The Capital Marx

Capital by Karl Marx is a foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy, economics and politics. Marx aimed to reveal the economic patterns underpinning the capitalist mode of production, in contrast to classical political economists such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. Marx did not live to publish the planned second and third parts, but they were both completed from his notes and published after his death by his colleague Friedrich Engels. Capital is the most cited book in the social sciences published before 1950.

“A brilliant contribution to present-day discussions on Marx’s value theory, money, capital and finance, highlighting the cardinal regulatory role of the financial sphere in capitalism. Achim Szepanski, following Marx’s analyses, takes finance seriously. He shows that ‘financialization’ is not a deviation from some ‘good’ industrial capitalism, or a new, ‘predatory’, method of exploitation (‘exploitation by dispossession’ etc.), a ‘bad’ exploitation as opposed to the ‘good’ exploitation by the ‘productive’ capital, but a historic development
expressing the formal determinations innate in the capitalist mode of production.”