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Karl MarxA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Socialism introduces a new way of thinking about human fulfillment. Private property renders people subject to the alien power of money, constantly infusing them with new desires even as the value of their money decreases. A vicious cycle ensues where a person spends all their money on luxuries, making them desperate to earn more money which they then fritter away once more. Private property cannot satisfy genuine human wants, especially for sociability, in large part because it degrades the person to the point where they are locked in an endless struggle with everyone else for financial advantage. They will readily flatter, deceive, threaten, and debase themselves as long as it retains the prospect of making money. Capitalism has alienated human beings from one another, and even from nature itself, trapping them in factories or overcrowded apartments, or else being kicked out into filthy city streets. Such people are worse off than even animals, unable to enjoy even basic sensory pleasures as they subsist on substandard food. According to the capitalist, they have simplified human life to the need for money and the consequent performance of a rote mechanical task. The more someone debases themselves, the more capitalism rewards them as the ideal worker and punishes anyone who seeks out more.
By Karl Marx
Das Kapital
Das Kapital
Karl Marx
The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Karl Marx
The German Ideology
The German Ideology
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels
Wage Labour and Capital & Value, Price and Profit
Wage Labour and Capital & Value, Price and Profit
Karl Marx