How did we advance to the present day?
An *economic* text, this book is considerably distinct from much of Marx's preceding output. In contrast to Marx, many capitalist apologists have explained capitalism as an "Unknown Ideal" while others despise historical analysis-- as if a feudal baron shouted one day, "I invented capitalism!" The bulk of Marx's presentation is theoretical-- calls for action, the nature of the state, and philosophical concepts are given little treatment throughout the 2,500 pages. What Marx *does* talk about- commodity production, use-values and exchange-values, theories of surplus-value, crisis theory, organic and technical compositions of capital, the transformation problem, changes in the rates of profit, and much more. It is an analysis of *capital*, and hence, *capitalism.* There is little information about the mechanics of a post-capitalist society. After investing the time to read it, readers will be baffled when critics argue "50 bujillion people DIED as a result of 'Capital!!!'" (Marx died in 1883) -- "therefore Marx is wrong!" To be objective, a thinker can imagine the absurdity of blaming World War Two, the slave trade, and imperialism on 'The Wealth of Nations'.
This is a brilliant work. The tough part is understanding the meaning of his terms, which was especially difficult for me, learning the neo-classical viewpoint first. The first chapters took a few days to understand with confidence. After that, the sheer length of the text is formidable, though rewarding and absolutely fascinating.
Later, in Mandel's introduction, "it would be very easy to 'prove' Marx's analysis to be wrong, if experience had shown, for example, that the more capitalist industry develops, the smaller and smaller the average factory becomes, the less it depends upon new technology, the more its capital is supplied by the workers themselves, the more workers become owners of their factories, the less the part of wages taken by consumer goods becomes (and the greater becomes the part of wages used for buying means of production). If, in addition, there had been decades without economic fluctuations and a full-scale disappearance of trade unions and employers' associations..... one could indeed say that 'Capital' was so much rubbish and had dismally failed to predict what would happen in the real capitalist world a century after its publication. It is sufficient to compare the real history of the world since 1867 on the one hand with what Marx predicted it would be, and on the other hand with any such alternative "laws of motion", to understand how remarkable indeed was Marx's theoretical achievement and how strongly it stands up against the experimental test of history."
A paranoia exists of socialist conspiracy to create monopoly as a transitional stage for communism. The largest 500 industrial and commercial corporations in the United States account for roughly 10% of all employees, 50% of profits, 70% of sales, and 90% of manufacturing assets, and 200 banks control 80% of all banking assets. How does this happen? An explanation that isn't even Marxist-- Joseph Schumpeter argues that modern technology creates enormous returns to scale. Under this hypothesis, large firms have the profit to experiment with new technologies, which creates new cost structures that promote greater efficiency in production. Competitive firms, which cannot absorb experimental failures and would have their innovations copied by the competition, have everything to lose by innovating and often not much to gain.
The volumes of this massive economic text were published successively in 1867, 1885, and 1894. His theoretical influence is seen on moderns including Paul Sweezy, Anwar Shaikh, Nubuo Okishio, Paul Mattick, Joan Robinson, and many others. There has been plenty of work critical of Marx in academia. Most economists feel marginalism has rendered it obsolete, others have appropriated pieces of Marxist thought into their work.
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For it inaugurated a new era in the relationship between men of all social conditions in the whole world and in years to come. It is the book where all the reasons for the downfall of capitalism in the end of the XIX century are pinpointed with a precise and polemical style, trademarks of the German author, and where, for the very first time in the story of History, historical movements are treated coherently as the necessary (deterministic) events of the social movements of humankind since the beginning of civilization, something called historical or dialectical determinism by the author, who borrowed and inverted many concepts from the German philosopher Hegel.
Notwhitdstanding the importance of the book to West and East culture, this is not an easy book to read, given the intricacy of the subjects treated and also its lenght. For me the most attractive feature of the book is the disdain Marx had for anyone who did not agree with him, unabashedly fighting against Political Economists and Historians of all ideological collors. Despite all the rabid polemic, what remains after almost 150 years of the publication of the first volume of Das Kapital is the collapse of the communist world and the strenght of Capitalism, who learned the lessons of survival better than its ideological counterpart.