How to read capital in the twenty-first century

Abstract

Critics frequently claim that important aspects of Marx’s Capital have been rendered irrelevant by changes in capitalism that have subsequently taken place. The present essay argues that these allegations of irrelevance are often based on misunderstandings or misrepresentations of the book’s genre. For example, it is evaluated as if it were a descriptive work rather than a theoretical one, or as if it were about capitalism as a whole rather than the capitalist mode of production. The essay then turns to specific arguments put forward by Silvia Federici, Jonathan Sperber, and Paul A. Baran and Paul Sweezy in their efforts to impugn the relevance of Marx’s theories of the reproduction of laborpower and the tendential fall in the rate of profit. It argues that these efforts fail, partly because the critics do not fully appreciate Capital’s genre.