Reading Capital Politically – Harry Cleaver

Description

This book re-examines Karl Marx’s analysis of value through a detailed study of Chapter One of Volume 1 of Capital. The object of this study is to bring out the political usefulness of the analysis of value by situating the abstract concepts of Chapter One with Marx’s overall analysis of the class struggles of capitalist society. I intend to return to what I believe was Marx’s original purpose: he wrote Capital to put a weapon in the hands of workers. In it he presented a detailed analysis of the fundamental dynamics of the struggles between the capitalist and the working classes. By reading Capital as a political document, workers could study in depth the various ways in which the capitalist class sought to dominate them as well as the methods they themselves used to struggle against that domination.