Capital
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Product Description
One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates. Living in exile in England, where this work was largely written, Marx drew on a wide-ranging knowledge of its society to support his analysis and generate fresh insights. Arguing that capitalism would create an ever-increasing division in wealth and welfare, he predicted its abolition and replacement by a system with common ownership of the means of production. Capital rapidly acquired readership among the leaders of social democratic parties, particularly in Russia and Germany, and ultimately throughout the world, to become a work described by Marx's friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels as 'the Bible of the Working Class'
About the Author
Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany and studied in Bonn and Berlin. Influenced by Hegel, he later reacted against idealist philosophy and began to develop his own theory of historical materialism. He related the state of society to its economic foundations and mode of production, and recommended armed revolution on the part of the proletariat. Together with Engels, who he met in Paris, he wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party. He lived in England as a refugee until his death in 1888, after participating in an unsuccessful revolution in Germany.
Ernst Mandel was a member of the Belgian TUV from 1954 to 1963 and was chosen for the annual Alfred Marshall Lectures by Cambridge University in 1978. He died in 1995 and the Guardian described him as 'one of the most creative and independent-minded revolutionary Marxist thinkers of the post-war world.'
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First Sentence
The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an 'immense collection of commodities'; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an 'immense collection of commodities'; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Having never read Karl Marx but heard him quoted; usually in a derogative way I thought that I should find out what he said for myself.
The downside of Marx is that he over explains to the point of sometimes stupifying the reader and never uses one word when six will do!!
The up side more than makes up for it and if you can persevere, given the current climate his writings are almost prophetic in several major and aposite ways.
I was surprised to find that he was not particularly political in the way that he is usually portrayed and was writing very specifically about the future of industrial capitalism as it was practised in America and the uk. No wonder the "masters of the universe" both then and now sought to shut him up by demonising him; they may have been rumbled before they made a packet otherwise! I don't agree with everything Marx wrote, but I do believe that his ideas should be more widely debated than they are. This was an excellent book for adding to my world perspective and I can thoroughly recommend it.
The downside of Marx is that he over explains to the point of sometimes stupifying the reader and never uses one word when six will do!!
The up side more than makes up for it and if you can persevere, given the current climate his writings are almost prophetic in several major and aposite ways.
I was surprised to find that he was not particularly political in the way that he is usually portrayed and was writing very specifically about the future of industrial capitalism as it was practised in America and the uk. No wonder the "masters of the universe" both then and now sought to shut him up by demonising him; they may have been rumbled before they made a packet otherwise! I don't agree with everything Marx wrote, but I do believe that his ideas should be more widely debated than they are. This was an excellent book for adding to my world perspective and I can thoroughly recommend it.
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Fascinating and world-view affecting reading.
If you're buying a copy of Capital to go with David Harvey's book "A Companion to Capital" or his phenomenal free lectures go with this one, rather than the Oxford World's Classics abridgement.
True, this version is intimidatingly fat, and the OWC's version seems to be a more readable translation, but it (the OWC version) is missing lots of the detail (sometimes several paragraphs at a time), colour and footnotes to which Harvey refers.
Hope this review doesn't seem superfluous but I bought the other version because it was all I could get hold of at short notice and spent hours finding and reading missing sections in a .pdf version as a result!
If you're buying a copy of Capital to go with David Harvey's book "A Companion to Capital" or his phenomenal free lectures go with this one, rather than the Oxford World's Classics abridgement.
True, this version is intimidatingly fat, and the OWC's version seems to be a more readable translation, but it (the OWC version) is missing lots of the detail (sometimes several paragraphs at a time), colour and footnotes to which Harvey refers.
Hope this review doesn't seem superfluous but I bought the other version because it was all I could get hold of at short notice and spent hours finding and reading missing sections in a .pdf version as a result!
88 of 96 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If :
- Your mum has taught you lots of valuable things (eat your vegetables, be nice to old people and little dogs, don't be late to school, keep a clean nose) but she was never really able to explain why you had to WORK for a living - instead of, you know, just living;
- Your teachers packed your head full with all kinds of useful knowledge (about prepositions and adverbs, mineralogy and astrophysics, the reproductive organs of plants, x+2-y=0) but they never told you how exactly PROFITS are made - and why anybody would want to make them anyway;
- Your friends and lovers can spend hours yakking about various interesting topics (the latest music machine, videogames, designer shoes, imitation leather sofas, blockbuster movies, pink underwear and cherry flavoured bubble-gum) but they call you a bore and a nitpick whenever you wonder why you're all surrounded by so many COMMODITIES and publicity ads promising you bigger, better and faster useless things.
- You often have the impression that some greater truth is lacking in your life (and you've tried all the legal/illegal drugs, exciting TV shows, gurus and psychoanalysts, help-yourself books and bestsellers about kid sorcerers)...
...Then the time may have come to have a long talk with good old Uncle Karl - the black sheep of the social sciences, the guy nobody likes to mention at social occasions (except in the form of a joke: "have you heard the one about Karl Marx in Las Vegas?"), the most misquoted and misinterpreted modern thinker.
In "Capital", he kindly invites you to break on through to the other side (that's how countercultural he was) and check out what's really happening behind the glitzy appearances of everyday life. You don't even have to be a genius to understand him (it will be enough if you can count to ten without choking). And you might be surprised about how obvious some things will seem after he explains to you about the cage you're sitting in.
Of course, mum will probably be broken-hearted and fear that you'll join the next anarcho-pinko-terrorist organization down the block. Your teachers might refer to a vast list of successful anti-Marx books and charity organizations. And your friends and lovers will find you an even greater bore than before.
- Your mum has taught you lots of valuable things (eat your vegetables, be nice to old people and little dogs, don't be late to school, keep a clean nose) but she was never really able to explain why you had to WORK for a living - instead of, you know, just living;
- Your teachers packed your head full with all kinds of useful knowledge (about prepositions and adverbs, mineralogy and astrophysics, the reproductive organs of plants, x+2-y=0) but they never told you how exactly PROFITS are made - and why anybody would want to make them anyway;
- Your friends and lovers can spend hours yakking about various interesting topics (the latest music machine, videogames, designer shoes, imitation leather sofas, blockbuster movies, pink underwear and cherry flavoured bubble-gum) but they call you a bore and a nitpick whenever you wonder why you're all surrounded by so many COMMODITIES and publicity ads promising you bigger, better and faster useless things.
- You often have the impression that some greater truth is lacking in your life (and you've tried all the legal/illegal drugs, exciting TV shows, gurus and psychoanalysts, help-yourself books and bestsellers about kid sorcerers)...
...Then the time may have come to have a long talk with good old Uncle Karl - the black sheep of the social sciences, the guy nobody likes to mention at social occasions (except in the form of a joke: "have you heard the one about Karl Marx in Las Vegas?"), the most misquoted and misinterpreted modern thinker.
In "Capital", he kindly invites you to break on through to the other side (that's how countercultural he was) and check out what's really happening behind the glitzy appearances of everyday life. You don't even have to be a genius to understand him (it will be enough if you can count to ten without choking). And you might be surprised about how obvious some things will seem after he explains to you about the cage you're sitting in.
Of course, mum will probably be broken-hearted and fear that you'll join the next anarcho-pinko-terrorist organization down the block. Your teachers might refer to a vast list of successful anti-Marx books and charity organizations. And your friends and lovers will find you an even greater bore than before.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Understanding Capitalism
To many people Marxism is a dirty word because of its association with the bureaucratic tyranny of the Stalinist regimes of Russia, Eastern Europe, China etc. Read more
Published 3 months ago by P. Webster
Five months well spent
This is a surprisingly enjoyable book to read. Not only does it give a disturbingly vivid (albeit skewed) account of capitalist history and working conditions, but much of the... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Mash
More relevant than ever.
I've not got much more to add to the other reviews that praise 'Capital', other than to say that, although it is difficult to read and it does involve hard work, it is not beyond... Read more
Published on 17 May 2010 by Germinal
The book I'd recommend to read for everyone
Like Darwin's The Origin of Species, Marx's Capital is based on years of research and scientific analysis of economic, social, political lives of people. Read more
Published on 15 Mar 2010 by B Green
Should be read despite what Marx got wrong
This review covers all three volumes of Mark's Capital in the Penguin edition.
This Penguin edition is exceptionally good value in terms of pennies per page. Read more
This Penguin edition is exceptionally good value in terms of pennies per page. Read more
Published on 7 Mar 2010 by Gareth Greenwood
Surplus value
The most important issue in economics today is an evaluation of Marx's theory of surplus value. If corporations were getting smaller, if labor's lot overall was improving, if... Read more
Published on 17 Nov 2006 by Lew E. Jeppson
why you should read marx
In Marx' economic works and above all in "capital" we find the deepening of the classical economists' theory of value, an understanding of the origins of crises as the... Read more
Published on 12 Jan 2000
The Influence Of Good on Evil
Criticisms of Marx arise mainly from reading this volume of "Capital", yet it is his whole body of thought that needs to be considered when assessing such a thinker,... Read more
Published on 7 Jan 2000
Overreach of a genius
Marx was an extraordinary analyst of economics. He was a serviceable philosopher, but the problem is that he tried to play prophet. Read more
Published on 21 Nov 1998
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