Capital, Volume I

Main ideas

• Commodity, value and labour analysed as the grammar of capitalist society.
• Exploitation explained through surplus value rather than mere unfair exchange.
• Industrial discipline and accumulation documented through reports, statistics and historical narrative.

Important themes

Reading context

Published in 1867, an analysis of how capital produces value and how that process shapes work, time and the body. Marx writes as an economist of his own century, using British factory reports as evidence.

How to approach it

Chapter 1 on the commodity is famously difficult. Many readers start at chapter 10 on the working day, where the evidence is vivid, and return to the theory afterwards.