Marx on economics.

This is a book on Marxian economics. Its general purpose is to permit the reader to discover the subtlety, complexity, and imaginative genius of Marx for himself. Most students of Marxian economics rarely read the master, but are content to let his critics speak for him. This happens because the twenty-five hundred pages of Capital, three hun dred pages of The Critique of Political Economy, more than four hundred pages of Theories of Surplus Value, his Critique of the Gotha Programme, German Ideology, Communist Manifesto, and other writings are forbidding in volume and turgid in prose. Beyond this, economic doctrines are scattered repetitiously throughout his works, seemingly without system. Marx often overwhelms his reader not only by the bulk of his writing, but also by the power of his expression and the force of his logic.

This volume has as its function bringing together in one place, as systematically arranged and logically ordered as possible, all of Marx's major statements respecting ideology and methodology, Marxian economics, and the shape of socialism and communism. The main focus of the collection is, of course, Marx's analysis of the nature of capitalism. Difficult decisions had to be made about when to cut and how to arrange the mass of material.