Customer Reviews:
 Classic doesn't really do it justice September 5, 2008
J. Gullick
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Much has obviously been said of this work! Humanist-Marxists say it is too mechanistic whilst analytic Marxists try to ignore the Dickensian passages which describe working conditions. In truth this book, in true Marxian style is the 'dialectical' synthesis of basically all that went before. Marx forswears many of the grinding debates with other intellectuals and revolutionaries of the time in favour of a 'capitalism for dummies style'. Your hand is held as you progress from simple 'laws', each of which is taken to the limit of its logic before the next idea is broached.
In fact what is striking is how pertinent this book is even today. Granted things have moved on, and it is no longer 'grim up north' but even a quick consideration makes one realise how our service-industry-fueled economy still holds to most of the same processes as Marx noted all those years ago. Beaudrillard claimed Marx was superseded because consumption has now trumped production, but a read of Capital and a bit of thought soon puts that idea to rest.
It is worth ignoring the suggestions that The German Ideology is a good introduction to Marx, or that Capital is some advanced monolith. It is large, but completely readable; just as readable as Manifesto, only longer. Despite spawning abstruse French theorists, Russian and Chinese revolutions and analysis second only in quantity to the Bible there is nothing to be intimidated about.
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