The name of Karl Marx is often associated with the revolutionary political movements of the nineteenth and twentieth century that called themselves “Marxist,” and Marx’s best-known work is probably the Communist Manifesto, the political pamphlet that Marx cowrote with Friedrich Engels in 1848. Yet Marx’s crowning achievement was the in-depth, rigorous economic analysis of capitalism he spent his later years refining, which eventually became volumes I, II, and III of Capital.

Over 150 years since the first volume of Capital was published, Marx’s economic theories continue to be widely debated and discussed — and also maligned and misunderstood. Jacobin A/V spoke to University of Massachusetts Amherst economist Deepankar Basu, author of The Logic of Capital: An Introduction to Marxist Economics (Cambridge University Press, 2021), who summarized what is most distinctive and important in Marx’s economics. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.