The 150th anniversary of the publication of Capital
September 14 was the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Capital by Karl Marx. It marked a turning point in mankind’s intellectual and historical development. With its publication, the laws of motion of capitalist society were laid bare, the causes of the social depredations it unleashed were revealed, and, most importantly, the struggle for a world free of exploitation and the establishment of genuine human freedom—that is, the struggle for socialism—was transformed from a matter of hopes and aspirations into a science.
On August 16, 1867, at two in the morning, after he had finished checking the last proofs, Marx wrote to his lifelong friend and collaborator, Frederick Engels: “So this volume is finished. I owe it to you alone that it was possible. Without your self-sacrifice for me I could not have managed the immense labour demanded…”
Summing up the enormous achievement, Engels explained in his graveside speech on the death of Marx some 16 years later that just as Darwin had discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx had discovered the law of development of human society and history.
Before Marx, the study of these questions had been dominated by religious mystification or the invocation of moral precepts and ideology. Marx established that human society was to be explained not from its ideological conceptions—art, politics, philosophy, the spirit of the age, etc.—but from its economic development, on the basis of which its institutions and ideological conceptions arose.
Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/09/18/pers-s18.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
