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The Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to increased scholarly attention to an important 'human need': good health. This article is about the relation between workers' health and capitalist production, as Marx examines it in his magnum opus. While Marx's main focus in Capital Volume 1 is on the production of surplus value by workers and its appropriation by capitalists, he does provide insights into how capitalism ruins the health of workers themselves, although these insights are scattered. In this article, I systematically re-articulate and analyse Marx's thoughts about workers' health in relation to some of the key-categories of his political economy: the value of labour power relative to wages; employment precarity; long working day; hidden abode of production; capitalists' despotic control over workers; and the capitalist transformation of nature. I briefly relate Marx's ideas about workers' health from Capital Volume 1 to some contemporary research on the social dimensions of health. I also show that Marx's explicit ideas about workers' health, which are my main focus, point to a broader approach to the topic that is only implicit in his thinking. I draw out some practical implications of this approach.

Humankind continues to face the two problems that have existed since the degeneration of the 1917 October Revolution that began in the mid-1920s. While it is experiencing enormous suffering caused by capitalism, there is also a crisis of anti-capitalist leadership. These two problems now cohabit with growing radicalization among sections of the working population and the youth, following the 2007 economic crisis; burgeoning threat of fascistic tendencies both within the state apparatuses and among the masses; and reformism among middle-class Marxist intellectuals (as well as among workers). In this global conjuncture, there is a need to return to the root of the Marxist agenda. This is the classical tradition, which includes the ideas of Marx and Engels and goes beyond their ideas. In this article, I offer an outline of that tradition.

The Marxist geographer, David Harvey, has written extensively and influentially about the production of space under capitalism and, in particular, uneven geographical development. This article is a Marxist critique of Harvey's theory of uneven geographical development. It presents his theory around six interconnected theses: spatial concentration thesis, spatial dispersal thesis, surplus absorption or spatial fix thesis, uneven geographical development-as-ideology thesis, the uneven geographical development and the state connection thesis, and uneven geographical development–associated political thesis. His theory has shed light on certain aspects of the internal relation between capitalist accumulation and uneven geographical development, giving due emphasis to uneven geographical development's contradictory character. It is, however, problematic on multiple grounds. It under-stresses the class relation, including the value-relation, between capital and labour, and correlatively fetishizes the power of spatial relations. While Harvey connects uneven geographical development to capitalist crisis, his theory of crisis is deeply inadequate. His theory also fails to systematically integrate the insights of state theory into it, and to the extent that the state is present, its essential class character remains under-emphasized. Finally, Harvey draws some conclusions about anti-capitalist political practice from his theory of uneven geographical development which are problematic from a Marxist vantage point. In particular, his view of the concept of the proletariat in Marxism and his scepticism towards the role of the proletariat in the fight against capital are contestable.

State repression is particularly likely when social movements target property relations that cause ordinary citizens to suffer. Whether these movements are violent, and whether the state is a liberal democracy is a contingent matter. This is illustrated by India's 'Maoist movement' (which is also known as the Naxalite movement because it originated in an area called Naxalbari, located in India's West Bengal State). Where necessary, sections of this movement use violent methods to fight for justice for aboriginal peoples and peasants. This strategy, which the author, incidentally, does not endorse, has been seen by the state as the greatest internal military threat to it. Such a perception invites state violence. What is often under-emphasized or ignored is that the movement is an economic, political and ideological threat, and not just a military threat, and it is so through its localized alternative developmental activities, and this is also a reason for the state's violent response to it.

This paper analyzes the nature of capitalism by critically employing Marx's comments in Capital on forms of subsumption of labor. It argues that to the extent that property owners employ wage laborers to produce for the market for a profit, they are capitalist, even if they may not reinvest their profit in technology. In this situation, wage-labor is formally subsumed under capital. The transition from this stage to real subsumption of labor, which signifies capitalist development with technological change, is not, however, automatic, as Marx tended to assume. It is mediated by class struggle, which occurs in the context of geographically varying factors, such as state interventions. Uneven development, seen as the uneven transition to real subsumption, is partly a product of place-specific outcomes of class struggle. The paper thus emphasizes the relation between class struggle and dynamics of capitalism including technological change. The conceptual arguments are illustrated with empirical evidence from India. The implications of the arguments for radical development theory and politics are also briefly explored.JEL classification: P16, O53, O14, B24. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

This paper analyzes the nature of capitalism by critically employing Marx's comments in Capital on forms of subsumption of labor. It argues that to the extent that property owners employ wage laborers to produce for the market for a profit, they are capitalist, even if they may not reinvest their profit in technology. In this situation, wage-labor is formally subsumed under capital. The transition from this stage to real subsumption of labor, which signifies capitalist development with technological change, is not, however, automatic, as Marx tended to assume. It is mediated by class struggle, which occurs in the context of geographically varying factors, such as state interventions. Uneven development, seen as the uneven transition to real subsumption, is partly a product of place-specific outcomes of class struggle. The paper thus emphasizes the relation between class struggle and dynamics of capitalism including technological change. The conceptual arguments are illustrated with empirical evidence from India. The implications of the arguments for radical development theory and politics are also briefly explored. JEL classification: P16, O53, O14, B24

This paper launches a class-based critique of social capital, and goes on to develop an alternative approach to it. In particular, it unpacks the nature of 'working-class social capital'. There cannot be a social-capital theory of society. Within a class theory of society, social capital can play some role—perhaps a minor role, given the enormously constraining effects of class on its production. How minor that role will be depends on the issue at hand, and is geographically contingent. A class critique of social capital is necessary in order to counter its growing popularity and its potential to serve neoliberal ends.

The state possesses the relatively autonomous power to give concessions to the lower classes, the poor. But the extent to which the poor will actually benefit from the policies designed to help them is influenced by three factors. First, it depends on the level of the material support for the policy through which the concessions are sought to be given. This level of material support is, in turn, influenced by the state's financial dependence on the private economy and by competing demands from different classes and groups on the state's resources. Second, the extent to which the poor will benefit from the antipoverty intervention also depends on the balance of power between state actors and the poor 'on the ground', that is, at the local scale of state – society interaction where the policies are implemented. There are two aspects to this balance of power. On the one hand, state actors have some relative autonomy which they use to bend the rules of the state, often in alliance with 'dominant' actors in the civil society, in order to pocket a part of the legitimate share belonging to the poor (bribes). On the other hand, these actions of state actors are also subject to the struggle of the poor. Finally, the economic structure within which both the state and its poor clients work also affects the ways in which the antipoverty policies operate. In this paper I argue that these three factors produce constant interactions between state and society. The state is to be seen as both a process and a relationship. To illustrate this argument, I make use of primary and secondary information on the implementation of a major poverty-alleviation programme in India.

The use of Green Revolution inputs has been responsible for higher levels of agrarian productivity in India. This is both because of the biological structure of high‐yield varieties of seeds themselves and because of the structure of the agrarian political economy in the country. But the question is: have the laborers benefited from the rise in productivity made possible by the use of these inputs? I have shown, both conceptually and empirically, that laborers do gain from higher productivity, but not uniformly over space. They gain more where they are more organized. This means that the relation between productivity and wages is, in part, a political relation, and the strength of this relation is characterized by 'spatial inconstancy'. I have also discussed how the Green Revolution has tended to undermine the relations of personal dependence between the landed and the laborers, and this seems to have helped labor organization to some extent. Labor organization is also affected by the structure of land/asset distribution. In particular, whether or not laborers possess some land/asset makes a difference to the effectiveness of laborers' bargaining power with landowners over wages, and therefore, to the actual level of wages being paid.