Research Report

Title Page / Formatting ● Title page setup​ (for APA)

General Working Outline Introduction: Establish a framework

○ 1-2 paragraphs to explain what your paper is about and give any background information or context that the reader needs to understand your argument.

○ Essential questions: ■ What is capitalism? ■ What are some defining characteristics of capitalism? ■ How does it work? ■ Where/when/why/how did capitalism emerge in the U.S.?

○ Sources: ■ ​https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socialism/#SociCapi

● "(i) The bulk of the means of production is privately owned and controlled.

● (ii) People legally own their labor power. (Here capitalism differs from slavery and feudalism, under which systems some individuals are entitled to control, whether completely or partially, the labor power of others).

● (iii) Markets are the main mechanism allocating inputs and outputs of production and determining how societies’ productive surplus is used, including whether and how it is consumed or invested.

● An additional feature that is typically present wherever (i)–(iii) hold, is that:

● (iv) There is a class division between capitalists and workers, involving specific relations (e.g., whether of bargaining, conflict, or subordination) between those classes, and shaping the labor market, the firm, and the broader political process."

■ https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/a.htm#:~:text=also%20Human %20Capital.-,Capitalism,the%20exploitation%20of%20wage%20labour​.

● “The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour.”

○ The last sentence of your introduction should be your thesis statement!

● Body 1: Wealth Inequality in Late Stage Capitalism ○ 1 paragraph to explain what capitalism looks like ​now​. Here is where you make

your point about the wealth gap. Talk about the things you see. ○ Essential questions:

■ What does wealth inequality look like in the U.S.? ■ Just how bad is it? ■ Why is it this way?

○ Sources: ■ ​https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/

● “the combined wealth of all U.S. billionaires increased by $1.138 trillion (39 percent) between March 18, 2020 and January 18, 2021...the richest five (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, and Elon Musk) saw an 85 percent increase in their combined wealth during this period.”

● “In 2018, the three men at the top of [the Forbes 400 list] — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and investor Warren Buffett — held combined fortunes worth more than the total wealth of the poorest half of Americans.”

■ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-a nd-wealth-inequality/

● “At the same time, the U.S. middle class, which once comprised the clear majority of Americans, is shrinking. ... The share of American adults who live in middle-income households has decreased from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2019.”

■ https://evonomics.com/how-capitalism-actually-generates-more-inequality ● “Today, in the USA, the richest 1 percent own 34 percent of the

wealth and the richest 10 percent own 74 percent of the wealth.” ● “Much of the inequality of wealth found within capitalist societies

results from inequalities of inheritance. The process is cumulative: inequalities of wealth often lead to differences in education, economic power, and further inequalities in income.”

● “Unlike owned capital, free labour power cannot be used as collateral to obtain loans for investment. At least in this respect, capital and labour do not meet on a level playing field, this asymmetry is a major driver of inequality.”

● “The foremost generator of inequality under capitalism is not markets but capital.”

● “These drivers are congenital to capitalism and its system of wage labour.”

● Body 2: Obligatory Labor and Class Dynamics

○ 1 paragraph to connect the wealth gap back to capitalism and to set up the connection with your next few points. This is the only part where you have to get super Marxist but I can help you out with quotes.

○ Essential questions: ■ How do the inner workings of capitalism function? ■ What is obligatory labor? Why is it the way that it is? ■ What is class? How do class dynamics create inequality and oppression?

○ Sources: ■ https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch02.ht

m ● “Labour-power is a commodity which its possessor, the

wage-worker, sells to the capitalist. Why does he sell it? It is in order to live.”

■ http://web.stanford.edu/~dharris/papers/Capitalist%20exploitation%20and %20black%20labor%20-%20some%20conceptual%20issues.pdf

● “There is nevertheless an element of necessity, one might even say coercion, in the social relation which the laborer occupies. This is so insofar as the laborer has no alternative to obtain means of subsistence at the required level for reproduction of himself and family and must therefore sell himself into wage employment.”

● “The use of labor-power in production produces more value than is paid to the laborer--it produces surplus value. This surplus value becomes the property of the capitalists (the nonproducers) and not of the workers (the direct producers) because the capitalists own the means of production and control the process of production. Thus, it is the social dominance of the capitalists as a class, as related specifically to their ownership of the means of production and control over the use of labor in production, which enables the capitalists to appropriate surplus value, and which therefore accounts for capitalist exploitation.”

● Body 3: Symptoms 1 - Poverty ○ 1 paragraph to make this point and connect it back to your central thesis. ○ Essential questions:

■ How does capitalism manufacture poverty? ■ Why does capitalism need people to be poor? ■ How do other intersections play a role? Race? Gender? Citizenship? Etc. ■ What is the cycle of poverty?

○ Sources: ■ ​https://www.jstor.org/stable/4418024?seq=1 ■ https://www.jstor.org/stable/23124193?seq=1

● Body 4: Symptoms 2 - Mental Health

○ 1 paragraph to make this point and connect it back to your central thesis. ○ Essential questions:

■ How does capitalism negatively impact mental health? ■ Why is a capitalist system so bad at treating mental health?

○ Sources: ■ ​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVQ4LIp39Xo

● Don’t cite the video​, if you’re citing a specific point check the sources in the description and cite the one you’re referencing.

■ https://medium.com/reason-in-revolt/capitalism-is-dangerous-for-your-me ntal-health-b02fd8f56dfe

■

● Body 5: Symptoms 3 - Crime / Violence ○ 1 paragraph to make this point and connect it back to your central thesis. ○ Essential questions:

■ How do we define violence? Why do we define it this way? ■ In what ways is capitalism systemically violent? ■ Why do we care more about individual violence than systemic violence? ■ How does capitalism perpetuate individual violence? ■ How does capitalism rely on the criminal justice system?

○ Sources: ■ https://harvardpolitics.com/capital-and-violence/

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● Body 6: Counter Argument (optional) ○ If you feel it’s necessary at this point (and if you have the word space) this would

be 1 paragraph explaining a counterargument to your stance and then defending against it.

○ Potential counterarguments: ■

○ Sources: ■ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/08/does-capitalism-cause-poverty/

● This is basically the source that sums up the “Marx predicted the future wrong” argument.

■ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6VqV1T4uYs ● This video explains the issue very well and he links all of his

sources in the description. Don’t cite the video directly but you can use it to formulate your argument and reference the actual sources.