Unravelling Capitalism

by Joseph Choonara

Karl Marx was the greatest critic of capitalism. Yet his ideas are widely dismissed or misunderstood.

But Marx is indispensable for anyone who wants to grasp why capitalism is a system of exploitation, instability and repeated crises.

Joseph Choonara introduces Marx’s approach to understanding capitalism—developed above all in the three volumes of Capital. He also outlines how this can be applied to capitalism as it has developed since Marx’s time.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Economics

159 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2009

Reviews

[Martin Empson]

This is a detailed and well written book. The centrality of the economic situation to political discourse at the moment makes this a must read for any radical trying to understand the ins and outs of the system. It should also be on the reading list for every economics student in the country, clearing away the confusions that a myriad of mainstream commentators have spread about Marxism....

http://resolutereader.blogspot.com/20...

[Nathan Fisher]

The first two parts are a fairly lucid attempt at extreme concision — the last part is where Choonara moves from what is an admirable compression of Marxism toward a rendition of the SWP's particular line on imperialism / state capitalism / the permanent arms economy — contested positions which I find smuggled in here in a somewhat objectionable manner (alas, yes, because I disagree with them).

[river]

a great intro to marxist PE + covered basically everything that i learned in my intro political economy class but obviously in a much more succinct way . would recommend if you’re just getting into PE/marxist PE

[Phil Webster]

There is now a new (2017) second edition of a book first published in 2009. It is a really excellent introduction to Marxist economics. The Marxist theorist and activist Alex Callinicos has summed the book up with the following comment:

“Joseph Choonara has updated and revised his excellent introduction to Marxist political economy. Remarkably, he’s improved on what was already a first-class book, which succeeds in making Marx’s ideas accessible without dumbing them down.”

Choonara follows Marx in showing that there are two key features of the capitalist system. Firstly, there is the fact that the capitalists make their profits by exploiting the working class. (The working class today includes ordinary white collar workers as well as manual workers.) Choonara clearly explains the process by which the capitalists extract surplus value from the workers. As Marx himself wrote, “Capital...vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour...”

Secondly, there is the competition between rival capitalists which drives on the exploitation and which leads to the anarchy of the market system, with its booms, slumps and crises, as we are seeing today. This economic competition between units of capital also leads to military competition between rival capitalist/imperialist states.

In relation to the crises which flow inevitably from this capitalist competition, Choonara clearly explains, and shows the importance of, what Marx called “the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall”.

The author also takes us through the changes to the capitalist system since Marx’s day, and through its ups and downs, such as the long boom of the 1950s and 1960s, and the return to crises since the 1970s.

Marx’s “Capital” is not just a technical economic treatise. Marx’s humanism and democratic instincts shine out throughout that book. There are marvellous indictments of the alienating, exploitative and undemocratic nature of the capitalist system, as well as some remarkably vivid historical sections.

I particularly like how Marx shows that people are alienated under capitalism, in the sense of their work being turned into soulless degradation, and also in the sense of having lost control of their lives to something they themselves have created - capital. Marx wrote: “As, in religion, man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalist production, he is governed by the products of his own hand.” Again, Choonara has a chapter on this concept of alienation.

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. But Choonara shows that these regimes had/have nothing to do with genuine Marxism. The so-called “communist” states were/are actually state capitalist systems controlled by a ruling class of bureaucrats who betrayed the aims of the 1917 Russian Revolution and turned on its head Marx’s aim of a democratic workers’ state and classless society.

Of course, it is not enough just to understand capitalism, we need to get rid of it. I’ll end by quoting the final part of the last chapter of Choonara’s excellent book:

“… while socialism is far from inevitable, the constant tussle between capital and labour… will continue as long as capitalism continues. In that conflict lie the seeds of something very different: a world structured according to the needs of its population, rather than the drive for profit; run democratically from below, rather than from on high by capitalists and their supporters; a world of socialism rather than a world of barbarism.”

[Moth]

Contrary to the other reviewers, I found this a bit hard to follow. I usually like short-and-to-the-point reads but Choonara was a bit too concise for me, and I'm assuming a bit too concise for any reader who is a complete economy dummy.

[gaverne Bennett]

I am trying to understand the standard of living crisis from a different perspective. Very interesting.

[William Brown]

Almost all of this is incorrect and fraught with peril. Avoid!

[Ethan]

Short zombie capitalism

[Diggi Dialektik]

Good and short explanation of the basic ideas of Marxs "Kapital". Sometimes well explained, sometimes a little hard to understand but still suitable for beginners or interested people.

[Joshua]

I read this book because I wanted to learn more about Marxist political economy. This has become interesting to me because of the global economic crisis of recent years. Overall I feel that this book is a good introduction to the field. I would say that this is an intermediate level book about Marxism in general, but a beginner level book in the field of Marxist political economy.

Marx's economic theory is explained using straight forward language with examples. Concepts like surplus value, living and dead labour, variable capital, constant capital, the organic composition of capital and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall are all introduced and explained fairly well. There are also brief chapters on the role of finance and credit which facilitates capitalist expansion while also increasing the crisis prone voltatility of the capitalist system.

The final third of the book is devoted to explaining five different eras of capitalism. The five eras are divided into the classical era, the birth of imperialism, the slump and state capitalism, the long boom, and the return to crisis (the era of capitalism we live in). These chapters were interesting because they build up explanations using the ideas introduced in the earlier chapters. There is of course a bias towards explanations worked out by theoreticians from the International Socialist Tendency. This is not surprising given that this book is published by Bookmarks, which is the publisher for the International Socialist Tendency.

I found the level of discussion to be not too difficult, although there were some areas that I had to read more than once to get my head around, specifically those found in the chapter on Prices and the general rate of profit. This chapter is a brief account of ideas outlined in Marx's third volume of Capital. Apparently this is a contentious area and there is something called the 'transformation problem'. I'm still not sure what the transformation problem is exactly. Apparently Marx asserts that the rate of profit in an economy tends to equalise across different branches of industry. Apparently capital flows from branches with a high organic composition of capital to areas with a low organic composition of capital. Somehow this leads to a 'general rate of profit' for the whole economy which capitalists grab a share of in proportion to the amount of capital they invest...

Overall I reckon this is a pretty good book to start looking at Marxist political economy. There are several pages worth of further reading suggested. I think I will return to Unravelling Capitalism and get more out of it as I read more about this fascinating area.

[Jacob Pointon]

Great introduction to Marxian Political Economy. I would recommend reading this along with Wage-Labour and Capital Value Price and Profit before starting Capital Vol. 1

[Robin]

Easy enough to read, and quite helpful in dealing with some complex issues

[Titus Hjelm]

Good primer on Marx's Capital and how it can help us understand modern capitalism. The view is quite uncritical, of course, but refreshing nevertheless.

[Rory Gee]

Capitalism for dummies