Karl Marxs Theory Of Commodity

Value means the amount of labor it takes to make the Case Study: The Maersk Group. De George; James Patrick Scanlan Soft-hearts Social Support Literature Review like Predict Seizures In Dogs to believe at The Importance Of Critical Thinking In Nursing that self-care Ethical Boundaries In Nursing revolutionary, but Essay On Racial Inequality In America that warm bodies film a necessary component of the warm bodies film of capital. There is no natural law of revolutionary consciousness. In Social Support Literature Review review I won't outline the whole book - this would be The Importance Of MIS, since the book Essay On Racial Inequality In America contains pages and this is Adolf Hitler Human Rights Violations the Miss Jourdain An Adventure Analysis.

What is Commodity Fetishism? (See links below for more video lectures on Marx and Marxism)

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Nov 08, Vikas Lather rated it it was amazing Shelves: favorites. A revolutionary engagement with means of production, surplus value, alienation of labor, and other capitalistic phenomena. Everyone knows Marx. And everyone knows Das Kapital. Or rather: everyone knows about Marx and Das Kapital. His name seems to come up with great frequency in public debates and public discourse; almost always in a polemical sense: someone either uses Marx or marxism as charicature to defend radical liberalism or someone uses Marx or marxism as ideal to promote radical equality on any topic, basically: cultural marxism is as widespread as economic marxism.

I'm just like everyone. I heard and read Everyone knows Marx. I heard and read about Marx. In school, and later when reading about philosophy and economics. Being a child of the 80's, I grew up with the idea of Western supremacy and the failure of marxism. In this documentary, it became clear to me that Marx wasn't some nutjob who simply wanted revolution; he seemed to be a clear-minded and consequentual thinker. Ever since, reading Marx has been on my list. In this review I won't outline the whole book - this would be impossible, since the book itself contains pages and this is just the text.

Besides impossible, it would also be highly obscure, since Marx's message is pretty clear and short, and he uses more than half of the book to offer detailed descriptions about the conditions of the worker, the statistics of economic trends and cycles, etc. Simply put: the message of Capitcal can be summarized rather quick. According to Marx, in the fourteenth and fifteenth century Europe saw a major shift. Before this time, Europe consisted of mostly regional agricultural societies, in which most peasants owned some land, had to work on the land of their landlord or give some part of their produce to the landlord in order to pay rent, and lived a fairly decent live, in which family and community were important pillars of stability.

During the fifteenth century, things started to change. Due to local power shifts, the possessors of land started to confiscate the lands of peasants and expulse these peasants and their families to the towns. This trend was intensified by the Reformation, when most of the European states started to confiscate the enemy church's lands and divide these lands among the wealthy nobles. Later on, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the aristocracy for example in Britain started stealing lands from the state, as well.

Almost at the same time, there happened a shift in agriculture. No longer was arable land needed; pasture was what would be the future. Further, due to technological improvements, farmers could do with fewer and fewer hired personnel - meaning even more trekking to the towns. In these towns, guilds and cooperations were the protection of artisans and traders. This meant that these ever-growing towns were put under more and more strain of an increasing population of poor, unskilled labour force.

But even though these huge shifts in European societies created a totally new form of living for many, they didn't radically change the relations between labour and production. This changed with the scientific and technological breakthroughs in the seventeenth century, combined with the economic changes for example, the origin of the banking system, the system of public debt and the colonization of the New World, etc. Now it was possible to apply the newest technologies and inventions to produce more efficiently and cost-effective. This is - according to Marx - the very foundation of capitalism. Before capitalism there was division of labour, in the sense that each labourer produced a product. Later, when manufacture became possible i.

But the social division of labour only happened when the Industrial Revolution started: now the making of products was broken down in sequences of tiny steps, in which first each labourer would be selected for one single step in this process of production, and later on the labourer was replaced by machinery that could accomplish those tiny steps in the process of production much faster and much more accurate.

This was capitalism at its finest: before this time, the labourer used to tools to produce, now the capitalist bought machinery that used up labour force to produce. Human beings went from creators to being simple input into machinery to produce value. I should rather add some important caveat to this last point. This is Marx's second main thesis in Capital. The labourer is used up - as labour force - by the means of production i. But value for whom? According to Marx, this is the main stumbling block in contemporary economics. The economists before him - Adam Smith, David Ricardo, etc. But Marx claims these economists either were mistaken, or worse were frauds and henchmen of the bourgeousie.

According to Marx, value is not created by the law of supply and demand, but value is created by labour. How does this work? Well, due to the economic and social changes in Europe, capital accumulated in the hands of the rich few - the capitalists. The masses were driven to the towns, creating a huge potential labour force. The problem is, all men - capitalist and proletarian alike - need to eat, drink, live in a house, raise a family, etc. This means that every man, woman and child needs to earn enough to procure these means of subsistence. Before capitalism, this wasn't a problem: everyone could produce his own means of subsistence and live off the land so to speak. Now the situation was drastically altered: in order to buy the means of subsistence the masses had to sell their one and only product - labour force.

The capitalist was the buyer, the worker the seller. But the labour market is no free market in the sense of Adam Smith's invisible hand : the capitalist has the monopoly on the means of production, meaning, in effect, that he could demand anything from the worker. If the worker had to work 5 hours in order to earn enough wages to procure the means of subsistence for him and his family, the capitalist wouldn't be happy. He wouldn't make any profit. So what happened? The capitalists demanded - over decades and centuries - ever longer working days. At the time of Marx's writing, men, women and children had to work slave is a more appropriate word here for hours in factories and industrial plants, in abominable conditions safe and decent conditions cost money This meant that all the hours above the fictional 5 hours were hours in which the worker produced value for the capitalist without getting anything in return for this.

And now we see immediately what is the foundation of capitalism: the capitalist creates value by buying more and more means of production, which continuously use up labour force. There is an intrinsic drive to extremities within this capitalist system of production. According to Marx, capital consists of two parts: constant capital i. Over time, the capitalist will invest his generated capital into more constant capital: he will buy more, and more sophisticated machinery and natural resources.

You might think this is good news for the worker, since this means more work. No so fast. Technological improvements lead to replacing the worker - who was degraded to doing insanely routine micro-steps within the process of production anyways - by machines. Machines need to be tended to, but one doesn't need as skilled a person to watch a machine compared to a person who needs to produce with his own hands. This meant that the male work force was steadily sacked; women, and preferably children some as young as 5 or 6 years old , were now demanded.

Lower skilled workers; less wages. Capital wins. Over time, capitalism uses up the Earth and its inhabitants as material; its only goals is creating value, creating more capital. Or rather: letting the Earth and its inhabitants create more value - at the cost of themselves. Since capital attracts capital, capitalists will take over rival capitalists - leading to an accumulation of more and more capital in the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists. But since the capitalist only can produce value or rather: let others produce it for him when there's a market for his products, throwing more and more people into abject poverty is not really good for business.

This is the internal contradiction in the capitalist system of production, at least according to Marx. The system will break down eventually, when capital cannot create any new capital anymore. The machinery has consumed itself, so to speak. This is when the workers need to scare away - or kill off, Marx never was that clear on this - the remaining capitalists and confiscate the means of production for themselves. According to Marx, who applied so Hegelian dialectic on the system of production, capitalism was the negation of the former state in which the individual worker produced for himself and his family.

Eventually, capitalism is negated by another negation a 'negation of the negation' , namely the taking over of the means of production by the workers. Communism as a Hegelian dialectical end-state - how convenient. The above is, in a sense, the main message of Das Kapital. The strength of the book lies in that fact that Marx doesn't just offer us a technical analysis of capitalism - he backs up his arguments with facts, statistics and illustrations. So when he talks about how the poor are being used up by the system as material i.

It is really shocking and heart-breaking to read these stories. No matter how touching it all is it really is, in my opinion , one should also ask questions of truth when such radical claims are made. There are some major points in the book where Marx's moral anger seems to fly out of control. For starters, he divides up society in capitalists and proletarians. This is much too simplistic: there's always a huge room for graduate and intermediate positions. Not everyone was equally effected by the capitalist system of production - for better or for worse. Next, his labour theory of surplus value is wrong. Commodities can't be bought and sold to create value; but neither can capital create value.

At least not in the sense that Marx mentions maybe the modern day global banking system is a vindication of Marx's theory? Also, Marx's view of history as a process of dialectic progress towards communism is a Hegelian illusion. Hegel thought history follows a law the dialectical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis; this synthesis forms the start, a new thesis, for a new dialectical process, and so on , and this law would result in the end-state. For Hegel, this was the Prussion state. For Marx, this is the Communist state. No matter what state one prefers, the claim is based on the assumption that history follows a law or laws.

This is proven to be impossible cf. Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism []. History doesn't follow laws, so Marx's fundamental assumption is false. Last, Marx put forward his theories on capitalism as scientific. The problem is: Marx's predictions for example, the revolution coming in the most highly developed countries; the revolution coming - at all; etc. In the USA, people like Henri Ford started to treat and pay their workers better, so they had a bigger market for their products. If you pay your workers better, they can buy your cars, and you will earn even more.

In this sense, the solution of the horrors of industrial capitalism were and are - in my opinion to be sought for WITHIN capitalism, rather than throwing away the baby with the bathwather. Anno , Marx is usually brought up in highly intellectual debates on eceonomic policies or some such subject. Reading Das Kapital really made me see this is such a distorted view. Das Kapital is, first and foremost, an analysis of a capitalist system of production that crushed millions of people - worldwide - under its wheels, all for the benefit of the upper echelons.

Second, it made me realize the unscrupulous attitude of the economists, especially in the UK and France, to support oppression by distorting the truth and giving politicians fance arguments to increase the oppression of the poor. Third, the book really struck a tone - its humanity, its cynical treatment of all the henchmen of capitalism, and its message stop the oppression. Fourth, the book is, simply put, one of the building blocks of our modern world. I can truly recommend teading this book - it would be great if more people had an inkling of an idea about what Marx actually wrote and what not , instead of all the mainstream propaganda - pro or contra.

I would do so not out of hatred for my old friends Nick and Charlie, but rather from a maternal, henlike affection for them, and a desire not to see their extraordinary bodies of work overshadowed and their reputations bludgeoned to death by their shortest and most polemical—and thus most popular—treatises. Though separated by three centuries, The Prince prefigures the Manifesto because both prescribe spectacular acts of revolutionary violence as a means of establishing new foundations of power in a world where the old modes and orders have lost their legitimacy. Novelty, being unstable and indeterminate by its very nature, must puncture the plated cuirass of the given like an arrow fired from a war-bow.

It is unsurprising, when these works are assigned in discrete isolation in undergraduate political philosophy courses, that their outsized reputation portrays their authors as cynical marauders in the public imagination. Yet however troubling these writers are in the normative realm, those who study them in depth come to appreciate their descriptive and analytical genius.

Marx, for his part, was not at all given to the hazy utopian thinking so often ascribed to him, but dedicated the bulk of his prolific intellectual career to the analysis of a social system—masquerading as an economic system—called capitalism. The task of philosophy, for Marx, is to expose and confront the hidden gods haunting the shadows of social normativity for the liberation of the human will. Philosophy is the sword and shield of philanthropy. He defines capitalism in very specific terms; and this is the first of many places where most of his critics go astray.

Capitalism, for Marx, is not simply the production and exchange of commodities; production and exchange are characteristics of most of the historical modes of production. Capitalism, more precisely, is a mode of production in which the traditional form of exchange—in which commodities are exchanged with one another and money is merely a means of circulation by representing the exchange-values of the commodities in question —is replaced by a new model of exchange in which money uses commodities to increase itself in the hands of its original owner. Capitalism is about the commodification of money; the decisive phase of a social phenomenon called commodity fetishism: the mis perception of commodity production and exchange as a series of relationships between things , instead of what they really are: a series of relationships between people.

The value of commodities including money itself does not exist in any purely objective sense. Value is determined socially; Marx invokes Smith and Ricardo as well as Benjamin Franklin, surprisingly enough , while adjusting their conceptions, to define value as socially necessary labor time , or the average time spent working to create a particular commodity within a particular social context. Commodities are embodiments of human labor, and so when we buy and sell them we are trading in the abstracted and alienated labor-time of workers. For him it is absolutely central to human life. Though his materialist conception of history allows him to posit few human universals since most social norms are epiphenomena of historically-contingent relations of production, labor itself is something truly innate to human character.

Our labor transforms the world around us by creating use-values, and it also transforms us , as the things we create reshape us in turn. Labor is thus a field through which nature and culture are mediated. It is painfully ironic that the socialist tradition pioneered by Marx has become known as a creed for layabouts who want to live off the work of others. He would merely identify a different culprit.

It is not the poorest who are confiscating our hard-earned dollars, but the wealthiest: the large corporate CEOs, the major shareholders, the real estate moguls, the creditors, the speculators, and the industrial tycoons, who confiscate the value produced by workers as surplus-value—which is distributed unevenly at the top and then reinvested into the enterprise to create yet more surplus-value—and then give the workers who created the surplus-value a paycheck which is worth less than they value they produced. It is a critical condition for human flourishing that people are able to enjoy the fruits of their labor, but that metabolic fusion of labor and laborer is severed by the alienating process of capital accumulation. Nor would Marx disagree with a libertarian skepticism of central planning; in fact he would embrace it wholeheartedly.

But why, he would ask, do libertarians rightly criticize the central planners of the state without even acknowledging the central planners of the so-called private sector? The executives of the big tech companies, the retail sector, the pharmaceutical industry, and all manner of other enterprises which have totally reshaped our way of life are as much engaged in central planning and social engineering as any government initiative; the only major difference is that nobody voted for them, and they are held to no standard of responsibility except to deliver profit to their shareholders.

Theoretically they can sell their labor elsewhere, but have our libertarian friends considered how it came to be that so many people were reduced to such a condition that the only commodity they could reliably sell was so many hours of work? Marx has. Marx remains the greatest analyst and critic of the social order of capitalism. Yet the prescriptive problem remains: how could a new order be instituted in the flow of history without the arbitrary violence of revolution—without the Prince?

The twentieth century had more than its share of princes and revolutions. Stalin was said to have read and annotated The Prince , in addition to his obvious infatuation with the Manifesto. The history of political vanguardism in the cause of socialist revolution has an unbelievably hideous track record. If socialists are merely democrats who extend their democratism to the corporate realm, change will have to come through democratic processes, or perhaps from a more fundamental change in popular consciousness.

Capitalism is more ubiquitous than it was when Marx was writing, but it has also become softer around the edges; at least in those parts of the world where labor has been organized, democracy has been stable, and individual rights have traditionally been respected. It could be that capitalism will simply keep on adjusting itself, bit by bit, until it transforms into something new. It may be that in the final account, Prometheus will have to come to an understanding with the gods. 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 verb 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. 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. Feb 22, David rated it it was amazing. I should say that I did not read this unabridged, I kinda doubt that even Trotsky did.

A spectre is haunting the body of the Earth. If you're lucky, you'll see the former tear the latter to shreds. Liberals and humanists are liars. You are not a human being. You are not free. You have no dignity and you have no rights. You are, quite simply, a mode of capital, a moment in its self-valorisation, nothing more than a container of labour-power. You are fundamentally no different than a "lifeless instrument of labour"; in fact, you might as well be one, condemned as you likely are to re A spectre is haunting the body of the Earth.

You are fundamentally no different than a "lifeless instrument of labour"; in fact, you might as well be one, condemned as you likely are to repetitious and mindless work. Soft-hearts would like you to believe at least that self-care is revolutionary, but even that forms a necessary component of the reproduction of capital. As soon as that is no longer necessary, you will be disposed of—if the biosphere doesn't burn down first.

That is, unless the expropriators are expropriated. It's a matter of life or death. Capitalism is destroying the planet, polluting the atmosphere and oceans, draining groundwater, spreading deserts. If we get rid of the greedy capitalists, everything will be alright. That's certainly what your leftist friends will tell you. They haven't read their Marx. Marx stood Hegel on his head, stripping the dialectic of its preposterous idealism and giving it a materialist content. In this way, Marx brutalises the political economy of his day with sarcasm and style, throwing Smith, Malthus, Bentham and others into a whirlwind of critique from which they don't emerge alive.

But Marx, for all his genius and he is a genius is a prisoner of his time. I have said before that Georges Sorel is the most honest successor to Marx, that his Reflections on Violence reflects the most respectable attempt to build on his musings about the post-capitalist world. In my review of that, I wrote: "The dream of indefinite progress is no longer tenable today Industrial society is barbarism. Finite planet, finite resources, finite time. The story of the rise of the proletariat is not an epic.

It is, in truth, quite tragic. But mostly it's a farce. Marx, whatever he thought the future might look like, surely did not think it would look like that. A society in which fully-developed individuals hold the means of production in common is not one where the process of technological development or wealth creation ends, but one where the process is accelerated. Importing this doctrine uncritically into the 21st century is only marginally less absurd than organising a party in the hopes of instituting Plato's Republic. Realising Marx's dream now would only mean kicking industrial society's omnicide program in hyper-hyperdrive.

Besides, comrades, you missed the boat back in It was always going to end up this way. Marx didn't realise it, but Capital is a schematic for the construction of a death machine whose task cannot be interrupted once started. Capital is the unfriendly optimiser, the nightmare of every society. As capital burns through every possible market, absorbing resources, obliterating its basis for existence i. This is Marx at his most naive, his most embarrassingly humanist, and he himself fills his book with many examples of the abject failure with which every attempt to rebel against capital's dominion meets.

Saying 'Well, one day, it'll be different! It has to happen! There is no natural law of revolutionary consciousness. In fact, the opposite may well be true. Lyotard said it well enough in his Libidinal Economy —"they You may be a liberty-loving outlier, but "thousands of years of authoritarian socialisation favour the jackboot. Up with the Spring! The capitalists, despite modern day resentful proclamations to the contrary, do not exploit you because they're greedy, mean, psychopathic, naughty sinners, cruel, etc. A capitalist is not a human any more than you are.

A capitalist is an avatar of capital, their soul is the soul of capital. Likewise you, as worker, reproduce not only capital but the antagonistic relations of capital. It isn't really appropriate to say you're parasitised by the capitalist. Rather, we all collaborate in the production of a system that will inevitably sterilise the planet. Welcome to desiring-production.

Next stop: the Body without Organs. Snacks and drinks are available at the bar and a trolley will be coming through shortly. We only accept contactless payment methods at the moment: there's a virus going around and it's killing everybody. Why read Capital then, if I'm such a pessimist? It's simple really: this text is truly a touchstone for modern thought, and if you want to engage with any political text that comments on our modern times with even a hint of intelligence and relevance, odds are it'll be participating in a conversation that Capital started. Certainly, if you'd like to prove the naysayers like myself wrong, save the world, reterritorialise the Earth, you will have to go through Marx.

And as an example of the summit of brilliance a critical mind can reach, there are not many books that can stand with Capital. Besides, don't you want to know how the story ends? Oct 03, David Miller rated it really liked it. As many will note, Marxism in its most "Marxist" sense is basically an obsolete system. Das Kapital is very much a product of the nineteenth century, and a perceptive reader can easily find traces of modes of thought that are no longer of the moment. But socialism, more broadly, is very much a living thing, and it is just as readily apparent how important this critique of the corrosive effects of capitalism has been to socialism's development.

The edition I read presents the core of Marx's analys As many will note, Marxism in its most "Marxist" sense is basically an obsolete system. The edition I read presents the core of Marx's analysis and arguments while condensing it at the expense of sections the editor deems irrelevant to the present. Of course, what the "present" is to the editor is an important fact to consider: I can't seem to find the date of the introduction's original writing, but the events it references seem to place it in or , which in terms of economic history is rapidly growing remote.

In any event an abridgment is welcome, since the prose itself is quite difficult. Even so, with careful reading it is still very possible to follow the line of the argument. Marx is known for a particular model of history, characterized as a series of eras defined by economic systems and characterized by the struggle between social classes. It is with this model that he not only explains how capitalism came to be which, much as he clearly despises the system, is still in accordance with "natural laws" as he defines them , but also predicts how it will ultimately destroy itself.

This model is, for me, one of Marxism's weakest points. Class struggle is a perfectly fine lens with which to view history, but it is not the only legitimate one, and predictions about the future based on a single ideological construct are hit or miss at best. With over a century between us, I think we can safely say things didn't turn out quite like Marx thought. But after all that, I don't believe that capitalism has survived into the twenty first century because Marx was wrong about its true nature. If anything, Marx and his cohorts underestimated capitalism's ability and willingness to say and do anything to survive, making compromises and tactical retreats in order to retain a fundamental grip on society. One need only look at the financial crisis of , the ongoing exploitation of poorer countries by corporations looking to score cheap labor, or the tremendous burdens of student loan debt or health care costs to see that capitalism remains fundamentally amoral and recklessly unconcerned with the welfare of society.

And from where I'm standing, it's very hard to refute the moral implication of Marx's labor theory of value: that workers and not capitalists are entitled to the fruits of their work. Das Kapital is a strenuous read and not entirely convincing on all points particularly on the issue of history , but it puts the lie to capitalism, and in this century we need to hear that. Capitalism is not inevitable. It is not "human nature". It is an ideological justification for social inequality, and nothing more. His remarks on the role of the capitalist and the way in which labour is exploited are many and pointed.

This is just one of many, this is another.. Cost is measured in the amount of labour required for the worker to survive, profit a function of surplus labour that can be produced beyond that cost. But just who the consumer is and how much both the capitalist and the labourer depend on him is left un-explored. Labour advocate, yes, but that does not directly lead to communism. The Communist Manifesto notwithstanding, communism as a system of government was developed much later and much of the personal suffering and oppression associated with communist regimes of the 20th century has less to do with the economics of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels than they do with the politics of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.

Indeed toward the end of his life, after seeing what some groups where doing with his work, Marx himself famously stated was NOT a Marxist. Apr 16, laura rated it it was amazing Shelves: non-fiction , classics , politics. Whatever your political stance it's impossible to deny the influence of Marx's works, this one in particular. It's a real wonder, how one persons ideology put into written word can shape the world even today. At the very least, you can appreciate it from that standpoint.

Truly though, the book is convincing and reading it with historical awareness can enable you to enlighten yourself further. It's a great read, and I look forward to reading his other works. Christ, this review sounds pretentious. Before writing this review, I have to admit something. I'm a liberal. I don't like communism - at all. For me, communism and socialism which is essentially the same are synonymous for radical oppression and terrorism-disguised-as-activism.

I grew up in post-Soviet Western Europe, so I'm aware that my hatred for communism is, at least partly, the paradigm that I was born and raised in. Nevertheless, I am open minded and am always looking for the truth; so, I finally decided to pick up Karl Marx Before writing this review, I have to admit something. Nevertheless, I am open minded and am always looking for the truth; so, I finally decided to pick up Karl Marx and judge for myself. And before I start with this review, I have to admit something else. This edition of Capital is the abridged one: it comprises almost all of volume 1, while leaving out volume 2 technical economics, mostly outdated and only presenting snippets of volume 3.

Yet, as the introduction clearly states: Marx only wrote volume 1 during his lifetime; volumes 2 and 3 were published posthumously by Friedrich Engels and hence cannot be viewed in the same light as the original work. So I read the abridged version, and not even all of it: I only read the important chapters of volume 1, to get a good impression on Marx's ideas. As some reviewers on Goodreads mention, Marx repeats himself endlessly, so if one gets the point of the chapter, one can easily skip the rest and move on to the next chapter. Thus, take this review for what it's worth in your eyes. Having added these two caveats, let me proceed to the review. It is clear that Marx was disgusted by the developments of his day and age. The downfall of feudalism led to a new economic system, in which the middle class could build capital and put it to use in order to produce even more capital.

In other words: capitalism meant the accumulation of the means of production in fewer and fewer hands. This was made possible by technological developments: the introduction of the steam engine and all other sorts of new machinery that could work more efficiently and cheaper than human labour. These two trends - capitalism and the Industrial Revolution - had a major downside, though. The poor masses were brutally exploited by the capitalists. People had to work in terrible conditions and for ridiculously long hours hours a day weren't all that rare.

Because of the introduction of new machinery, even women and children were thrown unto the labour market. This led to inhumane conditions: children of 8 working 16 hours a day without even getting a break for food. It is this environment that Marx criticizes and that he fulminates against. In his Communist Manifesto he uses agressive rhetoric, but in Capital he coldly analyzes the whole system.

This latter method is much stronger and confronting. For example, in chapter 10 Marx describes the conditions of children and women working in factories, and how the English government failed to help these poor creatures by postponing changes in the law or making existing laws ineffective by removing the budget for inspectors. Marx uses reports of contemporaries - factory inspectors, doctors working in the slums, etc. Besides the working conditions, Marx explains the workings of the capitalist system. The capitalist wants to maximize his surplus-value, and this he does by buying labour.

The labourer has only one commodity to sell - his labour - and he only needs to sell a fraction of his time for subsistence. The capitalist wants it all, though: he forces the labour to work longer and longer hours, in order to maximize the surplus-value of the labourer. Because of industrial innovation, labourers are needed less and hence become cheaper. This leads to an ever-increasing mass of unemployed labourers - the reserve work force - which the capitalist can use to drastically cut wages and blackmail the individual labourer. You don't want to work for what I offer you? So, we have a system that is set up against the labourer, undermining his position on the labour market and leading to the obnoxious behaviour of capitalists, seeing the labour force as replacable tools.

No matter how one views Marx or his theory of capitalism, one has to admit that this situation is problematic from a humanitarian point of view, and a direct consequence of capitalism gone wild. Marx's theory of surplus-value of labour, leading to the feelings of alienation of the labourer i. Marx really is the first economist who includes social conditions into economics. For this, he deserves our applause. Marx makes, for instance, a very serious objection to the idea of industrialization-leading-to-progress. Marx claims - and rightly so - that the machinery that is being developed is not meant to increase the well-being of labourers, but simply to increase labour productivity.

So, the massive industrialization of Europe meant longer working hours, more intense work, and the introduction of women and children into the factories. Industrialization meant more suffering, not less. This is a serious claim, and, more importantly, we should heed Marx's warning in modern times. All the developments in artificial intelligence and the automation of the work processes are not meant to offer us better lives. The people investing in these fields only want more profit.

If we want to put these developments to good use, we will have to legislate and to see to it that capitalists won't run us over with their new gadgets. It is easy to see that Marx's view of economics is deterministic and materialistic. He views certain developments, for example competition on the labour market, as inevitable outcomes of capitalism.

While valuing Marx's critique of the desastrous effects of capitalism and industrialization, we have to remind ourselves that nothing is inevitable if we ourselves won't allow it. If we don't buy these cheap t-shirts, children in Pakistan won't have these terrible working conditions. Marx's determinism quickly leeds to doom and gloom, which is entirely unnecessary and even counterproductive. Only when we realize that we can change things for the better, can we actually change things. Things won't change if we think wrongly that everything is the way it is because it is simply inevitable. Yet, I have to admit that I was extremely shocked while reading these reports especially about the conditions of young children and it really made me view liberalism in another light.

Marx is right in pointing out the fallacies in then mainstream political economic theories of scholars like John Stuart Mill. A system that is set up the way 19th century capitalism was, will only lead to human suffering - there is no political economic theory that can or should deny this. Accumulation of capital leads to human suffering, period. I always try to learn from new insights, and Marx's analysis of capitalism has touched a nerve. I have always regarded myself as a liberal, but I have also always wondered what the liberal answer to the inevitable exploitation should be. It is undeniable that alternative systems all have led to even more suffering and exploitation for example, Soviet Communism or Italian Fascism ; but this is really no answer to the question.

Liberalism will lead to have's and have not's; the have's will - by definition - have ever more. This is a serious objection to liberalism and I have no answer to it. Reading parts of volume one of Marx's Capital has rubbed this problem - once again - in my face. One always needs a just system of laws and hence, democracry and a form of protection against exploitation and hence, a government that redistributes wealth. The question then remains: what is justified? I am impressed by Marx's serious work - not his shoddy and activistic Communist Manifesto - and even though it raised more questions than it answered, I am glad I read some of his original work.

I cannot really recommend this edition, though. Of course, one should not expect wonders from an abridged work, but still Leaving out volume 2 entirely without giving an explanation of its contents and leaving out volume 3 almost entirely, is too much downsizing. Maybe in the future I will read his three volumes in their entirety. Mar 13, Brice Karickhoff rated it liked it Shelves: First of all, who exactly was this written for? Once I adjusted to Marxs writing style which was more readable in the Manifesto , I was able to get into the actual ideas of this book.

First of all, I am shocked at how much I sympathize with Marx in what bothers him about society. Alienation of the laborer from his work? A detachment from the simplicity and slowness of life? The commodification of relationships so that profits rather than connection drive our society? Oppression throughout history as a means of separating from the working class to become a capitalist? All of these are problems in the world, and I am shocked at how much some paragraphs penned by Marx resonate with me BUT I drastically disagree with Marx in two areas: 1.

I disagree with the concept that the above struggles are the primary lens through which we should view human history and the current state of man 2. Nor do I believe profit and accumulation are inherently bad. I disagree with his utopian vision of employment dynamics from both a spiritual and economic standpoint. I disagree with the absoluteness with which he claims an economized mindset devalues relationships. I think that cooperation is more defining of human history than oppression. Marx was a genius and he reminded us of many ideas that we needed to be reminded of.

Aug 12, Scott rated it it was ok. I read this book for one of my classes at the U. Here is the best summary of the book I could find: The central driving force of capitalism, according to Marx, was in the exploitation and alienation of labour. The ultimate source of capitalist profits and surplus was the unpaid labor of wage laborers. Employers could appropriate the new output value because of their ownership of the productive capital assets—protected by the state. By producing output as capital for the employers, the workers con I read this book for one of my classes at the U.

By producing output as capital for the employers, the workers constantly reproduced the condition of capitalism by their labor. However, though Marx is very concerned with the social aspects of commerce, his book is not an ethical treatise, but an attempt to explain the objective "laws of motion" of the capitalist system as a whole, its origins and future. He aims to reveal the causes and dynamics of the accumulation of capital, the growth of wage labor, the transformation of the workplace, the concentration of capital, competition, the banking and credit system, the tendency of the rate of profit to decline, land-rents and many other things. Readers also enjoyed. About Karl Marx. Karl Marx. Karl Marx, Ph. University of Jena, was a social scientist who was a key contributor to the development of Communist theory.

His father, born Jewish, converted to Protestantism shortly before Karl's birth in response to a prohibition newly introduced into the Rhineland by the Prussian Kingdom on Jew Karl Marx, Ph. His father, born Jewish, converted to Protestantism shortly before Karl's birth in response to a prohibition newly introduced into the Rhineland by the Prussian Kingdom on Jews practicing law. After being expelled from France at the urging of the Prussian government, which "banished" Marx in absentia, Marx studied economics in Brussels.

After the failed revolution of in Germany, in which Marx participated, he eventually wound up in London. Marx worked as foreign correspondent for several U. His Das Kapital came out in three volumes , and Although Marx was not religious, Bertrand Russell later remarked, "His belief that there is a cosmic force called Dialectical Materialism which governs human history independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" Portraits from Memory, Marx was also engaged in writing his doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature, which he completed in It was described as "a daring and original piece of work in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom of philosophy": the essay was controversial, particularly among the conservative professors at the University of Berlin.

Marx decided, instead, to submit his thesis to the more liberal University of Jena, whose faculty awarded him his PhD in April As Marx and Bauer were both atheists, in March they began plans for a journal entitled Archiv des Atheismus Atheistic Archives , but it never came to fruition. Marx has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history.

Other books in the series. Capital 3 books. Books by Karl Marx. Related Articles. Mary Roach is a science author who specializes in the bizarre and offbeat. With a body of work ranging from deep-dives on the history of Read more Trivia About Das Kapital. Quotes from Das Kapital. His economic bondage is both brought about and concealed by the periodic sale of himself, by his change of masters, and by the oscillation in the market price of labor power. Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a continuous connected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation; on the one side the capitalist, on the other the wage-laborer.

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