Reading Capital

Author: Louis Althusser
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844673472
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
Establishing a rigorous program of “symptomatic reading” that cuts through the silences and lacunae of Capital to reveal its philosophical core, Louis Althusser interprets Marx’s structural analysis of production as a revolutionary break—the basis of a completely new science. Building on a series of Althussers’s conceptual innovations that includes “overdetermination” and “social formation,” Étienne Balibar explores the historical and structural facets of production as Marx understood them, scrutinizing many of the most fundamental points in Capital, as though for the first time.

Representing Capital

Author: Fredric Jameson
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781681570
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
Representing Capital, Fredric Jameson’s first book-length engagement with Marx’s magnum opus, is a unique work of scholarship that records the progression of Marx’s thought as if it were a musical score. The textual landscape that emerges is the setting for paradoxes and contradictions that struggle toward resolution, giving rise to new antinomies and a new forward movement. These immense segments overlap each other to combine and develop on new levels in the same way that capital itself does, stumbling against obstacles that it overcomes by progressive expansions, which are in themselves so many leaps into the unknown.

Marx, Dead and Alive

Author: Andy Merrifield
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583678816
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
A contemporary interrogation of Marx’s masterwork Karl Marx saw the ruling class as a sorcerer, no longer able to control the ominous powers it has summoned from the netherworld. Today, in an age spawning the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, our society has never before been governed by so many conjuring tricks, with collusions and conspiracies, fake news and endless sleights of the economic and political hand. And yet, contends Andy Merrifield, as our modern lives become ever more mist-enveloped, the works of Marx can help us penetrate the fog. In Marx, Dead and Alive—a book that begins and ends beside Marx’s recently violated London graveside—Merrifield makes a spirited case for a critical thinker who can still offer people a route toward personal and social authenticity. Bolstering his argument with fascinating examples of literature and history, from Shakespeare and Beckett, to the Luddites and the Black Panthers, Merrifield demonstrates how Marx can reveal our individual lives to us within a collective perspective—and within a historical continuum. Who we are now hinges on who we once were—and who we might become. This, at a time when our value-system is undergoing core “post-truth” meltdown.

How to Read Marx's Capital

Author: Michael Heinrich
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583678964
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 409

Book Description
An accessible companion to Karl Marx's essential Capital With the recent revival of Karl Marx's theory, a general interest in reading Capital has also increased. But Capital—Marx’s foundational nineteenth-century work on political economy—is by no means considered an easily understood text. Central concepts, such as abstract labor, the value-form, or the fetishism of commodities, can seem opaque to us as first-time readers, and the prospect of comprehending Marx’s thought can be truly daunting. Until, that is, we pick up Michael Heinrich’s How to Read Marx's Capital. Paragraph by paragraph, Heinrich provides extensive commentary and lucid explanations of questions and quandaries that arise when encountering Marx’s original text. Suddenly, such seemingly gnarly chapters as “The Labor Process and the Valorization Process” and “Money or the Circulation of Capital” become refreshingly clear, as Heinrich explains just what we need to keep in mind when reading such a complex text. Deploying multiple appendices referring to other pertinent writings by Marx, Heinrich reveals what is relevant about Capital, and why we need to engage with it today. How to Read Marx's Capital provides an illuminating and indispensable guide to sorting through cultural detritus of a world whose political and economic systems are simultaneously imploding and exploding.

A Companion to Marx's Capital

Author: David Harvey
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1844673596
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
“My aim is to get you to read a book by Karl Marx called Capital, Volume 1, and to read it on Marx’s own terms…” The biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression has generated a surge of interest in Marx’s work in the effort to understand the origins of our current predicament. For nearly forty years, David Harvey has written and lectured on Capital, becoming one of the world’s most foremost Marx scholars. Based on his recent lectures, this current volume aims to bring this depth of learning to a broader audience, guiding first-time readers through a fascinating and deeply rewarding text. A Companion to Marx’s Capital offers fresh, original and sometimes critical interpretations of a book that changed the course of history and, as Harvey intimates, may do so again. David Harvey’s video lecture course can be found here: davidharvey.org/reading-capital/

How to Read Marx's Capital

Author: Stephen Shapiro
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745325613
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
Capital Volume I is essential reading on many undergraduate courses, but the structure and style of the book can be confusing for students, leading them to abandon the text. This book is a clear guide to reading Marx's classic text, which explains the reasoning behind the book's structure and provides help with the more technical aspects that non-economists may find taxing.Students are urged to think for themselves and engage with Marx's powerful methods of argument and explanation. Shapiro shows that Capital is key to understanding critical theory and cultural production.This highly focused book will prove invaluable to students of politics, cultural studies and literary theory.

How to Be a Revolutionary

Author: C.A. Davids
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1839760877
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
Winner of the 2023 UJ Prize Winner of the 2023 Sunday Times Literary Award An extraordinary, ambitious, globe-spanning novel about what we owe our consciences Fleeing her moribund marriage in Cape Town, Beth accepts a diplomatic posting to Shanghai. In this anonymous city she hopes to lose herself in books, wine, and solitude, and to dodge whatever pangs of conscience she feels for her fealty to a South African regime that, by the 21st century, has betrayed its early promises. At night, she hears the sound of typing, and then late one evening Zhao arrives at her door. They explore hidden Shanghai and discover a shared love of Langston Hughes--who had his own Chinese and African sojourns. But then Zhao vanishes, and a typewritten manuscript--chunk by chunk--appears at her doorstep instead. The truths unearthed in this manuscript cause her to reckon with her own past, and the long-buried story of what happened to Kay, her fearless, revolutionary friend... Connecting contemporary Shanghai, late Apartheid-era South Africa, and China during the Great Leap Forward and the Tiananmen uprising--and refracting this globe-trotting and time-traveling through Hughes' confessional letters to a South African protege about the poet's time in Shanghai--How to Be a Revolutionary is an amazingly ambitious novel. It's also a heartbreaking exploration of what we owe our countries, our consciences, and ourselves.

Understanding Marx’s Capital: A reader’s guide

Author: Adam Booth
Publisher: Wellred Books
ISBN: 1913026116
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

Book Description
Marx's Capital was a book that revolutionised political economy and for the first time opened our eyes to the real workings of capitalism. It was, however, met with a wall of silence from the mainstream economists and the establishment. Despite this, Capital became regarded in the workers' movement as the Bible of the working class... The aim of this book, written by authors from the International Marxist Tendency, is to help guide readers through the pages of volume one of Capital; to bring out the main themes and ideas contained within it; and to discuss the relevance of this great Marxist classic in terms of understanding the crisis-ridden world around us today - and, most importantly, how we can radically transform it.

The Concept in Crisis

Author: Nick Nesbitt
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822372908
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
The publication of Reading Capital—by Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey, and Jacques Rancière—in 1965 marked a key intervention in Marxist philosophy and critical theory, bringing forth a stunning array of concepts that continue to inspire philosophical reflection of the highest magnitude. The Concept in Crisis reconsiders the volume’s reading of Marx and renews its call for a critique of capitalism and culture for the twenty-first century. The contributors—who include Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, and Fernanda Navarro—interrogate Althusser's contributions in particular within the context of what is surely the most famous collective reading of Marx ever undertaken. Among other topics, they offer a symptomatic critique of Althusser; consider his writing as a materialist production of knowledge; analyze the volume’s conceptualization of value and crisis; examine how leftist Latin American leaders like Che Guevara and Subcomandante Marcos engaged with Althusser and Reading Capital; and draw out the volume's implications and use for feminist theory and praxis. Retrieving the inspiration that drove Althusser's reinterpretation of Marx, The Concept in Crisis explains why Reading Capital's revolutionary inflection retains its critical appeal, prompting readers to reconsider Marx's relevance in an era of neoliberal capitalism. Contributors. Emily Apter, Alain Badiou, Étienne Balibar, Bruno Bosteels, Adrian Johnston, Warren Montag, Fernanda Navarro, Nick Nesbitt, Knox Peden, Nina Power, Robert J. C. Young

33 Lessons on Capital

Author: Harry Cleaver
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN: 9780745339979
Category : Capital
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This book provides an up-to-date reading of Capital Volume I, emphasizing the relevance of Marx's analysis to everyday twenty-first century struggles. Harry Cleaver's treatise outlines and critiques Marx's analysis chapter by chapter. His unique interpretation of Marx's labour theory of value reveals how every theoretical category of Capital designates aspects of class struggle in ways that help us resist and escape them. At the same time, while rooted within the tradition of workerism, he understands the working class to include not only the industrial proletariat but also unwaged peasants, housewives, children and students. A challenge to scholars and an invaluable resource for students and activists today.