Michael Heinrich, How to Read Marx’s Capital, 2021 ✓

The first two chapters of Capital are the most difficult parts of the entire book and present major problems for readers. Nevertheless, these initial chapters are of central importance for Marx’s later arguments, so understanding them is especially important. That’s why this volume comments in detail on these chapters. On the one hand, it should make reading easier; on the other, it should clarify the contents of these chapters and what is frequently overlooked during a first reading. Hence, they could help even those who have already read the beginning of Capital to learn something new.

The first chapters of Capital deal with the interrelationship between value, labor, and money. Marx had already dealt many times with this problem, which is central to his critique of political economy. He addresses it at the beginning of the Grundrisse (1857–58) and in the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). A treatment of the issue is later found in the first edition of Capital (1867), only to be revised considerably in the second edition (1872–73). These different versions are not mere repetitions; their differences sometimes express advances in knowledge or changes in emphasis but sometimes also problematic simplifications. Therefore, it seemed to make sense to comment not only on the most recent versions, which appear in most editions of Capital, but also to deal with other versions.