Irfan Habib — Karl Marx And His Conception Of History

Good summary of the basic Marxist world view, which Marx got essentially correct in my view. It's what we now call economic sociology/anthropology. In my view also, economic sociologists and economic anthropologists are much closer to getting it right than theoretical economists, most of whom have lost the big picture by overly limiting the scope and scale of their inquiry.

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Karl Marx And His Conception Of History

Irfan Habib

(Irfan means wisdom, gnosis in Arabic. Habib means the Beloved.)

Marx’s “Capital” at 150: History in Capital, Capital in History

Today a new generation, experiencing major capitalist crises, increasingly concerned about its prospects and rising inequality, is powering radical movements in the homelands of capitalism behind figures and forces such as Sanders, Corbyn, Mélanchon, Die Linke, Podemos and Cinque Stelle. Will it bring Capital back into the history of these countries? Not before the burden of western misinterpretation that has accumulated over it for a century and a half, nearly crushing it, is removed. That involves rejecting more of our intellectual legacy, mainstream and ‘Marxist’, than we imagine....

What does all this mean for those approaching Capital today? Quite simply, Capital will not re-enter history, the one you must make to prevent capitalism taking humanity down with it, unless you recover the history in it. Park your ahistorical economics and social sciences at the door before you enter. They are not aids to understanding the greatest analysis of how we got here and where we might be headed. Read what Marx says. Pay no attention to those that tell you Capital is hard: they are merely saying ‘read my book first’. You have limited time: spend it on reading Capital. If you must read an introduction, Ernest Mandel’s, remarkably brief and unsullied by the problems discussed here, will do amply. Remember, Capital was serialised in a workers’ paper. You are today’s workers and Capital is your invitation card to history. 

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Marx’s “Capital” at 150: History in Capital, Capital in HistoryRadhika Desai | Professor at the Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada and author of Geopolitical Economy (2013)