Marx for the twenty-first century
The first new English translation in fifty years--and the only one based on the last German edition revised by Marx himself
Featuring extensive original commentary, including a foreword by acclaimed political theorist Wendy Brown
An astounding achievement.--China Miéville, author of October: The Story of the Russian Revolution

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was living in exile in England when he embarked on an ambitious, multivolume critique of the capitalist system of production. Though only the first volume saw publication in Marx's lifetime, it would become one of the most consequential books in history. This magnificent new edition of Capital is a translation of Marx for the twenty-first century. It is the first translation into English to be based on the last German edition revised by Marx himself, the only version that can be called authoritative, and it features extensive commentary and annotations by Paul North and Paul Reitter that draw on the latest scholarship and provide invaluable perspective on the book and its complicated legacy. At once precise and boldly readable, this translation captures the momentous scale and sweep of Marx's thought while recovering the elegance and humor of the original source.

For Marx, our global economic system is relentlessly driven by value--to produce it, capture it, trade it, and, most of all, to increase it. Lifespans are shortened under the demand for ever-greater value. Days are lengthened, work is intensified, and the division of labor deepens until it leaves two classes, owners and workers, in constant struggle for life and livelihood. In Capital, Marx reveals how value came to tyrannize our world, and how the history of capital is a chronicle of bloodshed, colonization, and enslavement.

With a foreword by Wendy Brown and an afterword by William Clare Roberts, this is a critical edition of Capital for our time, one that faithfully preserves the vitality and directness of Marx's German prose and renders his ideas newly relevant to modern readers.

The first volume of a political treatise that changed the world

One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates. Living in exile in England, where this work was largely written, Marx drew on a wide-ranging knowledge of its society to support his analysis and create fresh insights. Arguing that capitalism would cause an ever-increasing division in wealth and welfare, he predicted its abolition and replacement by a system with common ownership of the means of production. Capital rapidly acquired readership among the leaders of social democratic parties, particularly in Russia in Germany, and ultimately throughout the world, to become a work described by Marx friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels as the Bible of the working class.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Few writers have had a more demonstrable impact on the development of the modern world than has Karl Marx (1818-1883). Born in Trier into a middle-class Jewish family in 1818, by the time of his death in London in 1883, Marx claimed a growing international reputation.

Of central importance then and later was his book Das Kapital, or, as it is known to English readers, simply Capital. Volume One of Capital was published in Paris in 1867. This was the only volume published during Marx's lifetime and the only to have come directly from his pen. Volume Two, published in 1884, was based on notes Marx left, but written by his friend and collaborator, Friedrich Engels (1820-1895).

Readers from the nineteenth century to the present have been captivated by the unmistakable power and urgency of this classic of world literature. Marx's critique of the capitalist system is rife with big themes: his theory of 'surplus value', his discussion of the exploitation of the working class, and his forecast of class conflict on a grand scale. Marx wrote with purpose. As he famously put it, 'Philosophers have previously tried to explain the world, our task is to change it.'

Karl Marx is one of the most influential social theorists and political philosophers of the 19th century. His hugely significant works The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital fundamentally changed the way the world viewed economy and politics. His groundbreaking theory that much of a society's conflict is based on an economic imbalance between the wealthy ruling class, the bourgeoisie, who control the means of production, and the working class, or the proletariat, who are forced to sell their labor in return for wages, helped spur the development of socialist and communist political systems. This edition contains two of his more important essays. First written in 1847, Wage Labour and Capital is the foundation for the economic theories that were later developed in Das Kapital. Value, Price, and Profit was first given as a speech by Marx in 1865 and expands on his ideas regarding the relationship between wages and profit. Marx argues that workers are responsible for creating the value that leads to profit and they are entitled to share in it through increased wages. Marx's theories remain widely studied for their relevance and insight into the problems and inequalities that continue to exist in modern economic systems. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

Capital Vol. 1, 2, & 3: The Only Complete and Unabridged Edition in One Volume! is a definitive collection of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' monumental work on political economy. Bringing together all three volumes into a single comprehensive edition, this book offers readers an unparalleled opportunity to delve into Marx's magnum opus. From the analysis of capitalist production and the exploitation of labor to the examination of commodities, capital accumulation, and the dynamics of class struggle, Marx and Engels' penetrating insights continue to shape our understanding of economics and society.

The third volume of a political treatise that changed the world

Unfinished at the time of Marx's death in 1883 and first published with a preface by Frederick Engels in 1894, the third volume of Capital strives to combine the theories and concepts of the two previous volumes in order to prove conclusively that capitalism is inherently unworkable as a permanent system for society. Here, Marx controversially asserts that--regardless of the efforts of individual capitalists, public authorities or even generous philanthropists--any market economy is inevitably doomed to endure a series of worsening, explosive crises leading finally to complete collapse. But he also offers an inspirational and compelling prediction; that the end of capitalism will culminate in the birth of a far greater form of society.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates. Living in exile in England, where this work was largely written, Marx drew on a wide-ranging knowledge of its society to support his analysis and generate fresh insights. Arguing that capitalism would create an ever-increasing division in wealth and welfare, he predicted its abolition and replacement by a system with common ownership of the means of production. Capital rapidly acquired readership among the leaders of social democratic parties, particularly in Russia and Germany, and ultimately throughout the world, to become a work described by Marx's friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels as 'the Bible of the Working Class'.

This book contains four classic writings of Marxism by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. There is no better explanation of Marxism than in the words of its foremost thinkers. This volume includes: The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels. Socialism: Utopian and Scientific by Frederick Engels. The State and Revolution by V. I. Lenin. The Transitional Programme by Leon Trotsky.

Capital: Volume One by Karl Marx is a classic of political economics and was described by Friedrich Engels, the author's friend and collaborator, as the bible of the working class. Thirty years in the making, this 1867 publication was the first in the three-part Das Kapital series and the only volume published during Marx's lifetime. The polemic asserts that society is advancing from primitive economic systems toward the utopian state of communism.
It remains a work of tremendous importance and influence and offers an astute critique of capitalism, exploring commodities, value, money, and other factors related to the system's historic origins and contemporary functions. The examination of these elements forms the basis of Marxist doctrine: the system is irredeemable, a revolution is imperative, and a socialist system is the only viable alternative, providing a structure in which production serves the needs of all rather than the enrichment of the elite.

Nearly two years before his powerful Communist Manifesto, Marx (1818-1883) co-wrote The German Ideology in 1845 with friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels expounding a new political worldview, including positions on materialism, labor, production, alienation, the expansion of capitalism, class conflict, revolution, and eventually communism. They chart the course of true socialism based on Hegel's dialectic, while criticizing the ideas of Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner, and Ludwig Feuerbach. Marx expanded his criticism of the latter in his now famous Theses on Feuerbach, found after Marx's death and published by Engels in 1888. Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, also found among the posthumous papers of Marx, is a fragment of an introduction to his main works. Combining these three works, this volume is essential for an understanding of Marxism.

Das Kapital, Karl Marx's seminal work, is the book that above all others formed the twentieth century. From Kapital sprung the economic and political systems that at one time dominated half the earth and for nearly a century kept the world on the brink of war. Even today, more than one billion Chinese citizens live under a regime that proclaims fealty to Marxist ideology. Yet this important tome has been passed over by many readers frustrated by Marx's difficult style and his preoccupation with nineteenth-century events of little relevance to today's reader.

Here Serge Levitsky presents a revised version of Kapital, abridged to emphasize the political and philosophical core of Marx's work while trimming away much that is now unimportant. Pointing out Marx's many erroneous predictions about the development of capitalism, Levitsky's introduction nevertheless argues for Kapital's relevance as a prime example of a philosophy of economic determinism that subordinates the problems of human freedom and human dignity to the issues of who should own the means of production and how wealth should be distributed.

Here then is a fresh and highly readable version of a work whose ideas provided inspiration for communist regimes' ideological war against capitalism, a struggle that helped to shape the world today.

Since their first appearance as separate brochures Wage - Labour and Capital and Value, Price and Profit have served as popular introductions to the study of political economy, each complementing the other. The first is based on lectures delivered by Marx before the German Workingmen's Club of Brussels in 1847, the second is an address by Marx before two sessions of the General Council of the First International in London in 1865. Both classics are included in this volume. Value, Price and Profit will be found in the second half of the book.

Written during the winter of 1857-8, the Grundrisse was considered by Marx to be the first scientific elaboration of communist theory. A collection of seven notebooks on capital and money, it both develops the arguments outlined in the Communist Manifesto (1848) and explores the themes and theses that were to dominate his great later work Capital. Here, for the first time, Marx set out his own version of Hegel's dialectics and developed his mature views on labour, surplus value and profit, offering many fresh insights into alienation, automation and the dangers of capitalist society. Yet while the theories in Grundrisse make it a vital precursor to Capital, it also provides invaluable descriptions of Marx's wider-ranging philosophy, making it a unique insight into his beliefs and hopes for the foundation of a communist state.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Marx stated that the purpose of this essay was to demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part. In doing so he applies the method of Historical Materialism and besides it's many other points of interest and importance it can serve readers as a practical instance of this particular method of historical analysis

In this essay one finds Marx's famous formulation of the role of the individual in history, Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

Marx's interpretation of Louis Bonaparte's rise and rule is also of interest to later scholars studying the nature and meaning of fascism, among whom the coup is regarded as a forerunner of the phenomenon of 20th-century fascism.

English edition.

Das Kapital is a groundbreaking work of economic analysis, but also an unfinished literary masterpiece which, with its multi-layered structure, can be read as a Gothic novel, a Victorian melodrama, a Greek tragedy or a Swiftian satire. Francis Wheen, The Guardian.

Though he died in 1883, Karl Marx's Das Kapital, the Bible of the working class, has been the book that most shaped twentieth-century history. His theories divided much of the world into two blocs, one embracing communism and the other fearing it, and cast a shadow into the twenty-first century.

Although Marx writes as a philosopher and economist presenting an analysis of an economic system, the book is surprisingly readable. It reads like a Gothic novel whose heroes are enslaved and consumed by the monster they created.

Though many disagree with Marx's conclusions, his analysis has been almost universally respected. Surprisingly, it is Marx, and not Adam Smith who understood the central role of capital. The historian Gareth Stedman Jones wrote:

What is extraordinary about Das Kapital is that it offers a still-unrivalled picture of the dynamism of capitalism and its transformation of societies on a global scale. Das Kapital has now emerged as one of the great landmarks of nineteenth century thought.

Das Kapital is a revolutionary book; forged during the political and industrial revolutions of the nineteenth century, it became the keystone of many Communist revolutions of the twentieth century. In this comprehensive analysis of capitalist economics and articulation of his theory of class conflict, Karl Marx (1818-1883) relentlessly argues that the accumulation of capital can only be achieved by bourgeoisie exploitation of the working classes. Das Kapital has not only changed history, but also human thought, becoming a foundational text in materialist philosophy, economics and politics.

This volume includes The Communist Manifesto, written with his friend and colleague, Frederick Engels, which not only envisions a wholly equal society in which neither property nor money exist, but suggests that this will be a natural and inevitable consequence of the class struggle that dominates human history.

Karl Heinrich Marx (1818 - 1883) was a German-born philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist. He lived in poverty with his wife and four young children in a two-room flat in Soho, London, while writing Das Kapital. In 1845, he wrote, Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it, words that capture his spirit and are inscribed on his grave. Later in 1848, in The Manifesto of the Communist Party, with Engels, he famously wrote: Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!

Had he lived to see the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, he would have felt vindicated!

Following the great success of the first volume of the Classics of Marxism, a second volume is now published with five more important works. Wage Labour and Capital Karl Marx's Wage Labour and Capital contains many important insights into the workings of the capitalist system and the way in which labour is exploited. With an excellent introduction by Frederick Engels. Value, Price and Profit Value, Price and Profit was first delivered as a speech delivered by Marx in June 1865, while he was working on the first volume of Capital that was published two years later. Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder In Left-Wing Communism we have Lenin's exposition of the necessity to combine theoretical firmness with tactical and organizational flexibility in order to win the masses. In Defence of October Leon Trotsky's work In Defence of October is the title of a speech delivered to a meeting of Social Democratic students in Copenhagen advancing the cause of the Russian Revolution. Stalinism and Bolshevism By contrast, in Stalinism and Bolshevism Trotsky examines the revolution's bureaucratic degeneration which finally resulted in the Stalinist antithesis of the democratic workers' state. Twenty five years on from the fall of the Soviet Union, it can be seen as the prelude to a far greater drama: an unprecedented crisis on a world scale which shows that the capitalist system has exhausted itself is ready to follow Stalinism into the dustbin of history.

Capital Vol. 1, 2, & 3: The Only Complete and Unabridged Edition in One Volume! is a definitive collection of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' monumental work on political economy. Bringing together all three volumes into a single comprehensive edition, this book offers readers an unparalleled opportunity to delve into Marx's magnum opus. From the analysis of capitalist production and the exploitation of labor to the examination of commodities, capital accumulation, and the dynamics of class struggle, Marx and Engels' penetrating insights continue to shape our understanding of economics and society.

Written in 1844 as a series of notes, Marx's posthumously published critiques on the conditions of modern industrialist societies forms the foundation of the author's denunciation of capitalism. Combining elements of psychology, sociology, and anthropology, it is a profound examination of the human condition rooted in a philosophy of economics.
In this concise treatise, Marx presents an indictment of capitalism and its threat to the working man, his sense of self, and his ultimate potential. With a focus on Marxist Humanism, he describes the alienation of laborers in a capitalist system: since the results of their work belong to someone else, they are estranged from their own labor and can never function as freely productive beings. Through a powerful mixture of history and economics, Marx explores the degenerative effect of capitalism on the proletariat and his true human nature.
Regarded as one of his most important books, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 is a first glimpse at Marx's fascinating transition from philosophy to economics. Accessible and influential, it is an important predecessor to the Communist Manifesto and essential to an understanding of Marxist theory.

A classic of early modernism, Capital combines vivid historical detail with economic analysis to produce a bitter denunciation of mid-Victorian capitalist society. It has proved to be the most influential work in twentieth-century social science; Marx did for social science what Darwin had done for biology. This is the only abridged edition to take into account the whole of Capital. It offers virtually all of Volume 1, which Marx himself published in 1867; excerpts from a new translation of The Result of the Immediate Process Production; and a selection of key chapters from Volume 3, which Engels published in 1895.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A World Without Jews by Karl Marx speaks about religious prejudice specifically against Jews. It begs to question can the world survive without this prejudice and how Jews beg for political emancipation? Karl Marx (1818-1883) is best known not as a philosopher but as a revolutionary communist, whose works inspired the foundation of many communist regimes in the twentieth century. It is hard to think of many who have had as much influence in the creation of the modern world. Trained as a philosopher, Marx turned away from philosophy in his mid-twenties, towards economics and politics. However, in addition to his overtly philosophical early work, his later writings have many points of contact with contemporary philosophical debates, especially in the philosophy of history and the social sciences, and in moral and political philosophy. Historical materialism -- Marx's theory of history -- is centered around the idea that forms of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development of human productive power. Marx sees the historical process as proceeding through a necessary series of modes of production, culminating in communism. Marx's economic analysis of capitalism is based on his version of the labour theory of value, and includes the analysis of capitalist profit as the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat. The analysis of history and economics come together in Marx's prediction of the inevitable economic breakdown of capitalism, to be replaced by communism. However Marx refused to speculate in detail about the nature of communism, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not the realisation of a pre-determined moral ideal.