Das Kapital: A Critque of Political Economy

Five stars is a no-brainer here. A foundational book for anyone interested in the history of economics. Easy to read. A little harder to understand. Still, a must read for any serious learner.

Despite being written more than a century ago, Karl Marx’s main work is still the best way to understand the nature of this beast called capitalism. Marx moves from the most basic notion, that of commodity, to the highest levels of social organization that comprise the bourgeoisie society. At each level, he explains that our traditional notions are created to facilitate the lives of the elite, at the expense of the working class. Marx also saw and explained in this book the beginnings of the financial corporations that nowadays control entire continents.This is also the book that helped to put in motion an enormously successful workers movement that was essential to the development of society during the 20th century. The recent setbacks for workers around the world show the perennial truth of The Capital: if workers don’t unite around their interests, the capitalist class will do everything to expropriate all that is owned by workers. This is in fact the very essence of the class struggle in the capitalist system.

This is the most insightful and prescient analysis and criticism not merely of nineteenth century industrial capitalism, but Marx anticipated the GloboCapitalist financialized totalitarian business culture that currently holds the world in thrall. Whatever views a person may hold of Marx's prescription for revolutionary social upheaval, if that person has not made an intensive study of this canonical work then that has an incomplete understanding of capitalism. This is understood by even the most self-intoxicated libertarian Wall Street egoist. While Marx is certainly accessible to the autodidact it adds to one's understanding and enjoyment if one is able to find a competent and unbiased guide who is able to point out the exotic flora and fauna that one is certain to encounter in any work that is over one hundred and fifty years old. I recommend the online lectures of City University of New York professor David Harvey

This version, the CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, seems to be an amateur printing with a blurry, digital cover photo. I returned mine, and recommend you consider another version if you value a real book and don't want what seems to be the result of someone clicking print on a PDF and having it bound at Staples.Update #1: Having returned this version to Amazon, I bought the Penguin Classics edition and am happy with it.Update #2: I wish Amazon would separate reviews by edition, and not heap them chaotically. My low rating has nothing to do with Marx's work, and everything to do with the edition I referenced. This has kept me from writing more reviews. What if I love a book but hate an edition, because it is poorly abridged (like this one)?Update #3: It seems Amazon has begun to group reviews by edition, though not always reliably. Above you'll see "This review is from: [edition]" on the reviews for this book, but try and navigate through the hodgepodge of seven thousand reviews for the seemingly unlimited number of printings of The Hobbit.

This book is perhaps one of the most historic and influential books ever written. Now more than a century old and with a lot of water under the bridge it provides insights into the thinking at the time that makes it a must read for anyone seriously into history.As a book on philosophy it is absolutely fascinating to see how far an intelligent man can stretch a flawed assumption. The deductions made all follow rather smoothly from the debunked labor theory of value. This leads to some absurd conclusions after a large amount of very hard reasoning. It is difficult to find a better example of this anywhere else.Unfortunately as far as economics books go it is rather difficult to still call this one. The entire book is based on the assumption of the labor theory of value which has been completely discredited. Thus most of the conclusions are largely irrelevant as economic thoughts today as the foundations they are built on are simply not reflected in reality. The book can for example draw the conclusion that the corner store adds no value to society because if you just knew where he got all his goods you would just go to each supplier yourself and not waste your time with the middleman. In reality we all know that the store offers massive convenience and we are happy to pay a margin for it.Lastly it is rather clear to see why workers in primary industries found this book appealing. It effectively implies that they are the only people in society who add value and that everyone else, which these days is the vast majority of us, simply leech of them. It may seem silly now but when this book was written this group was obviously much larger and the appeal to this group as being special helped dictators the world over to grab power by promising a utopia where they take centre stage. The failure to setup these societies however highlighted once again, in direct contrast to the assumption of Marx, that the rest do actually play an important role in society.

The perfect companion to Smith's Wealth of Nations. It is like when the good Captain Kirk (played by William Shatner) has to battle the evil Captain Kirk for control of the Enterprise. But which book corresponds to which Captain Kirk? In all serious, I found his economic principles as entertaining as insightful. Some of the political theory, well it wasn't going to motivate me to sabotage my steam powered automated textile loom though it did give me some useful, and again entertaining tangeants of thought. But just when I was ready to rally the call to nationalize the digital streaming industry to The People's Digitial Binge Watching Cooperative, a giant Invisible Hand knocked the sense into me.

If you want to understand how our system works, read it, CAUTION: Heavy reading not for the Faint of Heart

Bought it as a joke for my slightly left leaning friend and his dad threw it out. Great laugh👍

Buen producto.

Apesar de alguns deslocamentos de texto, excelente versão digitalizada. Os links não funcionaram. Quanto ao livro, sem palavras. Um obra prima, necessária.

The paper back only includes the first 4 parts, or 15 chapters, of the first volume