Description

Today, we are witnessing an ongoing process of global industrialisation that is unprecedented in human history, accompanied by urbanisation, modernisation and the transition to a capitalist monetary economy across the globe. However, the new social and cultural conditions globally, and the new position and situation of wage earners globally, bear striking similarities to the situation in Europe during the rapid industrialisation of the mid-19th century.

It was then and there that Karl Marx wrote his magnum opus *Das Kapital*, one of the most significant works in the history of the social sciences and political thought. Marx’s theory of capitalism as a history-changing and society-transforming institutional structure and its associated social relations, in which the profit motive of capital is the central driving force, has thus acquired a renewed and paradoxical relevance.

In a newly written introduction to this sixth edition of the first volume of *Capital*, Mats Lindberg (formerly Dahlkvist) provides an introduction to the work and to Marx’s theory, building on the arguments in his influential doctoral thesis and study guide *Studying Capital* (new edition 2013). "Once upon a time, 'Capital' was the foremost comprehensive account of its era on modernity, capitalism and wage labour. I would like to ask whether ‘Capital’, despite all our developments in social science theory and all our advances in various social science disciplines, is perhaps still the most comprehensive theory of modern man’s contradictory and institutionally embedded living conditions.” From Mats Lindberg’s introduction (the introduction is also available as a separate publication).