – a Russian, a Latvian, or a Russian of Latvian origin?
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Date: January 21, 2022
Topic: Overview of the Labor Law of the Republic of Latvia
Link to lesson: https://youtu.be/xpE60LQg1w
- What is a right? (in the sense of laws and other regulations)
- In what cases can an employment contract be concluded for a certain period?
- How does staggered working hours worsen the employee’s situation?
- How many trade unions can be in one enterprise?
- What are the benefits of a collective labor agreement?
- What to do if the collective agreement does not specify the period of its validity?
- How much is the capitalist obliged to pay for overtime and night work?
- The company received cash from the sale of products, but 1) electricity and heating bills have not been paid, 2) wages have not been paid to employees, 3) there is a debt to suppliers and 4) it is necessary to purchase the next batch of raw materials so that the enterprise does not stand idle. Which of these expense items does the company have to pay first? Which article sets it up?
- Why is it impossible to have a social partnership and mutually beneficial cooperation between an employee and an employer?
- Is it possible to hold a legal strike if the enterprise has a valid collective agreement?
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Date: January 28, 2022
Topic: The Political Economy of Capitalism
Link to lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H-F3yYUMD4
- What is Marxism?
- Why is Marx’s teaching almighty?
- Name the major work of Marxism.
- What is Marx’s “Capital” about? What does Marx explore in “Capital”?
- What is the difference between exchange value and cost?
- What is the difference between value and price?
- Name and state the basic law of capitalism.
- Name a commodity for which money cannot serve as an equivalent.
- What is the significance of the fact that in the exchange of goods (commodity-money-commodity) the sale and subsequent purchase can be separated in time and space?
- What is payment?
- How is the value of labor determined?
- Give a definition of wages.
- What is the main factor in reducing the price of labor below its value?
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Date: February 18, 2022
Topic: Property relations in Marxist theory
Link to lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84x6cG0o5e0
- Is property an intrinsic property of material things?
- Which comes first: the emergence of private property or the emergence of classes?
- How does the development of the state and family reinforce private property and exploitation?
- What types of private-proprietorship formations do you know? What kind of ownership underlies them?
- What is private property? What is ownership?
- What is the difference between private property and personal property?
- What is the difference between intellectual property and authorship?
- What is the destruction of private property? How is the latter different from the destruction of objects?
- Who are the Luddites? What is the reason for the opportunism of this movement?
- Why are the reproaches of the socialists in the desire to “destroy property personally acquired, obtained by their own labor, the property that forms the basis of all personal freedom, activity and independence” untenable?
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Date: February 25, 2022
Topic: Political Economics of Socialism
Link to lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v-1WvrkIII
- Name three stages in the development of communism. Define each of them.
- On what basis does the lowest phase of communism develop?
- Are socialism and commodity production compatible?
- Are socialism and commodity exchange compatible?
- State the goal of socialist production. What is its principal difference from the goal of capitalist production?
- What is the basic economic law of socialist production called? Give a definition and explain it.
- Who is the author of so-called scientific communism? When was it introduced?
- What is market socialism?
- State the law of use value as it applies to the means of production.
- State the law of use value as it applies to the products of consumption.
- State the law of use value as it applies to the labor.
- What is the opposite of the law of value and the law of use value?
- What is chrematics and economics according to Aristotle?
- Does socialism exist in the transition period from capitalism to communism?
- Does abstract human labor exist under socialism?
- What is the dual nature of labor under socialism?
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Date: March 04, 2022
Topic: Freedom, Necessity, and Randomness
Link to lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86BIERrcys&t=2s
- What is determinism?
- Who is “Laplace’s demon”?
- What is voluntarism?
- Why is the proposition: “Freedom is a conscious necessity” not true?
- What is the fundamental difference between the animal and the human?
- What is primary, the freedom of the individual or the freedom of society?
- Fluctuations within a measure are the relation of ??? and ??? .
- What is the objective and what is the subjective basis of human and social freedom?
- Give examples of the boundaries of the probabilistic field of necessity.
- Can there be non-free individuals in a free society?
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Date: March 08, 2022
Topic: The political economy of mental labor
Link to lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d83rvPMYkkM
- At what price does a capitalist sell a tomato?
- How does “mental work” differ from a service?
- Under what conditions is reform better than revolution?
- What is included in the constant capital of a freelancer?
- Why is a computer program not a commodity, but a transformed form of a commodity?
- What is the organic structure of capital?
- To what “type of work” can Biden be classified?
- How does the replicability of a product affect its value?
- Can a programmer’s job supporting software be called a service?
- What is the use of capital from unproductive labor?
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Date: March 22, 2022
Topic: Soviets as an organizational form of the dictatorship of the proletariat
Link to lesson: https://youtu.be/4ADw3vvGHLU
- What is the dictatorship of the proletariat?
- What is the organizational form of the dictatorship of the proletariat?
- What is the difference between Soviet authority and bourgeois parliamentarism?
- How is Soviet authority structured?
- How does the recall of a deputy take place under Soviet authority?
- What is the Congress of Soviets?
- Why does the dictatorship of the proletariat reject the bourgeois principle of the separation of the branches of government?
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Date: May 13, 2022
Topic: Political parties and political struggle
Link to lesson: https://youtu.be/9LzRltn31bI
- Define policy.
- Why did Aristotle call politics a science and an art?
- Name three types (sections) of the class struggle.
- What is a political party?
- What types of working parties can there be?
- What is the ideological basis of any bourgeois party?
- Why can’t there be a state without a party and without an ideology?
- Are people outside politics involved in the political struggle?
- What do the theoretical propositions of communists express?
Videos of lessons that have already taken place in Latvian and in Russian.
