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Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography (Books That Changed the World)

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If you're anything like me, you have neither the time, nor the patience to delve into Karl Marx's monstrous Magnum opus of political economics, Das Kapital. Fortunately, Francis Wheen has done us a great service by giving us this fantastic "biography" of a book that changed the world. The book is superbly written, and the audio version, eloquently delivered by Simon Vance, is equally good. It is a concise work; the CD version is 3.5 hours, while the printed format is only about 144 pages. My CD version is separated into three sections. The first section details Marx's life and the circumstances that led him to write such a groundbreaking book. The second section is a succinct exposition of Das Kapital. Wheen aptly outlines and dissects the basic principles of Marx's revolutionary economic theory, objectively pointing out both Marx's errors, as well as his numerous insights, many of which have proven true. While his prophesies of the collapse of the capitalist system have obviously not come to pass, Marx offers more insight into the "nature of the beast" than anyone else before, or since.

The final section deals with the book's lasting influence and Marx's legacy. Wheen points out that in most "Marxist" countries, Marx's ideas were never thoroughly researched and interpreted, their leaders simply took their own interpretation, made it an unquestionable dogma, and that was that. Ironically, it's been in western capitalist societies where Marx, due to the freedom of scholars to study him, has been more thoroughly understood. "Marxism as practiced by Marx himself," Wheen writes, "was not so much an ideology, as a critical process, a continuous dialectical argument." More simply put, Marx was not a Marxist.

Wheen clearly has a great amount of respect for Marx. And while he is quick to point out certain lapses in logic or prognosis, he maintains that Marx was one of the most brilliant thinkers of the 19th century. In fact, he predicts that we have not seen the last of Karl Marx, and boldly suggests that in the end, he may turn out to be more relevant than most would expect. All in all, I would recommend this as a great introduction to Marx or even a refreshing new look at an old subject. 5 stars.

"Marx's Das Kapital" is noted Marx-sympathetic journalist Francis Wheen's contribution to Atlantic Magazine's series on book biographies. It's short, merely 120 pages of actual text, but it does the job well. Relying strongly on prominent secondary literature about Marx, such as David McLellan's excellent biography (Karl Marx, Fourth Edition: A Biography) and S.S. Prawer's equally fascinating study of Marx' use of literature and literary references (Karl Marx and World Literature (Oxford Paperbacks)), Wheen summarizes the background of Das Kapital, how it came to be, as well as its content and its reception.

Wheen is at his best in the journalistic parts, when he can give colorful and well-done descriptions of Marx's life and activities, his relation to Engels, his trials and tribulations while working on the magnum opus, and in commentary on Marx's books and style. On the other hand, his grasp of Marx's economic theories is very weak and likely to make things more confusing, especially since he misses the point and meaning of Marx's Theory of Value entirely. Also dubious is that he appends a chapter on 'afterlife' of the book, which is mostly an attempt to summarize all of the later Marxist tradition (from an anti-Leninist viewpoint) in a few pages, a task so impossible that its attempt is fruitless and uninformative.

However, Wheen is quite good at putting Das Kapital in its historical context, in emphasizing the rhetorical and literary qualities of the book and of Marx' thought in general, and the book also contains some fascinating quotes and remarks from pro-capitalist economists and businessmen who have come to see, to their own astonishment, that ol' Marx was a better analyst of the system they wish to support than anyone else. Let us hope the reader of this booklet will be inspired by this to attempt to delve into Marx & Engels' own works, which constantly show their relevance in new and unexpected ways. As Wheen demonstrates, this is precisely as Marx had intended it.

Karl Marx. For some, those two four letter words elicit hissing recoils and vicious claw swipes. Just one glimpse of the man resembling Santa Claus' evil twin can send them into a relentless conniption of fury. They may equate Marxism with communist, socialist, Leninist, anti-American claptrap. After all, weren't the Soviets America's diabolical enemy? Didn't they breed Bolsheviks in our washrooms? Inject anti-capitalist fluid into our drinking water? And didn't they derive such sinister plots from their hoary prophet of doom, Herr Marx? Surely the mighty bearded one inspired the killing fields, the Gulag death camps and the Red Square parades? So why drudge up this hateful mess?

After the Berlin Wall and the USSR collapsed, and especially after the September 11th, 2001 attacks, which put the focus on Middle East terrorism, Marx has acquired a more innocuous aura. Nothing cools old passions like new enemies. This new era has allowed Marx to crawl out from under those who have claimed him as their ideological messiah. And many have claimed him. But why did they claim him, an impoverished exiled German journalist? And were those countless communist regimes of the past two hundred years accurate reflections of Marx's ideas? Where did those ideas come from?

This small book explores the origins and fate of those ideas through Marx's maniacal magnum opus, "Das Kapital." As spiraling, towering, and dizzying, and as incomplete, as Gaudí's cathedral, this sprawling tome usually goes unread. A reputation for Tolstoyian verbosity, Proustian opacity, and Gödelian complexity preceded it into the twenty-first century. Not only that, at some 1000 pages, the book's physical presence alone would intimidate anyone but the most recklessly courageous bookworm. Nonetheless, it somehow persists. The story of how it came to be makes up this much shorter book's first two chapters. Procrastination, neglect, illness, despair, and squalor almost kept it from appearing. Decades passed between its conception and its printing. Fredrick Engels, Marx's partner and financial supporter, egged him on through a parade of excuses and diversions. Along the way snippets of Marx's economic theory, such as use-value, exchange-value, surplus-value, commodity fetishism, immiseration, and dialectic, also dot the narrative.

The reception of "Das Kapital" following its publication, outlined in chapters two and three, surprised everyone, except Engels. It didn't sell. It seemed to have fallen, a la Hume, still born from the press. Engels blamed the book's dense obscurity. The one place it did catch on, to Marx's astonishment, was in Tsarist Russia. Though Marx passed on well before the 1917 revolution there, he nonetheless praised the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by a group called "The People's Will." He also spent the rest of his days waiting for the fall of capitalism. He and Engels seemed to revel in every economic disruption. But the big blow never struck. The boom and bust cycles that Marx outlined in "Das Kapital" never destroyed capitalism from within, as he predicted it someday would and should. Of course, it still could, but to this day the system endures.

Chapter three discusses Marx's legacy. Most of all, it rescues him from some of the crimes perpetrated by "Marxist" regimes. Vladimir Lenin in particular seemed to turn the Marxian dialectic on its head by postulating an elite proletariat "intelligentsia." Marx never condoned such a thing. As the twentieth century continued, Marx was also appropriated by academic movements such as cultural studies. The book dismisses these movements apparent "Marxism" through figures such as Louis Althusser. It also criticizes this movement's displacement of economics, which lies at the heart of Marx's work, with critiques of mass culture, such as television shows and candy wrappers. Most shocking are quotes from modern economists who support some of Marx's views on capitalism. So Marx wasn't blacklisted along with all those 1930s entertainers. Marx's legacy may just be beginning, but not as a revolutionary overthrowing the capitalist machine, but as an observer of the machine's working and flaws.

A better introduction to Marx and "Das Kapital" is hard to imagine. The book reads like a roller coaster in clear accessible language. Pros as well as cons of Marxist theory, its implications, and abuses receive apt attention, and Marx's turgid masterpiece comes to life. Anyone curious about "the spectre of communism" should start with this tiny but riveting - and appropriately colored - book.

The state censors in Tsarist Russia were, in the short term, justified in their decision to pass Marx's greatest work, Das Kapital, for publication in 1867, reasoning that it would not be read by workers because the text was so impenetrable that "few would read it and still fewer understand it". Fifty years later, however, they had come to regret their decision as Marxists (like Trotsky, who studied the book in exile in Siberia, and Lenin, who read it at age 18) took the Russian workers' movement to victory.

Francis Wheen's story of Das Kapital charts the writing and the impact of the book, which had a laboured (overdue by at least 21 years) passage to the publisher. The first volume of Das Kapital was the only one to appear in Marx's lifetime. It took nearly four decades for the remaining three volumes to be assembled by Engels for publication.

The literally painful progress of the opus (Marx's infamous carbuncles caused him to finish volume 1 standing up) was a result, says Wheen, of Marx "never being able to resist a distraction", including "polemical pamphlets and articles, and wasteful feuds and score-settling".

Domestic interruptions also hampered progress in London where Marx spent over three decades of his political exile, facing evictions for non-payment of rent, irate creditors banging on the door ("I don't suppose anyone has written so much about `money' when so short of the stuff", he joked), continual illnesses, a brood of children to lavish attention on and to grieve over when some of them died young.

Overdue but worth the wait is Wheen's assessment of Das Kapital. Wheen does a fair job in limited space of capturing the major elements of the Marxist economic analysis of capitalism - surplus value (the extraction of profit from the labour of the worker), the human alienation that results from this, the permanent boom-bust cycle of capitalism.

Wheen is also judicious in assessing the common criticisms of Marx's predictions in Das Kapital, particularly the imminent demise of capitalism which Marx gleefully saw in "every flutter in the markets or rash of bankruptcies", have self-evidently proved premature, notes Wheen, adding, however, that "when one studies his work as a whole", Marx wavered between expectation (of capitalism's longevity) and hope (of its near death).

Reading Das Kapital has never been easy, despite its richness as a literary experience. Wheen classes Das Kapital as "radical literary collage", mixing mythology, literature, factory inspectors' reports, fairy tales and mathematical formulae in a modernist "fractured narrative" which is often mistaken by Marx's critics for "formlessness and incomprehensibility". Das Kapital could have been a "conventional economic treatise" but Marx made it into a work of art, its dramatic pathos, satire and imagery (with vampires a favoured Gothic motif) central to what Wheen sees as the book's ultimate aim - "penetrating the veils of illusion to reveal the exploitation by which capitalism lives".

Wheen, however, is silent on what to do with any new-found Marxist wisdom. What to do about the "instability, alienation and exploitation" of capitalism? Well, its your lot, mate, is the best answer Wheen seems to have. Wheen's obligatory vilification of Lenin as the authoritarian, elitist political progenitor of Stalin shows that Marx's liberal admirers, too, have a no-go area when it comes to using Das Kapital against capital.

I won't go into great detail in analyzing the book, other reviewers here have done a sufficient job of that. I will just say that to gain a real understanding of Marx's ideas requires that you read the actual Capital. I would recommend the abridged version if you haven't the time for the full one. For giving one an understanding of the ideas in Capital I would give this book three stars, not bad given how short of a read it is and how much history and theory the actual Capital covers. As a biography of Marx himself, I would give it 5 stars. It did an excellent job of painting a picture of his life and character. Overall its gets 4 stars for its easy readability regarding a complex subject and vivid portrayal of one of the nineteenth centuries most fascinating figures. It is a worthwhile read, especially in preparation for tackling the actual beast.

Francis Wheen has taken an extremely important book, and recorded the events that came from the book. He describes what the book says, what the book doesn't say, and how the book was used by Lenin, the Bolsheviks, and other politicians throughout history. Wheen describes the sacrifices Marx made while he wrote the book. He describes the creation of the book, which took 10 years due to Marx's inability to stay focused on it's completion. Wheen discusses Marx's correspondence with Engels about the book. The last 3rd of the book discusses the book and it's theories in context of politics, how Lenin and other power hungry narcissists used the book as a means for grabbing power.

This isn't so much a book on economics, as it is a book on the history of an idea.
I know a lot of Bolshevik history, and this is a fascinating book.

Marx's `Das Kapital` is one of the most influential books of the modern era, but it is also over 1000 pages, few people have the time or patience for its peculiarities. It's a strange, incomplete and difficult work. This short biography of `Das Kapital` provides an excellent and understandable overview of how it came to be written, what it actually says, and how it has influenced others. Not being an economist I had trouble following the economic theories, but its literary connections were surprising. It's essentially a satire of classic 17th and 18th century economic philosophers, Edmund Wilson called it one of the greatest ironic works ever written. Marx references 100s of great literary authors and works, including `Tristam Shandy`, which Das Kapital resembles with its endless digressions, and incredibly `Frankenstein`, which was a favorite of Marx. He was disappointed when no one took notice of his treaties literary merits. Instead it was picked up by an obscure group of Russians who under Lenin molded the theory to include the concept of a "proletariat intelligentsia" (working class thinkers) to run the show, an idea Marx was against. Thus started the misuse of Marx by every dictator in the world up until this day. Ironically it is only in the West, with its freedom of academic discussion, that real Marxists can exist (whatever "real" means). This is a short book but dense with insight and ideas, it would reward reading again and I hope to do so, it's probably the closest I'll ever come to actually reading `Das Kapital` itself.

When I picked up this book last week, I thought I would get some information on how 'Das Kapital' was written. In fact, I got a lot more.

The book is divided into three main sections: 1. Gestation, 2. Birth, and 3. Afterlife. The first gives you an idea of how Das Kapital developed inside Marx's mind. The second explains how it was finally published. The third explains why it is seeing a second revival, after the collapse of Soviet Union.

The book is full of insights. For instance, how the prose of Das Kapital was affected not only by what Marx's had been reading, but also by his health (his carbuncles). It also uncovers little frauds that he perpetrated along the way, like always telling people that the book is going to be ready shortly, when it actually took more than twenty years.

Another subtle insight is how Marxism (Marxianity?) may have evolved as a religion, and how it may be closely linked to Christianity. Marx, like Jesus Christ, thought of the poor and dis-empowered. In fact, all religious thinkers have thought about the poor and the deprived. And that may explain why Marxians feel threatened by other, competing religious philosophies.

We also understand how neither Lenin, nor Mao, really followed Marx's prescriptions in Das Kapital. Instead they jumped the gun, possibly using Das Kapital as a tool to acquire power. And this may be the reason why both failed miserably in the ultimate. This in fact highlights how Marxists have misused Marx's ideas (with a little help from Marx himself), treating these as mumbo-jumbo and spawned a religious cult, which has little in dialogue or understanding, but only in seeing the prophecy come true, by hook or by crook.

Another insight that I gained was how the Marxists, having failed in gaining control of the economy, have sought refuse in cultural alleys, where they have come to increasingly dominate the discourse and the discussion, mainly by forming intellectual trade unions and boycotting those who do not fall in line. In this they are somewhat like Marx himself, who is shown to be an intellectual tyrant, not letting by any deviation or dissent, without attacking the transgressor with savage force.

Francis Wheen moves deftly back and forth, linking Marx's life and experience with his thesis in the book. He takes us across the broad sweep of reactions to the book, and also points out Marx's own failings as well as disappointments. While he exposes Marx's intellectual flaws, he does this with surprising empathy.

By the time you finish the book, you have a much better understanding of the power of Das Kapital and the fascination it has generated across the world over the last 150 years or so. Wheen also helps us understand how the collapse of Soviet Union may not indicate the failure of Das Kapital, but rather its success. You end the book with a clear feeling that Das Kapital will remain around for a long time to come, and may possibly be even adopted by the West as its own, now that the threat of a belligerent Soviet Russia is gone.

This is a short book (120 pages, with well-spaced text), and can easily be read in 6-7 hours. The Atlantic Books binding (hardcover) is good and offers good value for money, especially as you may want to return again to the book and savor its delightful insights.

Francis Wheen's prose is also crisp and clear. He deals easily with some of the most difficult concepts of Das Kapital, without frightening you to death.

All in all, an excellent buy.

Karl Marx spent much of his life writing Das Kapital (publishing only the first volume before his death, and never seeing any translations in English). He was clearly cursed with a genius that allowed him to write a text an entire century before its time. Rather than spoil the story, I'll leave the details to your hungry mind.

Westerners have largely been taught that Marx and Socialism/Communism are evil. Much of the blame can be placed at the feet of Lenin. However, Marx was just a man who observed working conditions around him, and developed a theory on how these workers would, one day, become liberated from their chains of bondage.

Marx was rather surprised that his work was so popular in Russia. He wrote his theories using English workers during the Industrial Revolution.

A good 90-minute book. I recommend it!

A interesting read for me, as i can't get myself to stick with "The book"