Das Kapital

Business and economics

Print length: 296 pagesRegnery Pub., 2009

Description

Karl Marx examines capitalism as a system of production rather than simply a marketplace, asking how commodities, money, labor, and ownership combine to generate profit. Beginning with the commodity, he develops a labor theory of value based on the socially necessary time required to produce goods. His central claim is that workers create more value than they receive in wages, allowing owners to capture the difference as surplus value. Across three volumes, the analysis moves from production to circulation and then to the division of surplus into profit, interest, and rent. Marx connects accumulation with technological change, unemployment, falling profit rates, recurring crises, and intensifying class conflict, offering a systematic account of how capitalist growth reproduces both wealth and exploitation.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Academic · Dense · Technical

Pace

Slow

Tone

Cerebral · Earnest · Philosophical

Structure

Argumentative

Focus

Argument · Ideas

Emotional intensity

2 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 5 / 5
Ideas: 5 / 5
Structure: 4 / 5
Background knowledge: 4 / 5

Themes

ClassInequalityPolitics and ideologyPowerWealthWork

About Karl Marx

Karl Marx was a German philosopher, economist, political theorist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist whose work made material production and class conflict central to the study of history. He treats economic categories as social relations rather than neutral facts, repeatedly asking who controls production, how labor creates value, and how institutions preserve that control. His method combines abstract argument with historical analysis and polemic. In Capital, the exposition begins with the commodity, then widens through money, wages, surplus value, accumulation, circulation, and crisis, building its claims through dense technical analysis. The Communist Manifesto, written with Friedrich Engels, compresses a similar account of capitalism into a direct four-part political pamphlet, moving rapidly from historical claims to revolutionary program. The German Ideology shows a rougher side of the same enterprise. Its unfinished, fragmentary structure places an early statement of historical materialism beside sustained attacks on rival thinkers. Marx’s prose ranges from systematic economic architecture to compressed public argument, while returning to labor, ownership, alienation, and changing relations among classes.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Regnery Pub.
Language: English
ISBN: 9780895267115

Keep your books and notes in Collected for iPhone.

Apple Books is a service mark of Apple Inc. iPhone is a trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.