دانلود کتاب A Peoples Guide to Capitalism : an introduction to Marxist economics

Review by Marxist economist Michael Roberts

It is not easy explaining relatively complex ideas in a simple and clear manner. Ask any teacher. It’s a skill lacking in many. Hadas Thier has brilliantly succeeded in that challenge with her book introducing Marxist economics. She has delivered a clear, straightforward and entertaining explanation of all Marx’s basic theoretical insights into the nature and development of capitalism.

And she has done so using modern examples that help the reader to understand why Marxist political economy is so clinical in its analysis of the reality of modern capitalist economies. I would say nobody has done it better – and I ought to know because I have tried to do such in the past, but with nowhere near Thier’s success.

Thier says that her book “aims to follow the content and arc of Marx’s Capital. Capital’s three volumes were written to provide a theoretical arsenal to a workers’ movement for the revolutionary overthrow of the system—and to do so on the most scientific foundation possible.” But Thier rightly starts with the history of the emergence of capitalism before moving onto theory (the opposite of Marx’s approach in Capital). She deftly outlines the main concepts of Marxist economic theory, interspersed with excellent box insets on various key issues that stand on their own as insightful explanations. The subjects in these insets include: Marx on nature; the theory of marginal utility versus Marx’s value theory; how capitalism wastes so much resources; what is a bitcoin?; capitalism as a mode of production and so on.

Thier has written a fine introduction to Marx’s analysis of capitalism and one that can be regularly turned to in order to understand the waste, destruction and misery caused by the modern capitalist system of exploitation.