Karl Marx's Capital and the Present

Capitalism has been hugely transformed in the 150 years since the publication of the first German edition of Capital, especially with the rise to dominance of finance and the overwhelming presence of financial wealth. The essays in this book, originally delivered as four public lectures, revisit Karl Marx's Capital today, to use his characterization of the essential features of capitalism and his analysis of its laws of motion as a point of departure to understand the nature of contemporary capitalism and its dynamic. They also examine the factors determining the recurrence of severe crises that afflict capitalism today and discuss the reasons that may explain the resilience of the system despite those disruptions.