Das Kapital 150 Years Later

Both the admirers and critics of Das Kapital agree that it was one of the most influential books of the 19th century. As Nancy Holmstrom said, it is “an unsurpassed explanation of the very specific nature and development of the system of capitalism.” 150 years later, people believe that it still provides a relevant and…

Concepts of Class The concept of class poses profound problems for theory and practice. This is true across the academic disciplines and in the confused incoherence around “class issues” when concepts of class surface in economic, political and cultural discourses. Since 1945, the Cold War and its lingering effects prevented many discussions of social trends,…

It is not surprising that Karl Marx is having a comeback today, after the 2008 financial crisis, the growing awareness of capitalism’s propensity to crises and ecological problems, and the fact that global inequality has increased to an obscene degree – all of which Marx foresaw. That this is all happening 150 years after the…

Today, one hundred and fifty years after the publication of the first volume of Capital, Marx remains our contemporary. The commodification imperative (goods and services must take the form of commodities), the monetary imperative (money is required to gain access to the objective preconditions for human life – means of subsistence, means of production), and…

We are witnessing an era of conservative backlash on gender rights. Nearly across the board, women make less than men, make up a majority of those in poverty (70% of those in extreme poverty), and face the real prospect of becoming a victim of sexual violence (1-3 internationally).[1] In the US, for example, women’s reproductive…

Marx’s Capital has been heralded for many things, but providing an exhaustive account of a future socialist society isn’t one of them. And for good reason, since it is exclusively concerned with delineating the law of motion of capitalism. Nevertheless, Marx’s univocal focus on the critique of capital is precisely what enables him to develop…

This presentation is about time-travel, but not 150 years into the future. We’ll go back, then forward to the present. Let’s begin by stepping into our time-travel machine, and going back, not 150 years, but 50 years. More precisely, 47 years, Columbus, Ohio, mid-summer 1970. We enter a large, three-story house near the campus of…