A volume of Das Kapital becomes a $40,000 commodity fetish: what would Karl Marx have said?

The sale by Abebooks turns the monumental critique of capitalism into rich profit for one giant private owner

One has to wonder what Karl Marx would make of news from Abebooks that it has scored a coup with the sale of a volume of Das Kapital for $40,000, its second-highest cyber-trade of the year so far.

Abe's blog celebration links the sale to the current, rather spectacular heights of the stock market: "On the day that the Dow Jones index closed at an all-time high of 17,068 points, [we] sold a first edition of Karl Marx's Das Kapital for $40,000." Yet investment in fetish-vessels of cash in the form of fine art, memorabilia, and antiques is very often the resort of rich capitalists anxious about falling markets. If equities are zooming up, rich folks generally leave their money "working for them".

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