Marx's Capital Illustrated: An Illustrated Introduction

by David Smith, Phil Evans (Illustrator)

Overview

Imagine Karl Marx as a cartoonist, ready to set the record straight about his much maligned classic, Das Kapital. Impossibly difficult? Not in the least. Hopelessly outdated? Far from it. Though first published in 1867, Capital remains keenly relevant. Society continues to run on investment and profit, labor and technology. And predictions that once might have seemed rash—global economic crisis, societies nearing bankruptcy—are now simply facts. Capital remains the fullest attempt to explain these facts, and Marx's Capital Illustrated brings this attempt to vibrant life, proceeding all the way from the ABCs to the pertinence of Marx's theory of crisis for today's global woes.

Fresh, funny, and copiously illustrated, this book is for everyone who wants better insight into Capital and capitalism. Readers of Marx, unite! You have found your starting point.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608462667
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	07/22/2014
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	460,784
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

David Smith is the editor of a forthcoming English-language volume of Marx's Notes on Global Capitalism and Non-Western Culture for Yale UniversityPress. His publications include articles in many scholarly journals, including Sociological Theory, Rethinking Marxism, The American Psychologist, and Current Perspectives in Social Theory.

Phil Evans is a longtime political cartoonist based in England. He has illustrated Marx's Kapital for Beginners and Understanding Economics, among many other books.

Table of Contents

Introduction – 1
1. Commodities – 30
2. Products for Use – 34
3. Alienation of Use Value – 37
4. Overproduction – 41
5. Exchange Value – 44
6. Abstract Labour – 47
7. Alienation of Useful Labor – 54
8. Fetishism – 57
9. Money – 64
10. The Accumulation of Capital – 69
11. Labor Power – 86
12. Expropriation – 89
13. A History Lesson – 92
14. The Making of the Working Class – 97
15. Surplus Value – 113
16. The Rate of Surplus Value – 129
17. Labour Power and Class Struggle – 147
18. Abolition of Wage Labour – 162

Editorial Reviews

"Valuable...in some respects more so than all the interpretations and popularizations I have read." –– C.L.R. James

"[Marx's Capital Illustrated] is very, very good, a brilliant exposition and a really creative relationship between image and explanation." –– John Berger

From the Publisher