Karl Marx’s Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 is a landmark of political and philosophical thought, a profound investigation into the essence of capitalism—its mechanisms, its historical emergence, and its world-shaping consequences. This definitive new edition, translated by Paul Reitter, with editorial insights from Paul North, a foreword by renowned political theorist Wendy Brown, and an afterword by William Clare Roberts, represents a momentous return to the text as Marx himself finalized it in his lifetime. Based on the last German edition revised by Marx in 1872, this translation restores not only the theoretical precision and analytical force of Capital, but also the literary richness, humour, and irony of Marx’s prose, elements often lost in prior English versions. It is a Capital for the twenty-first century, bridging Marx’s historical critique with contemporary concerns of labour, value, exploitation, and global inequity.
Written during a period of intense personal struggle and historical upheaval, Capital is the product of Marx’s intellectual and material experience, shaped by decades of exhaustive research, personal privation, and passionate involvement in revolutionary politics. Marx’s insights into the capitalist mode of production emerged from his exile in England, a country at the center of industrial capitalism’s development, where the contradictions and brutality of the system were starkly evident. During this period, he encountered firsthand the squalor of working-class life, the unrelenting pressure of debt and illness, and the relentless tempo of factory production. These experiences imbued his theoretical work with an urgency and a clarity that remains startlingly relevant today. Capital, then, is not merely an academic treatise but a work forged in the crucible of historical reality—a synthesis of philosophy, political economy, and social critique that aims to lay bare the “hidden abode of production,” the place where surplus-value is extracted from labor, where exploitation occurs, and where the foundations of modern society are constituted.
At the core of Capital is Marx’s theory of value, a constructed framework that reveals how capitalist production is driven by the pursuit and augmentation of value—a social relation that manifests itself in the commodity form. For Marx, commodities are not merely objects of utility; they are the crystallized embodiment of labor power, dual entities possessing both “use-value” (their material utility) and “exchange-value” (their worth in the market). This dual nature is the foundation of capitalism’s illusionary surface, a mystification that conceals the exploitative relationship between capitalists and workers. The concept of “fetishism of commodities,” introduced early in Capital, encapsulates this mystification, whereby social relations between people assume the fantastical form of relations between things. The object world of commodities thus acquires a spectral quality, animated by labor yet appearing autonomous, as if endowed with a life of its own. This phenomenon is not a trivial abstraction; it is the very means by which capitalism reproduces itself, masking its inherent contradictions and the violence it entails.
Through a series of logically rigorous yet historically grounded arguments, Marx dissects the processes of capital accumulation and the extraction of surplus-value—the unpaid labor appropriated by capitalists. This analysis exposes the fundamental antagonism at the heart of capitalism: the conflict between the owners of the means of production and the laborers who must sell their capacity to work in order to survive. Marx’s concept of “surplus-value” is pivotal, illustrating how profit is derived not from fair exchange but from the exploitation of labor power. Wages, Marx argues, obscure this reality by giving the appearance of an equitable transaction, while in fact the worker’s labor produces more value than is returned in wages. The “capital relation,” therefore, is one of systemic extortion, where the freedom of the worker is a bitter irony—free to sell their labor, yet bound to conditions of exploitation.
Marx’s method of “critique” is not merely a negative deconstruction of political economy’s assumptions but an unveiling of the deeper dynamics and relations that classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo left unexamined. Unlike bourgeois economists, who began with surface phenomena like market exchanges and prices, Marx insists on descending into the “hidden abode” of production, where value is created and where the social relations of capitalism are constituted. This methodological approach is deeply influenced by Hegelian dialectics, yet Marx’s “materialist dialectic” remains tethered to the concrete realities of social and economic life. The movement of his analysis, from abstract categories to their concrete expressions, mirrors the movement of capital itself, which continually abstracts labor and resources into the generalized form of value.
Throughout Capital, Marx’s prose is marked by a dynamic exchange of theoretical abstraction and empirical detail. He draws on an astonishing range of sources—parliamentary reports, factory inspector testimonies, economic data, historical accounts—to ground his critique in the lived reality of workers under industrial capitalism. This empirical rigor lends a visceral quality to his arguments; his descriptions of child labor, working hours, and the conditions of factories are searing indictments of a system that prioritizes value accumulation over human well-being. The famous chapter on “The Working Day” is a masterful example of this synthesis, combining legal history, statistical analysis, and rhetorical power to demonstrate how capital’s relentless drive for surplus-value extends the working day to the point of physical and mental exhaustion. Marx’s anger—transmuted into the cold steel of critique—infuses these pages, giving Capital its relentless moral force.
The historical dimension of Capital is crucial to understanding its critique. Marx situates capitalism within a broader trajectory of social and economic development, showing how “primitive accumulation”—the violent expropriation of land, resources, and labor—laid the foundation for the modern capitalist system. This “so-called primitive accumulation,” which includes the enclosures of common lands in England, the transatlantic slave trade, and colonial conquest, reveals capitalism’s origins in dispossession and bloodshed. These historical processes continue to reverberate in the contemporary global economy, where exploitation, expropriation, and environmental degradation are ongoing features of capitalist expansion. Marx’s analysis thus provides a lens through which to view the persistence of inequality, racialized labor exploitation, and ecological destruction in the present day.
In the foreword by Wendy Brown, the enduring relevance of Capital is explored with incisive clarity. Brown situates Marx’s critique within the context of late capitalism, marked by financialization, digital economies, and environmental crisis. She shows how Marx’s insights into value, commodification, and exploitation illuminate the contemporary world’s structural injustices and systemic contradictions. Similarly, William Clare Roberts’ afterword reflects on the legacy of Capital and its ongoing significance for political struggles and theoretical inquiry. These contributions, along with the annotations and commentary by Paul North and Paul Reitter, make this edition not only a faithful rendering of Marx’s thought but also a critical companion for navigating the complexities of our capitalist world.
Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 remains an unparalleled work of critique, a monument of human thought that continues to challenge, illuminate, and inspire. In this definitive translation, the power of Marx’s critique is renewed, offering contemporary readers a deeper understanding of capitalism’s logic, its historical development, and its devastating human consequences. For those seeking to comprehend the forces that shape our world, and for those committed to transforming it, this edition of Capital is indispensable—a work that is, in the words of Marx, a “weapon of criticism” that may yet become a “material force.”
Simon Gros 
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