"Karl Marx's Das Kapital" [podcast 4 min 39 sec]

With Labor Day just around the corner, we revisit one of the seminal 19th century works that recognized the central role of labor in the creation of capital. We look at Karl Marx's Das Kapital: A Critique of Political Economy -- or at least volume 1 of the 3-volume work, first published in 1867 while Marx was still alive (he died in 1883). The other two volumes were postumously published. Das Kapital explored the fundamental laws that shaped capitalist production and sought to expose the ironies and exploitative relations underlying modern capitalism. For more information about Das Kapital, see Francis Wheen's Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography (Monthly Review Press, 2007). Das Kapital is widely available on line in various editions. The short audio reading selection we aired -- from the Preface of volume 1 of Das Kapital -- comes to use from LibriVox (www.librivox.org).