Book excerpt: A clear and compact guide to Marx’s road to Das Kapital Ernest Mandel traces the development of Marx’s economic ideas from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts to the completion of the Grundrisse. In a series of crystalline chapters, he provides an overview of subjects central to Marxist economic theory. Mandel focuses on Marx’s concept of alienation, which gained much currency among Marxists in the twentieth century, and traces the development of debates surrounding the labour theory of value, and Marx’s writings on communism and “crisis.” These discussions remain pertinent today, and these texts vital to all those who wish to interpret and to change the world.