|
Indeed, this 'forgotten' volume, suggests Ernest Mandel in his stimulating Introduction, occupies a 'key place in the monumental theoretical construction'. For it is here that Marx analyses in depth the specific problems of the commodity - the basic cell of capitalist wealth - and fills in his picture of the market and the nature of value and surplus-value. That in turn allows him to show why capitalist growth will always be 'uneven, disproportionate and unharmonious' and to formulate his 'awe-inspiring prediction, borne out by empirical evidence ever since,' about 'the only possible remedy for economic crises of over-production and social crises of class struggle'. The result is a work of immense power and subtlety, one of the greatest achievments in the whole of social science.
|
