Das Kapital is "a groundbreaking work of economic analysis, but also an unfinished literary masterpiece which, with its multi-layered structure, can be read as a Gothic novel, a Victorian melodrama, a Greek tragedy or a Swiftian satire." Francis Wheen, The Guardian.

Though he died in 1883, Karl Marx's Das Kapital, "the Bible of the working class," has been the book that most shaped twentieth-century history. His theories divided much of the world into two blocs, one embracing communism and the other fearing it, and cast a shadow into the twenty-first century.

Although Marx writes as a philosopher and economist presenting an analysis of an economic system, the book is surprisingly readable. It reads like a Gothic novel "whose heroes are enslaved and consumed by the monster they created."

Though many disagree with Marx's conclusions, his analysis has been almost universally respected. Surprisingly, it is Marx, and not Adam Smith who understood the central role of capital. The historian Gareth Stedman Jones wrote: