Category Archives: Capital

Tractors, Marx and Sowing Seeds

A woman in a trim blue padded coat stopped and asked if she could help. Blond hair blew in whisps across her face. She was all smiles and sparkly eyes. I was standing at a road junction near the railway station at Shepherdswell studying an Ordnance Survey map. I looked at her over the topContinue reading “Tractors, Marx and Sowing Seeds”

When Marx went to Morrisons…

…Hegel came too In the film The Million Pound Note Gregory Peck plays the character of the American sailor Henry Adams. He has been blown off course in his schooner, picked up in the Atlantic and ends up in London penniless. Two eccentric brothers, Oliver and Roderick Montpelier see him in the street (he isContinue reading “When Marx went to Morrisons…”

In the beginning was the commodity

The question is raised as to why Marx starts Capital with the ‘commodity’. It’s right there in the first line of the first chapter of the first volume: “The wealth of societies dominated by the capitalist mode of production appears in the form of an ‘enormous accumulation of commodities’ “. Why did Marx start withContinue reading “In the beginning was the commodity”

(Night) train to Antwerpen

The most unlikely places create stimulation. Stepping out into Kings Cross from a train that’s just arrived from the coast. Into the middle of a world city. The train ran up from east Kent and the Channel could be seen alongside the track. Grey and steel-like, container ships and tankers and bulk carriers in theContinue reading “(Night) train to Antwerpen”

Visions of Marx….endlessly

The only part of Capital to be published in Marx’s lifetime was volume one. It first came into being in Hamburg in 1867. Throughout the book Marx confidently asserts that ‘more of this will appear in volume two’, ‘this argument will continue in volume three’ and so on. But those later volumes were not finalisedContinue reading “Visions of Marx….endlessly”

A Funeral

Strange dreams; dreams are always strange. In the English countryside, early November days, the medieval period comes alive once more. Here and there, cottages in the misty late afternoon. Low cut tress, copper hues, dried blood red, dark green tones as life fades from the summer leaves. Winter trees appear, dark shadows, the starkness ofContinue reading “A Funeral”

Canary Wharf: First Impressions

The Radical Walk, Canary Wharf & Marx’s Literary Style is on Thursday 16 May A short promotional film about Canary Wharf Impressions matter. This is a time of accelerated media production. An ever increasing number of image-objects, a relentless global expansion of capital, billions of packets of data each second moving almost at the speedContinue reading “Canary Wharf: First Impressions”