A Reader's Guide To Marx's Capital.

The first volume of Marx's Capital was published 150 years ago. It continues to entice readers eager to grapple with the author's account of the 'laws of motion' of capitalism. Yet for many, Capital can seem a forbidding work. This book, by Joseph Choonara, author of Unravelling Capitalism, is aimed at both individual readers and Capital reading groups. It takes each chapter of the first volume of Capital in turn, leading the reader through Marx's key arguments and offering insights and contemporary examples that can provide further illumination.

"[P]erhaps, the most useful guide in reading Capital today is a new book by Joseph Choonara, A Reader's Guide to Marx's Capital... Choonara takes the reader through each chapter of Volume One with some clarifying analysis and relevant comment to help. Choonara says that "It is designed to be read in parallel with Capital itself, with each chapter of this book consulted either before or after digesting the relevant sections of Marx's work."  The aim, unlike that of Harvey's more comprehensive approach in his video lectures, is "instead to dwell on those areas that are the most vital to an overall understanding of the work and those that most often confuse, drawing on my own experience teaching Capital to left-wing audiences of students and workers over the past decade"... Choonara is not afraid to take a view on what Marx means, particularly in the more difficult early chapters on value. There are many...useful commentaries by Choonara on aspects of Capital: on the nature of alienation, productive and unproductive labour, mental and material labour, complex and simple labour, on accumulation etc."--Michael Roberts, The Next Recession