This book provides a comprehensive guide to all three volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital, with advice on further reading and points for further discussion. Recognizing the contemporary relevance of Capital in the midst of the current financial crisis, Kenneth Smith has produced an essential guide to Marx’s ideas, particularly on the subject of the circulation of money-capital.

This guide uniquely presents the three volumes of Capital in a different order of reading to that in which they were published, placing them instead in the order that Marx himself sometimes recommended as a more user-friendly way of reading. Dr Smith also argues that, for most of the twentieth century, the full development of the capitalist mode of production (CMP) has been undermined by the existence of a non-capitalist ‘third world’, which has caused the CMP to take on the form of what Marx called a highly developed mercantile system, rather than one characterized by an uninterrupted circuit of industrial capital of the kind he expected would develop.

While the guide can be read as a book in its own right, it also contains detailed references to Volumes I–III so that students, seminars and discussion groups can easily make connections between Dr Smith’s explanations and the relevant parts of Capital. Both user-friendly and comprehensive, Karl Marx’s Capital: A Guide to Volumes I-III will be useful to undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, political science, philosophy and economics, as well as to the general reader with a keen interest in Marx’s Capital and its relevance to the world today.

Dr Kenneth Smith is the author of Emile Durkheim and the Collective Consciousness of Society, a Study in Criminology (Anthem Press, 2014) and Perspectivism, a Contribution to the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (The Bardwell Press, 2020).

Preface to the Second Edition; Introduction; Part I: The Development of the Capitalist Mode of Production; 1. Absolute and Relative Surplus Value in Capital,Vol. I, Ch. 10 and 12; 2. Cooperation and the Division of Labour in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 13–14; 3. Machinery and Modern Industry in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 15; 4. Primitive Accumulation in Capital, Vol. I, Part VIII, Ch. 26–33; Part II: The Capitalist Mode of Production; 5. Simple Reproduction in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 7, 11 and 23; 6. Extended Reproduction in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 24; 7. Simple Reproduction in Capital, Vol. II, Sections 1–8 55; 8. Extended Reproduction in Capital, Vol. II, Ch. 21, Section 3; 9. The Precipitation of Fixed Capital in Capital, Vol. II, Ch. 21, Sections 1–2; Ch. 20, Section 11; Part III: The Underdevelopment of the Capitalist Mode of Production; 10. Mercantilism and the Circuit of Industrial Capital in Capital, vol. II, Part I, Ch. 1–4; 11. Credit and the Dissolution of the CMP in Capital, Vol. III, Ch. 27; 12. Rudolf Hilferding and ‘Finance Capital’: Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 2; 13. Marx on Development and Underdevelopment in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 5; 14. The Tendency of the Rate of Profi t to Fall in Capital, Vol. III, Parts I–III, Ch. 1–15, but especially Ch. 14–15; Part IV: The Value Theory of Labour; 15. The Rate of Profit and the Rate of Surplus Value in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 9, Section 3, and Vol. III, Parts I and III; 16. The Degree of Exploitation of Labour by Capital in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 9, Section 1; Ch. 6–7; 17. The Labour Theory of Value and the Value Theory of Labour in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 1, Sections 1–3; 18. The Reification of Commodity Fetishism in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 4, and Vol. III, Ch. 24; Conclusion; Appendix: On Social Classes; Notes; Bibliography; Index

‘Marx’s work continues to be of unrivalled analytic significance for making sense of the trials and tribulations of the global capitalist economy. The timely publication of Ken Smith’s excellent guide to Marx’s “Capital” will prove to be of great value to researchers, teachers and students striving to make sense of the state we are in.’ —Barry Smart, Professor of Sociology, University of Portsmouth