HOW NOT TO STUDY MAR^ 13 brings into being. Moreover, the workers become saturated with capitalist ideology and look at life in terms of capitalist values. They have developed a state of mind in which they do not want the rules of the game to be altered. It is very noticeable today that Marxism flourishes best in countries where capitalism is least successful.9 As on the question of the Labour Theory of Value, here again, Mrs Robinson takes certain isolated passages from Capital Volume I without taking the crucial conclusions of the work as a whole. She misses the essence of Marxian theory according to which the two categories of capital and labour represent two poles of a particular social relation— the relation between the owner of the means of production and the owner of labour power (and nothing but labour power). The profit of the former and the wages of the latter therefore represent this particular social relation. The owner of labour power is paid at the market price of his commodity, i.e. the labour power, while he creates surplus value for the owner of the means of production. It is this social relation^ the relation of exploitation, that is represented by accumulation of capital at one end and pauperisation and impoverishment at the other. The actual amount of wages received by the workers of ^a particular country or a particular group of countries may at times and in places increase when capitalism develops. It is also possible (as we see today, although Marx could not clearly foresee it in his day) that, even in hitherto-backward countries like those of Asia and Africa the standard of living of sections of the common people registers rises when these countries become part of capitalist society. None of these developments, however, negates the basic reality that, even while there is such an improvement in the standard of life of sections of the working class, this improvement is more than counterbalanced by the still larger accumulation of capital in the hands of a narrow group of monopolies. The growth of a handful of monopolist families in every advanced capitalist country is a fact which a world-renowned economist like Mrs Robinson cannot deny. Nor can she deny that what she calls the improvement in the standard of living of the workers is a trifle when compared with the unpre cedented tightening of the Hold of a handful of monopolists in every capitalist country. It is this gulf between the ever-expanding capital in the hands'of an ever-narrowing circle of monopolists on the one hand and the improvement of an ever-widening circle of the common people that is relevant to the discussion of the capital-labour relations analysed by Marx. As for 'increasing misery driving the workers to rebellion5, it has never been Marx's contention that the accentuation of the economic crises will automatically lead to political revolutions, (see the quotation given above from Marx^s Preface^to the Critique, the passages to which emphasis has been added). Marx, Engels and Lenin were, and their present-day followers are, firmly opposed to what is called the theory of economic determinism. The development of political consciousness, its consolida-