CONTENTS: Introduction - Labour, Necessary product, Surplus Product - Exchange, Commodity, Value - Money, Capital, Surplus-value - The Development of Capital - The Contradictions of Capitalism - Trade - Credit - Money - Agriculture- Reproduction and the Growth of National Income - Periodical Crises - Monopoly Capitalism - Imperialism - The Epoch of Capitalist Decline - The Soviet Economy - The Economy of the Transition Period - Socialist Economy - Origin, Rise and Withering Away of Political Economy- Bibliography - Index

"Is alienation, or estrangement from one's fellow human beings, an innate and inevitable condition of human existence? The authors of this book say no. They explain that alienation is rooted in the development of class society itself, in the alienation of labor under all systems of private property from slavery to capitalism, where the products of the hands and minds of the vast majority are taken from them and controlled by the propertied class. Mandel and Novack argue that alienation can be overcome through the revolutionary fight for a society both free of domination by the capitalist class, and with complete democratic control of the government and economy by working people" -- Back cover.