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Capital: A New Abridgement
A classic of early modernism, Capital combines vivid historical detail with economic analysis to produce a bitter denunciation of mid-Victorian capitalist society. It has proved to be the most influential work in twentieth-century social science; Marx did for social science what Darwin had done for biology.
This is the only abridged edition to take into account the whole of Capital. It offers virtually all of Volume 1, which Marx himself published in 1867; excerpts from a new translation of "The Result of the Immediate Process Production"; and a selection of key chapters from Volume 3, which Engels published in 1895.
This is the only abridged edition to take into account the whole of Capital. It offers virtually all of Volume 1, which Marx himself published in 1867; excerpts from a new translation of "The Result of the Immediate Process Production"; and a selection of key chapters from Volume 3, which Engels published in 1895.
544 pages, Paperback
Published November 11, 1999
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About the author
Karl Marx
3,237 books6,483 followersWith the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote
The Communist Manifesto
(1848) and
Das Kapital
(1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
October 11, 2008
Karl would be spinning in his grave right now and in between gaffuws saying I TOLD YOU SO! as America saves its most stalwart capitalist icons with socialist policies! Read it and understand that the only real value is human labor...not paper or plastic.
February 4, 2019
I went into reading Das Kapital hoping to get a grip on the more technical and mathematical side of Marxism, as well as hoping to develop a deeper appreciation of the ideology in general. To some extent, I was succesful in both. I was surprised that there wasn't more mathematics in this book - there is some certainly, but nothing so substantial as I had hoped for (of course that could have been the abridgement).
In terms of negatives, the biggest problem with this text as I see it, is Marx's verbosity. I can only imagine what it would be like to read the unabridged Das Kapital - I cannot conceive of any situation in which that might be necessary. In just this five hundred page abridgement, there is a great deal of repetition as Marx explains already introduced and discussed ideas over and over and over again. My edition omits two thousand pages out of the original three volume work - I could hardly imagine reading the whole thing. There were large parts of even this edition that I scanned or even skipped, because they consisted of Marx simply repeating material in different wording.
If you can cope with wading through the wordiness however, there is some really rewarding reading here. Marx is an enduring figure in the realm of political philosophy. His ideas have not lost relevance. Despite his name being anathema to many modern Westerners (particularly among the right wing), the content of this book is not shocking or violent - and most of it isn't even controversial. For example, almost everybody in the Western world would agree with Marx on the necessity of reforming the factory working conditions he describes.
Das Kapital is also a dramatic change in tone from the fervent populism of The Communist Manifesto. This book doesn't scapegoat, it never really gets angry and it makes few dramatic predictions. It is a work of theory, and it has the same detached cerebral quality that one would expect from most reasonable theorists.
In terms of negatives, the biggest problem with this text as I see it, is Marx's verbosity. I can only imagine what it would be like to read the unabridged Das Kapital - I cannot conceive of any situation in which that might be necessary. In just this five hundred page abridgement, there is a great deal of repetition as Marx explains already introduced and discussed ideas over and over and over again. My edition omits two thousand pages out of the original three volume work - I could hardly imagine reading the whole thing. There were large parts of even this edition that I scanned or even skipped, because they consisted of Marx simply repeating material in different wording.
If you can cope with wading through the wordiness however, there is some really rewarding reading here. Marx is an enduring figure in the realm of political philosophy. His ideas have not lost relevance. Despite his name being anathema to many modern Westerners (particularly among the right wing), the content of this book is not shocking or violent - and most of it isn't even controversial. For example, almost everybody in the Western world would agree with Marx on the necessity of reforming the factory working conditions he describes.
Das Kapital is also a dramatic change in tone from the fervent populism of The Communist Manifesto. This book doesn't scapegoat, it never really gets angry and it makes few dramatic predictions. It is a work of theory, and it has the same detached cerebral quality that one would expect from most reasonable theorists.
August 27, 2025
Essential reading! I did only read the abridged version but will definitely look at the full versions too! So many people condemn Marx without actually reading him- This is actually a very detached, objective and theoretical analysis of the capitalist system, primitive accumulation and the theory of value. It would be very hard to disagree with any point that he makes, and everything is explained clearly. It is a little dense at the beginning but gets easier to read as it goes on. I feel a little sad to have finished this version. I’ve carried it around with me for a couple of months now, it’s brimming with post it notes and thoughts, it feels like a friend. I would recommend this book to anyone, full stop.
Read
November 27, 2012I read this while in High School and at the time I thought the ideas where good but as I have grown older I have found that the ideas of Marx are incompatible with the driving forces of man. We would need to go through a radical evolution of mind to even be able to adopt any of Marx and if you take his ideas and apply them to a microcosm of individual families you can see the break down pretty quickly.
May 3, 2024
A must read in social theory and materialist philosophy even though the economics presented in this book are not in all aspects up to date with contemporary economics. Marx takes a clear normative stance towards the arrangement of economic production: you should earn what you work for. The capitalist mode of production inherently violates this premise by allowing capital to appropriate all surplus value (i.e. all the produced value by labor power beyond the value necessary for the reproduction of the worker). Marx believed that all produced value — and value according to the economic understanding from his time comes strictly from labor — should go to the worker because he has worked for it and the capitalist didn't. Surplus appropriation is seen as exploitation because it represents produced value that the wages do not cover and the capitalist therefore does not pay for. It is not entirely clear to me how Marx views the risk taken by the capitalist for exposing his capital to losses or how his moral claims would stand in relation to current day economic theory of supply and demand. His economic normative stance is therefore less appealing to me although it makes intuitive sense.
More interestingly are his views on the relationship of power between the worker and capital and the role of technology within it. Technological advancement plays a vital role in the conflict between worker and capitalist as it does not only cause production and product improvement but also shifts and consolidations of power relations. Formerly, the worker used technology as an object for his productive process. But technology introduced real subsumption and inverted the relationship between worker and technology making the machine the subject and the worker the object in the production process. We do not need to look far for radicalized real world examples: Amazon warehouse workers use production machinery, surveillance technology, algorithmic decision making and much more to force production speed norms, internalized management gazes, skill dependence, co-worker alienation—all to squeeze out absolute and relative surplus value from its workers necessary for capital expansion. Popular answers to such cases point to the freedom the worker holds to change jobs. The worker is, however, condemned to nature’s necessities and the veil of economic transaction between labor and capital hides the unfreedom with which labor comes to negotiate the transaction with capital. But the point is stronger than that, for capitalism has, built-in, a mechanism that continuously makes the worker dependent, less skilled or even obsolete. To do this, it needs to absorb the skills and knowledge of the worker and materialize this in the machine that propels production. The machine comes to dominate the production process and rule over the worker; the machine, representing capital's demand, subjects the worker as a conscious organ through which capital accumulates itself. It is for these reasons that — and this is the most important and relevant insight of the book I believe — “It would be possible to write a whole history of the inventions made since 1830 for the sole purpose of providing capital with weapons against working-class revolt”.
More interestingly are his views on the relationship of power between the worker and capital and the role of technology within it. Technological advancement plays a vital role in the conflict between worker and capitalist as it does not only cause production and product improvement but also shifts and consolidations of power relations. Formerly, the worker used technology as an object for his productive process. But technology introduced real subsumption and inverted the relationship between worker and technology making the machine the subject and the worker the object in the production process. We do not need to look far for radicalized real world examples: Amazon warehouse workers use production machinery, surveillance technology, algorithmic decision making and much more to force production speed norms, internalized management gazes, skill dependence, co-worker alienation—all to squeeze out absolute and relative surplus value from its workers necessary for capital expansion. Popular answers to such cases point to the freedom the worker holds to change jobs. The worker is, however, condemned to nature’s necessities and the veil of economic transaction between labor and capital hides the unfreedom with which labor comes to negotiate the transaction with capital. But the point is stronger than that, for capitalism has, built-in, a mechanism that continuously makes the worker dependent, less skilled or even obsolete. To do this, it needs to absorb the skills and knowledge of the worker and materialize this in the machine that propels production. The machine comes to dominate the production process and rule over the worker; the machine, representing capital's demand, subjects the worker as a conscious organ through which capital accumulates itself. It is for these reasons that — and this is the most important and relevant insight of the book I believe — “It would be possible to write a whole history of the inventions made since 1830 for the sole purpose of providing capital with weapons against working-class revolt”.
June 4, 2018
I mean I don't know what I expected. It's Capital, and it's extensive and very opaque. Reading from the beginning, it's a painfully slow but precise explanation of exchange, value, and money. Then he gets into how a Capitalist is formed. Then there is some history of the English factory system, which was real bad by the way.
But then he starts talking about real value of labor, and I could not follow. Suffice it to say that, worker makes thing, thing sold for more than worker makes in wages. There, that's capitalism. At least I think it is, according to this book.
Definitely not an introductory or even intermediate read in this field. MAYBE I'll come back to it in 5 years, but maybe not.
But then he starts talking about real value of labor, and I could not follow. Suffice it to say that, worker makes thing, thing sold for more than worker makes in wages. There, that's capitalism. At least I think it is, according to this book.
Definitely not an introductory or even intermediate read in this field. MAYBE I'll come back to it in 5 years, but maybe not.
June 28, 2007
Well what can I say? Perhaps one of the most unreadable books every written, but required reading for anyone hoping to get their teeth into Marxian political economy. While it’s very heavy going, it can be very rewarding. Time consuming in the extreme, I would still recommend it, although it’s become increasingly hard to get hold of a copy that has not been edited, abridged, or otherwise tampered with.
I would however advise people to read the likes of Wage Labour & Capital before starting with this, along with the Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy.
I would however advise people to read the likes of Wage Labour & Capital before starting with this, along with the Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy.
January 28, 2020
Interesante pela didática. Tive a impressão que exageraram no resumo, mas seria muito útil em um curso voltado para trabalhadores e pessoas fora da academia em geral. Para os estudiosos, pulavel para quem já conhece a teoria da historia de outros textos.
August 27, 2022
At last chugged my way through. Most of his theory and criticism is based on flawed assumptions and there is an awful lot of waffle/repetition, but some of his theory can actually be a useful proxy in some situations I think.
March 26, 2015
Informative read into Marx headspace, at a time when money was on the gold standard.
Das Kapital, it has been said, is the bible of Communism, while the Communist Manifesto is its creed.Few can boast that they have read all 3 volumes of Das Kapital; fewer still have understood its tortuous prose. Yet millions have passionately defended or attacked it, and revolutions have been made in its name. Sua fata habent libelli [books have a fate of their own].
Volume I of Das Kapital was published in 1867 (almost 2 decades after the Manifesto, by combining two chapters of an earlier study. When Marx died, in 1883, Volumes II and III were no more than a confused mass of notes, references and outlines. It was Fredrich Engels' lot to put them into final form and prepare them for publication. They appeared in 1885 and 1894, respectively.
Production is the primordial fact to which all other facts without exception must be subordinated, if they are to be understood correctly. By production, Marx meant specifically man's production of his means of subsistence.
The capitalist's task is facilitated by the growing unemployment brought about by the process of automation.
Exploitation is not a scientific phenomenon but one of the moral order.
[Marx'] great error was to ascribe to his observations a static, permanent, as well as general, character. He did not believe capitalism capable of evolution, and what he saw in the society of his time, he regarded as the basis for all society, everywhere and at all times.
Greek society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labour powers.
A commodity is a mysterious thing simply because in it the social character of men's labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour.
The religious world is but a reflex of the real world.
The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.
Political economy has in deed analyzed value and its magnitude. But it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour time by the magnitude of that value.
Money functions as a means of circulation only because in it the values of commodities have independent reality.
Paper money is a token representing gold or money.
Some one may ask why gold is capable of being replaced by tokens that have no value?
Hoarding
The continual movement in circuits of the two antithetical metamorphoses of commodities, or the never ceasing alternation of sale and purchase, is reflected in the restless currency of money, or in the function that money performs of a perpetuum mobile of circulation. But so soon as the series of metamorphoses is interrupted, so soon as sales are not supplemented by subsequent purchases, money ceases to be mobilised; it is transformed... from moveable into immovable, from coin into money.
The money becomes petrified into a hoard, and the seller becomes a hoarder of money.
Gold and silver become of themselves social expression for superfluity of wealth.
Nexus rerum = connection of ("a universal connection of things in the world")
The means of production can never add more value to the product than they themselves possess independently of the process in which they assist.
The limits of the working day
The labourer needs time for satisfying his intellectual and social wants, the extend and number of which are conditioned by the general state of social advancement. So, we find working days of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours, ie of the most different lengths.
Compulsory working to death is here the recognized form of over-work.
In its blind unrestrainable passion, its werewolf hunger for surplus-labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the working day. It usurps the time for growth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. It higgles over a meal-time, incorporating it where possible with the process of production of food iself, so that food is given to the labourer as to a mere means of production, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the restoration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily powers to just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential. It is not the normal maintenance of the labour-power which is to determine the limits of the working day; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of labour-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory, and painful it may be, which is to determine the limits of the labourers' period of repose. Capital cares nothing for the length of life of labour-power.
The establishment of a normal working day is the result of centuries of struggle between capitalist and labourer.
A normal working day [of 12 hours] for modern industry only dates from the Factory Act of 1833.
Co-operation begins with the labour process, but they have then ceased to belong to themselves.
Simple co-operation is always the prevailing form, in those branches of production in which capital operates on a large scale, and division of labour machinery play but a subordinate part.
bellum omnium contra omnes = "the war of all against all" [Thomas Hobbes gives to human existence in the state of nature thought experiment that he conducts in De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651). The common modern English usage is a war of "each against all" where war is rare and terms such as "competition" or "struggle" are more common. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellum_o...]
In manufacture, in order to make the the collective labourer, and through him capital, rich in social productive power, each labourer must be made poor in individual productive powers.
Just as a man requires lungs to breathe with, so he requires something that is work of man's hand, in order to consume physical forces productively.
Compulsory work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children's play, but also of free labour at home within moderate limits for the support of the family.
The place of the slave driver's lash is taken by the overlooker's book of penalties.
Is Fourier wrong when he calls factories 'tempered bagnos.' [bagno = bath]
Every advance in Chemistry not only multiplies the number of useful materials and the useful applications of those already know, thus extending with the growth of capital its sphere of investment.
Das Kapital, it has been said, is the bible of Communism, while the Communist Manifesto is its creed.Few can boast that they have read all 3 volumes of Das Kapital; fewer still have understood its tortuous prose. Yet millions have passionately defended or attacked it, and revolutions have been made in its name. Sua fata habent libelli [books have a fate of their own].
Volume I of Das Kapital was published in 1867 (almost 2 decades after the Manifesto, by combining two chapters of an earlier study. When Marx died, in 1883, Volumes II and III were no more than a confused mass of notes, references and outlines. It was Fredrich Engels' lot to put them into final form and prepare them for publication. They appeared in 1885 and 1894, respectively.
Production is the primordial fact to which all other facts without exception must be subordinated, if they are to be understood correctly. By production, Marx meant specifically man's production of his means of subsistence.
The capitalist's task is facilitated by the growing unemployment brought about by the process of automation.
Exploitation is not a scientific phenomenon but one of the moral order.
[Marx'] great error was to ascribe to his observations a static, permanent, as well as general, character. He did not believe capitalism capable of evolution, and what he saw in the society of his time, he regarded as the basis for all society, everywhere and at all times.
Greek society was founded upon slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labour powers.
A commodity is a mysterious thing simply because in it the social character of men's labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour.
The religious world is but a reflex of the real world.
The life-process of society, which is based on the process of material production, does not strip off its mystical veil until it is treated as production by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.
Political economy has in deed analyzed value and its magnitude. But it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour time by the magnitude of that value.
Money functions as a means of circulation only because in it the values of commodities have independent reality.
Paper money is a token representing gold or money.
Some one may ask why gold is capable of being replaced by tokens that have no value?
Hoarding
The continual movement in circuits of the two antithetical metamorphoses of commodities, or the never ceasing alternation of sale and purchase, is reflected in the restless currency of money, or in the function that money performs of a perpetuum mobile of circulation. But so soon as the series of metamorphoses is interrupted, so soon as sales are not supplemented by subsequent purchases, money ceases to be mobilised; it is transformed... from moveable into immovable, from coin into money.
The money becomes petrified into a hoard, and the seller becomes a hoarder of money.
Gold and silver become of themselves social expression for superfluity of wealth.
Nexus rerum = connection of ("a universal connection of things in the world")
The means of production can never add more value to the product than they themselves possess independently of the process in which they assist.
The limits of the working day
The labourer needs time for satisfying his intellectual and social wants, the extend and number of which are conditioned by the general state of social advancement. So, we find working days of 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 hours, ie of the most different lengths.
Compulsory working to death is here the recognized form of over-work.
In its blind unrestrainable passion, its werewolf hunger for surplus-labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the working day. It usurps the time for growth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. It higgles over a meal-time, incorporating it where possible with the process of production of food iself, so that food is given to the labourer as to a mere means of production, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the restoration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily powers to just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential. It is not the normal maintenance of the labour-power which is to determine the limits of the working day; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of labour-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory, and painful it may be, which is to determine the limits of the labourers' period of repose. Capital cares nothing for the length of life of labour-power.
The establishment of a normal working day is the result of centuries of struggle between capitalist and labourer.
A normal working day [of 12 hours] for modern industry only dates from the Factory Act of 1833.
Co-operation begins with the labour process, but they have then ceased to belong to themselves.
Simple co-operation is always the prevailing form, in those branches of production in which capital operates on a large scale, and division of labour machinery play but a subordinate part.
bellum omnium contra omnes = "the war of all against all" [Thomas Hobbes gives to human existence in the state of nature thought experiment that he conducts in De Cive (1642) and Leviathan (1651). The common modern English usage is a war of "each against all" where war is rare and terms such as "competition" or "struggle" are more common. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellum_o...]
In manufacture, in order to make the the collective labourer, and through him capital, rich in social productive power, each labourer must be made poor in individual productive powers.
Just as a man requires lungs to breathe with, so he requires something that is work of man's hand, in order to consume physical forces productively.
Compulsory work for the capitalist usurped the place, not only of the children's play, but also of free labour at home within moderate limits for the support of the family.
The place of the slave driver's lash is taken by the overlooker's book of penalties.
Is Fourier wrong when he calls factories 'tempered bagnos.' [bagno = bath]
Every advance in Chemistry not only multiplies the number of useful materials and the useful applications of those already know, thus extending with the growth of capital its sphere of investment.
April 3, 2012
This particular print of the book knocked off a star (at least) from my review. It was published by Pacific Publishing in 2010, and it is riddled with typos. There are paragraphs after paragraphs that start with a random capital P before the first word, many words are missing their first letter, and it is not clear that this is actually only the first book (of three) of Marx's capital. It is also probably an edited version of the first book, but there is no way to tell in this way sub-par print.
That said, the book itself was excruciating at first. Marx goes over in detail and in repetition what seem to me very simple concepts. He employs a lot of repetition throughout the book, but the first half of this (probably edited) book was pretty painful. That said there are some common sense ideas that Marx did help clarify for me. For example: the qualitative difference in our relationship to money if we sell a commodity (our labour for example) and use money as a medium to obtain other commodities and services---this is the great majority's relationship to money---and on the other hand, the "selling" or advancing of money into a commodity, which becomes a medium (the commodity) to obtain more money. This is rather simple and obvious, and yet it was beneficial to my own understanding.
Not everything advanced by Marx is necessarily so elementary, but there certainly wasn't anything earth-shattering in here for me. This would probably have received 3 stars without all the issues from the publishing of this edition. There's some good perspective in here on the nature of industry in Marx's time, and some important historical connections in the preceding couple centuries (again, this is probably only an edited book 1 of the full work). Some particularly piercing analysis at the end of the book about the soul-crippling nature of "detail labourers" in manufacture is also good.
That said, the book itself was excruciating at first. Marx goes over in detail and in repetition what seem to me very simple concepts. He employs a lot of repetition throughout the book, but the first half of this (probably edited) book was pretty painful. That said there are some common sense ideas that Marx did help clarify for me. For example: the qualitative difference in our relationship to money if we sell a commodity (our labour for example) and use money as a medium to obtain other commodities and services---this is the great majority's relationship to money---and on the other hand, the "selling" or advancing of money into a commodity, which becomes a medium (the commodity) to obtain more money. This is rather simple and obvious, and yet it was beneficial to my own understanding.
Not everything advanced by Marx is necessarily so elementary, but there certainly wasn't anything earth-shattering in here for me. This would probably have received 3 stars without all the issues from the publishing of this edition. There's some good perspective in here on the nature of industry in Marx's time, and some important historical connections in the preceding couple centuries (again, this is probably only an edited book 1 of the full work). Some particularly piercing analysis at the end of the book about the soul-crippling nature of "detail labourers" in manufacture is also good.
February 13, 2025
How to review a book like this? Some of this was truly as arch and radical and incomprehensible as its reputation suggested. But much of this was also clear and digestible and common-sense driven. Reading this after Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was a perfect primer on classical economics. There is Marx the radical all through this, though many of the culturally transmitted themes and ideas I took to be Marx-himself came only later, in passages of Vol 3 and I guess I would reiterate there is much to gain for any reader here, both the would be radical and general economist. Many of Marx's predictions have not come true, - in particular, capitalism created a comfortably apathetic middle class to buffer the final implosion of capital accumulation - and his labor theory of value doesn't have a chance at keeping up with modern economic realities but many of his critiques have been ESSENTIAL to modern labor politics and progressive movements. You can't overrate Marx's influence and as a philosopher of human freedom and political economy.
July 27, 2011
Not sure if I got much out of actually reading this book. The general ideas are public knowledge and the serious economic stuff is beyond the understanding of anyone who isn't pretty familiar with economic concepts already. He is a really good writer when he reaches out to a wider audience, dropping referrences to Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare, Cervantes and the Greeks with ease. It was a good reminder that the capitalist system is not 'natural', however acclimatised to it we are in the west, but I think it's probably more trouble than it's worth to read it.
Read
March 15, 2015Compared to the selected chapters in the Marx-Engels Reader, this version contains more or less most part of volume 1 in the Capital. However, there is also abridged passages where asterisks are not used to indicate an omission. I have to say so far I find the Chinese translation (complete and thorough, including notes appearing in versions of the Capital in several languages, as well as the Chinese translators' own) most useful.
April 11, 2022
It is indeed one of the most influential works in social science, I can see why. This book contains various analyses and insights into modern society's economic law of motion. However, it took me numerous discussions and some Youtube breakdowns to fully grasp what Mr. Marx was saying. Fully recommended, but you need some company to verify your understanding.
February 27, 2008
Fittingly dense. So much of what Marx wrote, which once seemed perceptive, has been superceded by later ideas in various fields, and his utopianism and economic determinism never did make sense in hind-sight. A must-read, simply for its influence.
March 21, 2018
Interesting to read a book that has had such influence. It has arguably been used by many to cause such hardship, which it should have alleviated, and has now largely been abandoned. That said, a tough read, pedantic, repetitive and this is the abridged version!
September 22, 2021
Very difficult to understand, and most readers are probably lacking in the historical background and context -- if you (like me) are just an armchair philosopher it is probably much better to read modern takes on Marxism and people writing about Marx, rather than Marx himself.
December 6, 2022
Really interesting to read Marx’s analysis of the economy and insights into exploitation of the working class.
Easy to see how it is such a foundational text though it was quite dry at some points. First 100 pages are a slog.
Easy to see how it is such a foundational text though it was quite dry at some points. First 100 pages are a slog.
October 30, 2007
my first book that make me interested on marx!
Want to read
June 6, 2008I keep swearing I'll read this thing one day.
Currently reading
March 24, 2010The process by which laborers became divorced from the means of production is particularly well told.
Read
August 1, 2012Heavy going is right. I slept through most of it.
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