Rating: 
Summary: INTENDED FOR ECONOMISTS
Review: I don't understand why the latter reviews about this book mention that this book did not contribute to economic theory. A critique IS a contribution to economic theory simply because it lets us see the other side of the picture whether it is right or wrong. Adam Smith never got to see the explotation of children and the working factory conditions when he wrote Wealth of Nations. He also never got to see it. Marx, on the other hand, never himself set foot on a factory. Marx should be required reading for any economist. For someone to say Marxist theory are wrong one must FIRST read his book. The same goes for Adam Smith or any philosopher whatsoever.
Rating:
Summary: I only recommend volume 1.
Review: I studied political science in a leftist university and I read a lot of Marx texts, some of them are useful to think, to reflect, to debate and to confront ideas against non-leftis authors. Das Kapital or The Capital is very helpful, but only if you read volume 1 (he wrote 3 volumes) and both introductions to the Critique of Political Economy (1859 & 1857).
Rating: 
Summary: Seeing in the Fifth Dimension
Review: I think it was the poor French philosopher Althusser who claimed that Marx had discovered a new continent of thought called "history" equivalent to the continents of thought discovered by Pythagoras (geometry) and Aristotle (science). I would use a different metaphor. It is as if Marx invented a pair of x-ray glasses that allows you the viewer to see the exploitation hidden in every commodity, no matter how beautifully it is packaged. I guess the only book it is really comparable to would be the Bible, edited and created in the year 207 by the North African Roman citizen Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus. On the narrative level the books are quite opposite. The one starts with a single savior who comes to save the world, but ends up being exploited, abused and killed, thus needing saving, the other starts with a class that is exploited, abused and killed, but ends up saving the world. Of the two, Marx is definitely the more optimistic view. But if we could resurrect Marx as we resurrected Jesus, would he still have his optimism?
Rating:
Summary: Seeing in the Fifth Dimension
Review: I think it was the poor French philosopher Althusser who claimed that Marx had discovered a new continent of thought called "history" equivalent to the continents of thought discovered by Pythagoras (geometry) and Aristotle (science). I would use a different metaphor. It is as if Marx invented a pair of x-ray glasses that allows you the viewer to see the exploitation hidden in every commodity, no matter how beautifully it is packaged. I guess the only book it is really comparable to would be the Bible, edited and created in the year 207 by the North African Roman citizen Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus. On the narrative level the books are quite opposite. The one starts with a single savior who comes to save the world, but ends up being exploited, abused and killed, thus needing saving, the other starts with a class that is exploited, abused and killed, but ends up saving the world. Of the two, Marx is definitely the more optimistic view. But if we could resurrect Marx as we resurrected Jesus, would he still have his optimism?
Rating:
Summary: Big Impact on My Life
Review: I used to ascribe to Marxist philosophy. However, there are problems with his analysis, and it can be seen in concrete terms from command economies. If the labor theory of value is true, then there is no difference between 1 year old scotch and 15-year old scotch whiskey, although conisseurs of liquor would disagree... shoddy products and inefficent workers come into play. Another problem is that Marx promises "Proof" of the labor theory of value but never gives it. Also, he talked alot about Capital but not a lot about Communism. He never discussed how Communist society would work in a modern world, giving us only vague extrapolations from "Primitive Communism" or Hunter/Gatherer societies. Worth the money though.
Rating:
Summary: Surprising
Review: I was greatly surprised to find that Communism and Socialism are not discussed 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 relavent today, for example, his analysis on how capitalism exerts continious 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 depopolation 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 with 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."
Rating:
Summary: Surprising
Review: 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."
Rating:
Summary: A good read for his time and for ours
Review: I would think that Marx has had both good and bad rep and that his detractors and fans have taken his legacy further than it deserved. So how should he be viewed? I submit that there are 4 ways to do so and all of them are mutually important. They are 1) Economic, 2) Intellectual, 3) Political and 4) Moral.Marx based his economic views on the premise that all value of a good produced comes from the labor that goes into it. Intuitively this seems wrong. What of the capital, management, demand (by the way Marx does not like the idea of supply and demand either) etc. Our experience shows that all of these and more play a role in determining what value a thing has. Iteratively the Marxist model of economy then suffers from its imperfect premise. His contention of lack of sustainable profits etc make sense if you agree with his premise but that is not how it shapes out in the modern World. All in all it seems that Marx misses the point about how economy works, and given his incredible intelligence, you wonder why. I think the reason is in the intellectual workings of his mind. Now it appears that most of human experience happens in shades of gray or on a spectrum. Very few things actually are definite "this or that". This is particularly true of psychology, sociology and also economics. Perhaps the very fact that so many variables come to bear on any given situation that it would be impossible to reproduce that situation again reliably. Hence much of these fields are understood along a spectrum and minor variation in observation is to be expected from event to event and from time to time. Unfortunately many people tend to think of the World as an absolute. For this, against that, regardless of the circumstances (abortion, death penalty, taxes etc come to mind). Marx takes the notion of value of labor from Adam Smith and particularly David Ricardo and fixates upon it as the only determinant of value of a good. Intellectually it boxes him in an inflexible position where he has to stick to his position. Eventually this inflexibility dooms him. Marx built upon his economic position to develop a political scenario that just did not happen - not sustainably. I think here the folly is not that the position was wrong but rather that when he makes his predictions: "....exploiters will be expropriated ...", he never says how it would come about. This would not be so bad if more of his writings actually had some sort of road map of how you get to this utopia, but they don't. Finally, is he as bad as I have made him out to be? Well, you be the judge. This is a man writing at the tail end of the initial experience of the industrial revolution. He devotes a large part of Capital to vivid descriptions of young children being dragged out of bed at 2 and 3 in the morning to work in horrible factories, of starving mothers giving up their children to horrendous working conditions in phosphorus match factories where they would die within a few years or were horribly afflicted, of terrible lung diseases in potters or resistance to reducing the average work day to a mere 18 hours. He sees all these and cries out. What follows may be flawed but is grounded in a deep human sympathy. And his experience resonates today with us when we think that perhaps the working poor ought to at least get a living wage, or people must not have to make a decision between rent and medicines and children ought not to die because access of healthcare was not affordable.
Rating:
Summary: Deep Structure of a Society
Review: In this first volume, the only one the publication of which Marx himself supervised, the structurally contradictory, and hence dynamic and directional, "deep structure" of capitalist society is rigorously explored. Beginning with the commodity form, he unfolds categorially the historical logic of capitalism. In so doing, he criticizes excogitate philosophy by immanently encompassing and incorporating his own would-be excogitate exposition of the commodity form itself in the famous first chapter. He handles Hegel likewise by translating Hegelian historical dynamism within the logic of capitalism. And, of course, there are the truly brilliant sustained engagements, accountings for, and critiques of Adam Smith and David Ricordo which are the sites for the most impressive display of Marx's method. For therein he accounts for ideology as a structural feature of the system. The commodity form "projects" a mode of appearance determinately that is itself deceiving- for instance, that one confuse the labor of the flesh and blood laborer with the commodity generative of surplus value, labor power, etc. This is no functionalist class-based fact, a point often obscured by the unfortunate label Marx uses, "bourgeois economy." Briefly, just to pick up some typically conventional remarks made about Marx. This is Marx's masterpiece, his life's work, the only work that displays fully his delightfully caustic wit, profoundly penetrating analytical powers, and stylistic genius. Forget the utterly bogus crap that still floats in the American atmosphere like a miasmic stench arising from a McCarthyism that never really got flushed. Beuracratic collectivism, the agglutination of the individual into a mass heap, celebrations of industrial worker heroes, and all the rest of the distortions that have arisen out of Soviet-style or Western "democratic" advanced industrial states should be checked at the gate. Indeed, it is one of the few advantages of this brave new world that we can at least read Marx in peace and good conscience again (especially now that it seems that the system fears no enemies- we are free to pursue every vice and feed our fantasies out whatever utopia just so long as we make into work on time on Monday morning). Finally, this translation, though unfortunate at times, offers the advantage of including at the end an extremely worthwhile appendix of some 150 pages entitled something like "Results of the Immediate Process of Production", which alone would make it worth the price of the book. Of course, like everything else in Capital it cannot be read out of context. In fact, it would I think be worthwhile to read it in the position where it was originally intended to be, after chapter 5, I believe, instead of at the end. Regardless, it is crucial that one read the work as a whole. It simply cannot be understood from the first section. After having done so, should one seek some insightful commentary to unravel some of the many thorny problems of interpretation one cannot do better than to consult Marx's own notebooks, the Grundrisse, also available in an affordable Penguin paperback edition. The point is, all facile declarations of the "objective refutation" of Marx sloganizing aside (see Fukuyama's tendentious and second-rate piece of state propoganda, End of History and the Last Man), all serious criticism of the pathologies of modernity begin with Marx and even the best of the twentieth century often falls short of him.
Rating:
Summary: Poor Karl!
Review: It is really fun to observe that Das Kapital still creates such a turmoil on its well educated! well-intended,great! economy-politic observers. There is nothing to worry about. Under capitalist system we are all happy. Yes Mr Fukuyama is right!We have arrived to the end of the history;THE NEW WORLD ORDER. Such a great order that has left over 80 million american credit card holders with their 'happy' depths. Happy school kids machinegunning their fellow friends. Yes, this is the end of the history;85 percent of total US GNP is held by only 15 percent of the nation. This is such a great system that we had two great world wars within only the first part of the this century end left very happy millions of deads behind us the sake of the private property. A few words for poor Karl; *He could never see that a revolution could occur in Russia. In any of his writings, there is no such prediction.(A premature birth delivered by Mr Lenin. Poor Marx can not be held responsible for such an action) *Poor Karl was axpecting a 'happinnig' either in England or in Germany *Poor Karl called what human kind has exprienced so far as 'PREHISTORIC' and every minute we realise under capitalist relations is proving this. People who had a little history reading please WAKE UP;There were other econo-politic systems poeple lived under and changed them profoundly. You like it or not there will be another one as well and hopefuly a bit more 'humanitarian' than capitalism If you have not read Das Capital, give it a try. It may help you understand what you have illusioned with.
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