ABSTRACT

A critical analysis of Karl Marx’s Capital, which is without question one of the most influential books to be published in the course of the past two centuries. Controversial in its politics, and arriving at conclusions that are passionately debated to this day, it is nonetheless a fine example of the creative combination of a philosophical method (the dialectic) with historical and economic information to produce a new interpretation of history. 

Capitalism, thought Marx, works by exploiting the working class. Their wages do not reflect the value of their labor. Marx concluded that capitalism would fail because of this contradiction at the heart of the capitalist system. He wrote Capital to give activists the theories and language they needed to criticize the system. But the work also outlines the new communist society that Marx hoped would rise in its place, and it helped to inspire the rise of states that largely shaped the modern history of our planet. Today, after a century of conflict, Marx’s analysis still offers valuable tools that help us analyze the modern world.

Marx's belief that he had arrived at a scientific way of describing the present and predicting the future may not be shared by many of his modern interpreters. But his ability to connect things together in new ways is not in doubt – and nor is the influence of the new hypotheses that he generated as a result of so much careful analysis.

chapter |5 pages

Ways in to the Text

section 1|18 pages

Influences

module 1|5 pages

The Author and the Historical Context

module 2|4 pages

Academic Context

module 3|4 pages

The Problem

module 4|4 pages

The Author’s Contribution

section 2|22 pages

Ideas

module 5|5 pages

Main Ideas

module 6|6 pages

Secondary Ideas

module 7|5 pages

Achievement

module 8|5 pages

Place in the Author’s Work

section 3|20 pages

Impact

module 9|5 pages

The First Responses

module 10|5 pages

The Evolving Debate

module 11|5 pages

Impact and Influence Today

module 12|4 pages

Where Next?