‘Marx’s Das Capital For Beginners’ by Michael Wayne & Sungyoon Choi, For Beginners

‘Marx’s Das Capital For Beginners’ by Michael Wayne and Sungyoon Choi is a introduction to ‘Das Kapital’ (Capital), the masterpiece in the modern world, by a German philosopher, sociologist, economist and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx.

Digests of each chapters are below.
Introduction – ‘Das Kapital’ is a criticism to capitalism, not only a explain about it. Marx’s economics in the book peculiar. it includes economics, philosophy, politics, sociology, history and literature. The chief aim of his consideration in ‘Das Kapital’ is why and how economic categories such as money, profit, capital and so forth actively repress the social content with determines them.
Chapter 1 – Commodity has a use value and an exchange value. Human beings have always produced use values in order to survive and in order to develop. But in capitalism society, use values are combined with exchange values. Exchange value is the value to exchange for each other and it finds its expression in price. The value is measured by money, means of easily exchange. Money is pure exchange value can exchange different qualities of commodities. On the hand human labor turned abstract, and this abstract labor produces value of commodities, then is equivalent, can be exchanged and measured by money.
Chapter 2 – Basically, our economics and daily life carry on circulation of equivalent exchange money and commodity in market. But, in capitalist or bourgeois society people are motivated by the pursuit of self-interest. Surplus value added commodities and the phenomenon brings imbalance and inequality to capitalist society.
Chapter 3 – Marx thought there are two circuits of exchange one is the simple circulation of commodities, another is the circulation of money as capital. The circulation of money, adds to itself a surplus value, which converts into capital. Workers sold their labor power in labor market. Labor became a commodity to be purchased by capitalists. Also human labor is the source of all social wealth, and produce ‘surplus’ value need not for survival. But capitalists don’t pay wages to ‘surplus labor time’ by Workers, which produces surplus values.
Chapter 4 – Author explains how Marx think about value. Marx divides capital into two types: constant capital and variable capital. Constant capital is the means and materials of production such as building, machine and raw materials. Variable capital is the human labor employed by capitalist. Value doesn’t produced only by constant capital. Making use of variable capital with constant capital adds value to commodities, and produces surplus values.
Chapter 5 – Author argues working condition and problems in modern world. Capitalists exploited surplus value produced by surplus labor work to gain private property. On the other hand, to produce surplus value, capitalist needs surplus labor by workers. Also innovation of technology made manager class labor workers. But excesses of surplus value consequences prices fall. Marx suggested innovation of technology shorten working hours, liberate human being from nature, and increase wealth for everyone. Marx is not only a revolutionist but also he considered social reforms by making use of the merits of capitalism.
Chapter 6 – Capitalist production is the system of reproducing production, and continuously extend the scale of itself. And, by Marx, capitalism expand and crises by overproduction. The causes are conflicts with the social inequalities caused by capitalism itself, and breakdowns in the flow of value caused by market competition. One of the consequences of crisis is the ‘centralization of capital’ which is the process whereby one portion of capital annexes, takes over and absorbs another portion of capital. And the process interacts with the ‘concentration of capital’ which refers to the growing mass of capital as a whole as more and more capital is accumulated.
Chapter 7 – Under capitalism, fetishism took the form of the commodity. The free worker is separated from the mean of production, the goods he produce. The commodity fetishism made by relationships of market, capital, commodities and money dominates our lives. Although the capitalist market made a realm of liberation, freedom, empowerment and individual agency. The general exchange of activities and products appears as to be a wide sphere of subjective and individual freedom. Influences of the material capitalist production dominate the means of mental production, and realized the ruling ideas of the ruling class. Phenomenal forms of the capitalist system (capital, commodities, exchange, markets, competition and so on) construct the idea-system or ideology. The idea system or ideology of bourgeois control social and economic interests, grasp ‘hegemony’ of a society.
Chapter 7 – Capitalism inverted the connection of human needs and their production. Value dominates the life of the human community, and people live in the world of commodity fetishism. Marx showed how capitalism placed the foundations for its own overthrow and its contradiction made the that necessary. The basis of transforming capitalism is capitalism itself.

This is a elementary introduction to ‘Das Capital’, not Marx’s entire life and thought. Author concentrates on comments on useful essences of ‘Das Kapital’ by making use of the fundamental economic key concepts of ‘Marx’s political economy’ such as capital, commodity, surplus value, fetishism and ideology. And he explains the theory of ‘Das Kapital’ by examples of economic cases, social affairs and social problems on contemporary society. Also he quotes statements to Marx and capitalism problems of many thinkers. Author comments a reasonable and neutral view point to Marx, neither criticise nor applause. In each chapters, he mainly states ‘how Marx thought’ in ‘Das Kapital’ and other works, then he applied Marx theory to today’s actual economic scene in modern and contemporary times. the system of capitalism
By this book you can grasp and make out Marx’s economics or political economy. I think today’s significance of Marxist theory is in his consideration on relations among human beings, money, labor (or work), objects (or commodities) and some values (include capitals), not like numerical value on accounts or finance in the contemporary economics. But Marx himself was swayed by and couldn’t overcome the historical ideology and historical limit. I think we need criticise, extent and apply Marx’s economic theory.
This book is only a easy commentary to theories in ‘Das Kapital’, and author states a few his own answer and conclusion. So yet this book is an excellent first-step primer on Karl Marx or his voluminous great work ‘Das Kapital’.

And this book is one book of ‘For Beginners’ series, but it is not cartoon guide book, only attaches Illustrations in text. So it’s very readable to me.

Marx’s Das Capital For Beginners (For Beginners)
Michael Wayne, Illustrations by Sungyoon Choi
For Beginners LLC, Danbury, 29 May 2012
144 pages $16.99
ISBN: 978-1-934389-59-1
Contents:
Introduction
1. The Commodity
2. The Exchange of Commodities
3. Circulation and the Buying of Labor-Power
4. Value
5. Work Under Capitalism
6. Reproduction and Crises
7. Commodity Fetishism and Ideology
8. After Capitalism?

‘Marx in 90 Minutes’ by Paul Strathern, Ivan R. Dee

‘Marx in 90 Minutes’ by Paul Strathern is a introduction to the thought and man of a German philosopher, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist Karl Marx.

On the main content ‘Marx’s Life and Works’ Strathern describes Marx’s biography along with his thought and philosophy.
Karl Marx was born in Trier, Kingdom of Prussia, and his family is a German Jewish affluent family. The cosmopolitan atmosphere and comfortable bourgeois surroundings were to have significant influences on Marx. And his father Herschel converted to Christianity. This enabled Karl to join German middle class society and European culture (Kant and Voltaire). Marx entered the Bonn University, and a year later Marx transferred to the University of Berlin to continue law studies. In there, Marx encountered philosophy and Hegel’s idealistic vast, all-embracing and ever-evolving system of philosophy. This dynamic system affected all history and all phenomenons. Hegel’s philosophy of history applied government and society. By Hegel, the Prussian state is the ideal liberal society made by a link of the state and citizens. But Hegel’s philosophy was idealism, it insisted that all was moving toward the absolute spirit, was made Marx disappointed but he influenced by Hegel’s dynamism and the dialectical method. Equal to Hegel, another large influence on Marx’s thought was the materialism of a German humanist and moralist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. Marx participated in the Left Hegelians, and he attempted to mix the dialectical theory of consciousness and historical reality by the school with the materialism learned by Feuerbach. After worked at journalist of a liberal newspaper, Marx was exiled from his homeland, move to Paris, Brussels and London, met and formed a friendly relation with a bourgeois Communist Friedrich Engels, and joined the Communist League and wrote the ‘Communist Manifesto’ with Engels. In this era he intensively study Economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and form his own materialist epistemology to percept activities in the world. In London, Marx continued to study philosophy of Hegel and Feuerbach, classical economics and collect economic statistics to prepare for his original economic work. By 1859 Marx completed his first economic work ‘Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’. In this book, he stated his economic materialism. Social life based is on economic relations. A superstructure of laws and social consciousness reflects the economic structure. Capitalism productions, private property, money and profit motive alienate men from the world and nature. Marx’s massive masterworks, ‘Das Kapital’ published in 1867, which investigates the mechanisms of capitalist economics. Marx viewed history as a succession of class struggles. As capitalism developed, the internal pressures arose, and the revolution by workers collapses the capitalist system. Karl Marx died in 1883. One of Marx’s contributions to philosophy is that it takes place within society, which is run on economic lines.

Strathern comments on forming and content of Marx’s thought along with his life, philosophical background and works. Author particularly explains how Marx formed his philosophy and thought, and the significance of Marx’s thought. The thought realized us what are the value and significance of existence in the modern society. And author also comments Marx didn’t nothing but attack for the capitalism. A socialist society or freedom of workers were fulfilled by reformations of capitalism. And Marx thought the socialist society and the communist society (fulfilled by a revolution) can be formed by adoption of the merits of the advanced capitalist economic and production system.
Also author points out mistakes of Marx. For example, private property and profit motive make us wealthy, and give us freedom in capitalist societies. But socialist societies deprived people of motives for work and innovation, freedom and humanity. And Marx misjudged the role of the capitalist. Capitalists are not wicked men, they are challengers devoted themselves entirely to business, production, innovation and gaining private property by using their own property. The innovation improves technology, science, our working, social and economical conditions. One of the problem of Marxist theory is that he couldn’t foreseen the development of reforms in politics, mass production, technology, science and education driven by the capitalism economics.
Author stands philosophically neutral in judging Marx’s thought. He both criticise and follow thought of Marx. It’s very regrettable majority of people dismissed with prejudice which formed by the dogmatic Marxist theory. I think, for example, concepts of commodity, capital and value-from by Marx are very significance also in today. We should reconsider proper or better capitalist society and capitalist production system by the thought of Marxist philosophy. This book is very helpful to study Marx for quite beginners.
Also you can read this book as an interesting brief biography of Marx. Author describes penniless and wandering life humorously. So I recommend this small book to the reader who what to get a basic understanding of Marx.

Marx in 90 Minutes (Philosophers in 90 Minutes Series)
Paul Strathern
Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 17 April 2001
96 pages $9.95
ISBN: 978-1-56663-355-0
Contents:
Introduction
Marx’s Life and Works
From Marx’s Writing
Chronology of Significant Philosophical Dates
Chronology of Marx’s Life and Times
Recommended Reading
Index