What is Capitalism? Introduction to Marxist economics

There is a growing hostility to the status quo and therefore to capitalism that is developing amongst a layer of society. However, what actually is capitalism? This talk will uncover the hidden workings of the capitalist system, which was best explained by Karl Marx. In doing so, it will set out exactly how it works, and how it can be overthrown.
Session details and suggested reading: schoolofcommun...

[@potterinhe11]

Introduction: 8:00
0:13:09 - 1:34:43
2:13:36 - 2:22:25
2:22:30 - 3:10:35
3:12:12 - 3:52:50
Conclusion: 3:52:55

[@-mwolf]

Does anybody know what he said at 3:35:57 ? It seems to be cut off.

[@-mwolf]

Marx defines labor power as "aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being".
What if machine can obtain all those capabilities…does that fall under labour power?
Normally, a machines just amplifies the productivity of a worker. But if the machine can act autonomously, sustaining itself indefinitely without the input of humans (which requires the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities…), then it is no different to a human, economically speaking. At this point, one could argue, it is no longer appropriate to call them machines, but rather something like "synthetic humans".
I don't think this is pointless mental exercise. While the current AI hype with its "approach" to AGI might not lead us there within the next years, there is a good chance it will happen before we reach socialism. Thinking about this also allows us to explain the phenomenon of tech capitalists going crazy and screaming "singularity": This development of technology sharpens the contradictions... When Sam Altman publicly speaks about the idea of "universal basic compute" - of course absolutely impossible under capitalism - it leads directly to the question of economic power (and is a nice concept to think about in the context of a socialist planned economy).
The singularity we are approaching is the shrinking the rate of profit towards 0. As technology advances - to the point of synthetic humans even - the capitalist mode of production becomes increasingly contradictory and senseless.

[@-mwolf]

Though I am not entirely sure what the effects of such "synthetic labour power" will be on the dynamics of the system. It would be like a second source of profit - one that gets cheaper over time! (as soon as robotics and ai is avanced enough to carry out all relevant tasks in the supply chain required to create new robots and maintain or improve existing ones - just like with humans).
Due to the utter inefectiveness of capitalism to invest in and develop this area of research, rather than the LLM speculation bubble, this is of course much more delayed than it could be. But it is entirely reasonable to assume we will have something that comes at least close to this by the late 30s or early 40s...

[@-mwolf]

this ineffectiveness, btw, doesn't only manifest itself in the monetary investments, but also in the lack of principled research being done. it is a tiny minority which has a dialectical approach. so much effort is being spent on meaningless changes to the current paradigms, which might or might not improve the SOTA by 0.1% (with loads of caveats), just to produce papers in the rotten state of academia. billions of dollars are invested to train almost exactly the same models by different competing companies.
this is why the current state of AI seems so bad, but it will not take much for an internal revolution of the field. with capitalism doing what it does best, the advance of technology allows even small teams to explore old and new ideas at unprecedented scale. a small team with the right ideas can be the cause for big change

[@tanujSE]

The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,
-Das capital