Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy (Penguin Classics)

First, a note on what CAPITAL is not. It is not a "communist" tract, though it is a foundation for communist thought. Marx follows two main trains of thought -- the first is observational, the second diagnostic. He explains how capitalism works, and why it works that way. Disagreeable as some of his ideas may be, they cannot be brushed away by citing the examples of Stalin and Pol Pot to discredit them. Unlike the typical Communist dictator, Marx was a hard-working scholar, a clear thinker, a fundamentally honest writer. His familiarity with the whole spectrum of economic and philosophical writings that preceded him is unquestionable, and CAPITAL is probably more impressive to a reader who's read THE WEALTH OF NATIONS (Adam Smith), if nothing else.

The capitalism of Marx's time (mid-19th century) had dismal effects on the "proletariat" or working-class, and CAPITAL cannot be fully appreciated without some knowledge of how England, the most industrialized nation in the world, looked at that period of history. Charles Dickens is one writer who "exposed" the condition of the poor, in a more acceptable (though no less wordy) fashion it seems.

CAPITAL is certainly an important book and it is not the unreadable monstrosity it's reputed to be. It is repetitious, but usually the repetition includes some new twist as Marx proceeds from one aspect of his theory to the next. The purpose of the book was to establish a scientific basis for his understanding of capitalism, so Marx employs numerous algebraic equations that might scare readers away at first. They are not complicated, however, nor are they really "mathematical" so much as illustrative of abstract economic processes. One quickly grows accustomed to them; I personally find them amusing.

Marx's book is also a polemical text, and he injects some bitter wit and just plain nastiness into his analysis. Either he couldn't restrain himself, or it's a rhetorical device, but whatever the case, CAPITAL contains some very interesting screeds and some very memorable caricatures of capitalists. Overall a powerful book and one that promotes greater understanding of the forces that shape our world even today.


please read the book before reviewing it!   June 29, 2005
Alexander Janums (New York, United States)
68 out of 71 found this review helpful

Reading the "reviews" of Capital here on Amazon.com, a person who has read the book can see that most "reviewers" have not even troubled themselves read the book! Instead of taking the time and energy to plow through this work, many would rather get on a soap box and ramble on about their own views thereby "reviewing" the work.
I read the entire book from cover to cover. Not an easy task. It took me more than a year with persistence! But I did it.
Socialism is not mentioned once the the actual work itself. (Of course it is mentioned in the 87 page Introduction which some of the "reviewers" might have bothered to skim through!)
What is the name of the book? Capital! Not Communism or Socialism! One who has bothered to read this long book knows that the book has nothing to do with Communism. The book was supposed to form a scientific explanation of what the Capitalist mode of production was and how it formed and its' inner workings. Marx felt that after writing the pamphlet Manifesto of 1848, he owed it to the world tho explain what Capitalism was. It is a microscopic examination of the capitalist mode of production in mid-nineteenth century England. Granted that things have changed since 1850 England, the basic core of Capitalism hasn't changed.
The man was brilliant, he obviously spent a lot of time formulating an understanding of what Capitalism is. It was an eye opener for me into what Capitalism really is. It was stimulating to see how Marx in the work slowly but surely synthesizes his successive points one by one thereby building a model of the Capitalist mode of production for one to examine.
My only complaint was that it was too long. He could have said what he had to say in 200 pages rather than 800.


Surprising   March 17, 2004
El Cholo Invisivel (Brazil)
29 out of 30 found this review helpful

I was greatly surprised to find that the words "Communism" and "Socialism" are not even mentioned in Capital, volume 1. This leads me to believe that the most vehement criticisms of this book are by people who haven't read it. I am not by any means a communist, but I found this book to be an excellent description of capitalism. Since we are still living in a capitalist system, much of what Marx says is still relevant today, for example, his analysis on how capitalism exerts continuous pressure to lengthen the work day. I regularly read the Economist and found Marx's criticism of the magazine entertaining. It is worth knowing, for example, that the Economist opposed shortening the work day of children to 10 hours. In another fascinating section, Marx uses the depopulation of Ireland based on the Potato Famine and the resulting land grab by the rich to disprove Malthus' theory on population. He proved how, contrary to what Malthus predicted, despite losing half of its population to famine and emigration, poverty continued to rise, and the rich continued to get richer. He ends the chapter on this prophetic note: "The accumulation of the Irish in America keeps pace with the accumulation of rents in Ireland. The Irishman, banished by the sheep and the ox, reappears on the other side of the ocean as a Fenian. And there a young but gigantic republic rises, more and more threateningly, to face the old queen of the waves."


Doors of Perception   January 23, 2007
Clary Antome
30 out of 33 found this review helpful

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.



Indispensable   April 17, 2002
26 out of 32 found this review helpful

One thing often overlooked about Karl Marx is that he is an accomplished prose stylist and remarkable rhetorician. Many of his phrases and formulations are well known and frequently employed even now, and reading Marx continues to be a pleasurable experience. Philosophically, Marx remains one of the most original and arresting of nineteenth century thinkers. An assessment of Marx, however, should not focus on the content of particular pronouncements or "predictions" (there are in fact precious few of these last in his corpus) but should, rather, engage with the movement of his thought and with the conceptual revolution he initiated. If you want to make that engagement, then Capital is as good a place as any to start. But it entails commitment and risk.

It is a platitude, of course, that Marx's "vision" of how capitalism would develop has been refuted by history. Of course, this right wing mantra bears little scrutiny. Again, Marx is valuable not as a body of proposals and concrete prognoses. He provides us, rather, with an ever elastic and dynamic conceptual apparatus; a horizon of understanding that has scarcely been surpassed. In any case, the clichés used to discredit Marx's "predictions" are usually underwritten by a complete misunderstanding of how capitalism now works. Take for example the notion (it is scarcely even that) of the "disappearing working class". If one lives in a First World country the "working class" may indeed APPEAR to have diminished. Marx, however, would have us go beyond the (ideological) appearance. The pseudo-theorists in the West can afford to babble about the "disappearing working class" only because of the very "invisibility" of millions of anonymous workers sweating in Third World factories (take a look at your designer labels - the traces are readily discernible). The USA is turning into a country of managerial planning, banking, servicing and so on, while its "disappearing working class" is reappearing in places like China, where a large proportion of US products is manufactured in conditions that are ideal for capitalist exploitation. Marx would have understood only too well both this international division of labour AND its ideological masking. If you want to understand (really understand, not just pragmatically from the inside) the dominant economic and political system, then Marx's Capital is simply - and one does not use the word lightly - indispensable.