Karl Marx's great work, Capital, has intrigued and puzzled readers for more than a century by its mystifyingly intricate arguments and dramatic literary embellishments. In this book, Robert Paul Wolff dispels much of the mystery surrounding Capital by providing a literary-philosophical analysis of the text and of Marx's intentions. Writing in a lively, satirical, sometimes comical style that echoes Marx's own use of language, Wolff shows that Marx was at the very same time and in the very same texts a brilliant theoretical economist and a powerfully imaginative writer and that he deliberately forged an ironic voice in Capital in order to better communicate his theoretical arguments.