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Karl Marx

Boethius

Das Kapital, Gateway Edition (Skeptical Reader) Paperback – Abridged, July 1, 1996

by Karl Marx (Author), Friedrich Engels (Editor), Serge L. Levitsky (Introduction)

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Das Kapital, Karl Marx's seminal work, is the book that above all others formed the twentieth century. From Kapital sprung the economic and political systems that at one time dominated half the earth and for nearly a century kept the world on the brink of war. Even today, more than one billion Chinese citizens live under a regime that proclaims fealty to Marxist ideology. Yet this important tome has been passed over by many readers frustrated by Marx’s difficult style and his preoccupation with nineteenth-century events of little relevance to today's reader.

Here Serge Levitsky presents a revised version of Kapital, abridged to emphasize the political and philosophical core of Marx’s work while trimming away much that is now unimportant. Pointing out Marx’s many erroneous predictions about the development of capitalism, Levitsky's introduction nevertheless argues for Kapital's relevance as a prime example of a philosophy of economic determinism that "subordinates the problems of human freedom and human dignity to the issues of who should own the means of production and how wealth should be distributed."

Here then is a fresh and highly readable version of a work whose ideas provided inspiration for communist regimes' ideological war against capitalism, a struggle that helped to shape the world today.

Print length

356 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Gateway Editions
Publication date

July 1, 1996
Dimensions

6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

9780895267115
ISBN-13

978-0895267115
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From the Back Cover

Das Kapital, Karl Marx's masterwork, is the book that above all others formed the twentieth century. From Kapital sprung the economic and political systems that in our time dominated half the earth and for half a century kept the world on the brink of war. Even today, one billion Chinese remain in the power of the Marxist system. Yet this important and powerful work has been passed over by many readers frustrated by Marx's difficult style and his preoccupation with nineteenth-century events of little relevance to today's reader. Now Serge Levitsky presents a new revised version of this masterpiece, carefully retranslated for the modern reader and abridged to emphasize the political and philosophical core of Marx's work, while trimming away much that is now unimportant. Here then is a fresh and highly readable version of a work whose ideas have influenced the lives of nearly every person alive today.

About the Author

The list of Regnery authors reads like a "who's who" of conservative thought, action, and history.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 089526711X
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Gateway Editions; Abridged edition (July 1, 1996)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 356 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780895267115
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0895267115
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,035,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,063 in Political Economy
- #2,913 in Philosophy History & Survey
- #3,069 in Communism & Socialism (Books)

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4.2 99 ratings

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Karl Marx
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Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist, and revolutionary, whose ideas played a significant role in the development of modern communism. Marx summarized his approach in the first line of chapter one of The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Marx argued that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, would inevitably produce internal tensions which would lead to its destruction. Just as capitalism replaced feudalism, he believed socialism would, in its turn, replace capitalism, and lead to a stateless, classless society called pure communism. This would emerge after a transitional period called the "dictatorship of the proletariat": a period sometimes referred to as the "workers state" or "workers' democracy". In section one of The Communist Manifesto Marx describes feudalism, capitalism, and the role internal social contradictions play in the historical process: We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged...the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes.... The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring order into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.Marx argued for a systemic understanding of socio-economic change.
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Boethius
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Rodrigo Andrés García Pinochet
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Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

99 global ratings

5 star		64%
4 star		10%
3 star		14%
2 star		6%
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Sao Volak

Document that changed the world so much

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 2, 2009

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It may not be easy to fully understand the rationale behind what has origially driven Karl Max to write "Das Kapital", but this very document has surely created the Cold War that divided the world so deeply and so painfully. It caused so many lives, so much miserable living conditions to so million people around the world.

So far, there's maybe no other document in the world history that killed so many people with the same grave impact as Das Kapital.

Volak Sao
Phnom Penh

3 people found this helpful

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Andy

A+

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 15, 2019

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A+

One person found this helpful

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Nemo

Torturous

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 25, 2014

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This is the third work by Marx that I've read; The Communist Manifesto and The Eighteenth Brumaire previously. If you're going to read Marx, be prepared that his strong point isn't brevity. It can take pages, if not chapters, for Marx to make a point if ever a point is to be made. His writing is abstruse and many times inconsequential. If you've read Nietzsche, be prepared for similar madman rants.

If you want to save yourself some time, I suggest reading the Introduction by Serge Levitsky. He makes some lucid points about "Das Kapital". I agree with him as well that "Das Kapital" is "obsolete, irrelevant, and torturous prose."The book in a nut shell is this formula (though it is chock-full of formulas) Profit - Labor = Theft.

I disagree on nearly every point made in this book; few they were. Those that were made were not done so, to me, in full context. My major disagreement with Marx is that he hunts the wrong bogeyman. His bogeyman, the Capitalist, is nothing without the true power-broker, the State. Had this book been called "Das Staaten" and divulged all the ways in which the State creates monopoly, picks winners and losers, centralizes power, and colludes with Capitalists, etc...then I may have become a Marxist years ago. I've never been a vigorous follower of Praxeology, but if a case were to be made, it would begin with "Das Kapital".

Unfortunately, he makes a strenuous argument equating voluntary actions to slavery. Marx is selling something that I can't buy. The modern day irony is that this Luddite claptrap seems to be regaining popularity through Kindles, Ipads, and Nooks. I guess the Capitalists did win.

14 people found this helpful

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Matthew Markstone

Marx

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 17, 2009

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As a history teacher, it is always nice to get back into the text and re-discover what history is all about. Economic theory is somehting that has eluded me for a long time. This book is outstanding.

4 people found this helpful

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William Griffith

After reading this ponderous tome it is difficult for me ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 22, 2015

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After reading this ponderous tome it is difficult for me to understand how communism ever got started. The entire thesis is that plant owners make money and that they could make less and pay their labor more than a basic living wage.

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Wrong from page 3.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 6, 2002

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Marx got it all wrong. He derives his understanding of economics
not from the real world, but seemingly out of thin air. His first
real mistake come on page 3, when he asserts, without any good
reason, that use value can be completely omitted from his
derivation of exchange value. The Austrian school of economics,
exemplified by Ludwig vonMises and George Reisman, has shown that
use value can in fact be quantified, using a principle called
marginal utility. Not only can use value be quantified, but it
is the primary force in determining the market value of goods.
The second biggest problem seems to be his treatment of labor
as if it were some kind of substance. It may be simply a metaphor
on his part, but I get the feeling it isn't. Labor is an action,
not a substance intrinsically contained in commodities.
Some of his other mistakes, like his treatment of the source
of property rights, may be excusable considering the time period,
when most land could be traced to ownership by right of conquest,
but on the whole this book reads like sophistry for a hatered
and envy of producers, rather than a scholarly work of economics.

26 people found this helpful

Helpful

Daryn Haffer

Introduction has an extremely neoliberal capitalist bias. Levitsky used ...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 5, 2016

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Introduction has an extremely neoliberal capitalist bias. Levitsky used over half of the introduction calling it an "erroneous doctrine" that has already been proven false. He goes on to lay out events that he claims Karl Marx never foreshadowed and thus deems Das Kapital false of: joint stock (which the ruling class owns most of), the growing middle class (published in 2009 after the recession while the middle class had been shrinking for 40 years), unions making revolution not necessary (unions have been shrinking as well.) He claims that the text is abridged and all non applicable points to today's economy are left out. It seems some other people who wrote reviews have did some research on Levitsky and have found ties to conservative publishing.

How can one trust him after such a biased intro?

54 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Mid

Good book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 7, 2021

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👌

Amazon Customer

I liked it.( And I am not a socialist).

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 5, 2017

Verified Purchase

Still not an easy read, although immeasurably easier than the original. Highly recommended if you are unwilling, (or unable) to decipher the actual book, and seems to cover everything, in a more understandable prose.

2 people found this helpful

Karen

Prompt delivery

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 28, 2019

Verified Purchase

Required for university

D. R. Edmond

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 31, 2017

Verified Purchase

Great read and interesting perspective.

roberto

Okay

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 6, 2013

Verified Purchase

As much as i loathe communism, this book was very good at giving the reader a back ground and working knowledge of Marxism and the like. Very useful in a debate!

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