Carnegie Mellon University

Das Kapital
Illustrious but Ill-Read

Exhibit by Posner Center intern, David Haeselin
Fall 2013


Karl Marx’s critique of the industrial revolution - Das Kapital (1867) - has secured its place as one of the most important and contentious theoretical works in modern intellectual history. Just four years after the book’s original German publication, supporters formed a Marxist Party, though few would have read his magnum opus. What’s more, this trend has persisted for the nearly one hundred and fifty years since the three-volume work’s publication. Accordingly, this exhibit explores the actual transmission of Marx’s ideas via pamphlets, excerpts, reading guides, adaptations, journalism and cheap reprints including his most widely read work, “The Communist Manifesto.

Karl MarxGellert








Images: Amazon, Karl Marx' 'Capital' in Lithographs