Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy
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- ISBN13: 9780140445688
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- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, “Capital” is an sharp 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 make 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 bought 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 Effective Class’.
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Try reading this thing! Nite, nite, don’t let the bedbugs bite
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
First off, this was a hard read and I would only recommend this book to people who really have a strong background in literature or who read every day. Secondly the thoughts in this book are horribly inaccurate, the examination of the world economies and social standings has been proven incorrect in many cases. The thoughts are moral thoughts about fairness and equality but sorry to say, for all of us, the world is an unfair place and we can not impose fairness on the world. At the time of Karl Marx the world was in shambles depression and world conflicts had made the world a very grave place to live. His thoughts were revolutionary at the time and were seized upon by extremist around the world. Anything people could do to make their lives a small better was fare game regardless of the long term impact. Time and again we can see the lack of foresight Karl had about the danger of giving total control of a society to one governing body. People who get into power will permanently take advantage of that power in every society, the difference with Marxism is that you have no alternatives to choose from and language out can get you killed. The United States is going down the road of huge government were the people are loosing their voice more and more each day. This is the result of Marxist thoughts in the government and if it continues the US will become Marxist and before long after fall into perfect chaos as most Marxist societies do.
What Karl also failed to take into consideration when language about equality in the realm of personal wealth and property is each individual’s ability or lack of ability to be equal. Why should a person with more stamina, skill and might work hard as a laborer if he could make the same living as a librarian? While a name who isn’t as skilled does his manual labor job less efficiently than it could be done. In a free market there is plenty of incentive for the labor to excel at the trade for which his skills and talents allows for. Personal wealth and a privileged standard of living are the rewards for excelling at the occupation that you are talented or skilled at. People who belong to a system that gives them everything with small or no incentive to excel will in most cases become dependant on that system and will have no desire to better themselves or their society.
A friend of mine in high school had a rich uncle who died and left his family tree with a large inheritance, once my friend turned 16 his mother used that wealth to buy her son a groundbreaking new car for his birthday. He did nothing to earn the car and had small respect for the new car. I had to get a job and bum rides from my sister to and from work until I earned enough money for half a car, my parents sported the second half of the car. Six months after my buddy got his car it had been in three accidents and was driven with no care for its maintenance and was heading for the scrap yard. While my car although modest and much older was running like a champ and lasted me about three years until I could afford something newer. The point of the tale is when you have to earn something and it belongs to you, you take care of it and make sure it last. Conversely, if you are agreed things and have to do small or nothing to earn them you have no incentive to take care of them and why should you? My friend went out a bought another new car about a week after his first one was being towed away to the scrap heap and his mother paid for it.
If you don’t own anything why should you take care of the possessions the government has so kindly allowed you to use? In a Marxist society you are agreed hand outs by the government, if the government decides they are needed elsewhere then you are out of luck. The moral bandwagon that Karl and many, many additional Marxist have been on for decades has gone nowhere except bankruptcy, lose of liberty, and death for centuries, isn’t it time to get off the Marxist bandwagon? The book tries to take the moral high ground and I reflect we, as a people, should try to take the moral high ground but Karl’s lack of foresight makes this book a excellent history lesson that moral thoughts come with a fee and sometimes that fee is too high to pay.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Hillarious, I establish only Roger Rabbit, and Attack of the Green Tomato’s more intellectual.
While I once loved this book,(after all I am V.I Lenin) I have alas out grown it. Sorry to say I most appologize to all persons who had to live under communism or who once supported it it sounded so excellent on paper back in 1917.
But it has been and will more likely than not continue to remain a idelogy plague by a lack of practicality(most of the formerly stalinist regimes are now capitalist or semi capitalist(Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam…etc) (North Vietnam being the remaining exception) based on the inherant pointlessness of the communist/socialist economic model.
Sorry to say, as a system it is prone to abuse by persons claiming to represnt the people,(Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Sung and His Son, Che Guevara etc.)to impose totalitarian controls much like persons imposed by Adolf Hitler.
Therefore I must conclude that systems which are republican(United States) and parlimentarian (England, Italy, Germany, Japan) make greater access to opportunity and freedom from repression.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This is one of the most vital books of the modern age. This is reasonably simply, a sad fact. The common aver you will likely hear from a modern Marxist is that communism did not fail, it simply never existed. This goes contrary to history: Lenin and several others (Mao and Pol Pot most notably) did their best to bring about the supposed dialectical steps necessary for communism. Communism, or the attempt at bringing about it, did in fact fail, but not because of revolutions being “corrupted” ala Animal Farm, or because of the “invasion of capital” brought about by the West (had this reason been right, it would have disproved Marx’s theory to a large extent since communism was supposed to outproduce capitalism), but rather because of philosophical flaws in Marxism.
Marxism is a Historicism. Historicists judge that history can largely be predicted through reason, and that it moves towards an absolute goal, which is preordained. Now there’s a lot of problems with this thought, obviously. The first is that lacking a belief in God, there is no logical reasoning to hold this mess of a theory together. The German philosopher Hegel, who was a significant influence on Marx, largely justified the historicism by believing in God. Because Marx does not presuppose God, there is no way he can properly reason that there is an “end of history.”
Further on this line of thinking is the Marxist determinism. For instance, a pro-Marxist reading my critique might say “he only believes that because he is bourgeoisie!” The problem with this is that, the Marxist was predetermined to judge in Marxism, and Marx was predetermined to judge the fundaments of his philosophy, etc. And belief provides no reason for thinking something is right. Thus determinism contradicts itself and under its own terms people have no reason to judge in Marxism.
Marxism is fundamentally a violent theory. Marx does not call for reform towards the end of history, he calls for violent class war. Thus a devout Marxist has no reason to listen to his opponents, the dialectic of history is on his side. He only has to shoot to kill and the utopia will follow. This has provided Communists with the philosophical justification to butcher over 100 million individuals.
Had Marx really wanted to prove his theory, then why did he not just establish a worker-owned factory? Had he been right, it would have surely outproduced everyone else, and since capitalism follows the market, worker owned factories would have sprung up everywhere and quietly attained victory. (this had already been attempted but, as persons of you with a bit of history know. The people who tried this were the “utopian socialists” whom Marx argues, unconvincingly, against in the Manifesto. My question is, why did Marx still judge in socialism when he had seen it fail?)
Marx also had faulty notions of economics and human progress.
1) economics — Marx believed that capitalism led to monopolies which would gradually grow in power and oppress the workers until finally being consumed in the revolution. This did not take place. Monopolies tend to collapse rather quickly in a capitalist system — as soon as they fail to innovate. Take the example of IBM — they had the computer platform everyone wanted, but succumbed to dozens of startup companies which were able to offer the equal or better computers at lower prices. Monopolies generally only thrive where they are supported by the state, which is supposedly a dialectical step towards communism (again, this didn’t take place, it just helped the collapse of several economies, including Germany’s, which led to the rise of Hitler). What must be noticed is that capitalism leads to a freer, wealthier, and less classed society. Look at what the poor of America have compared to what the rich of the Middle Ages had. Capitalism and Science better people’s lives in ways that government programs never can or will. The modern capitalist society is pear shaped rather than pyramid shaped for a reason — hard labor and serfdom aren’t as necessary for a strong economy. Machinery is largely freeing up humans for more creative pursuits, not oppressing or impoverishing them.
2) human progress — Marx misunderstands this too. He thinks that by increasing the power of the state to an nearly total control of the citizens lives, the state will “dry up away.” Yeah, right. Look at Hitler and Stalin. Power is concentrated in the state, but nothing miraculous happens, the economy gets more and more unstable, the state has to take genocidal actions to conquer revolt, and eventually the government falls due to internal and/or external pressure. Mass government power is not an advance, it is a backsliding. The conception of the state is largely that it represents a separation of public life and private life. Totalitarianism is a de-politization of society: in all respects, it is a neo-tribalism. In clannish societies, the individual is suppressed and order upheld. This is largely what Marx wanted. The fantastic marvel is not why Marxism did not lead to greater production and progress, but why Marx thought it would.
I would recommend this book critical mind, who can stand to read a hideously dull book (this ain’t Ulysses or Brothers Karamozov.) It is vital that Marxism be studied, for it has not left us. It is still a dominant factor in many universities (outside of economics departments, where it is for the most part known as a discredited system,) and still exerts a massive influence on European and American politics (in America Marxists are incorrectly known as “liberals”)
This is a treacherous book which has led to the deaths of over 100 million. That’s about 16 Holocausts.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
Reading this book really shows that Marx understood nothing about economy: Prices cannot be fixed objectively according to some cost computation, but depend on how much people want things, of the balance of want and demand. I recommend as a replacement for reading book by insightful persons, like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Israel Kirzner, etc. Anyway reading Marx clarifies why all goes incorrect in socialist/communist countries, why people become so poor and have so small freedom and rights. The only value of this book may be to take what Marx thinks is excellent as on the contrary the way things should never been done.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5