Tools for exploring the history of capitalism, labor conflict, racial capitalism, and financialization — drawn from UW–Madison and MIT OCW curricula.
Pick an era of capitalism and trace how the relationship between capital, labor, and the state changed — from mercantile colonialism through industrial capitalism and into 20th-century financialization.
Pick a labor conflict and trace what workers demanded, how employers responded, what the state did, and what lasting changes — in law, organizing, or workplace conditions — the conflict produced.
Explore how racial hierarchy was integral to capital accumulation — slavery, convict leasing, racial wage differentials, redlining — and trace how each form served the accumulation needs of its era.
Pick an enclosure or dispossession and trace how pre-capitalist resources were converted into private capital — who organized it, who resisted, what legal and violent mechanisms made it possible.
Read about a financial instrument or crisis and trace how it connects to the real economy — what it claimed to do, who profited from it, who bore the risk, and what the 2008 crisis reveals about the structure.
