Accounting for History in Marx's Capital

The book reinterprets Marx’s historical materialism as a world accounting history, answers his critics, and supports his theory with accounting evidence from history. It explains Marx’s prediction of the inevitability of socialism, and outlines the necessary tasks of critical accounting for Marxists to get Day One.

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Accounting for History uses the accounting interpretation of Marx’s theories of history and value to explain and defend his prediction of the inevitability of socialism as the end of history. In addition to the technological and institutional development of advanced capitalism, Bryer argues that the key necessary conditions, are that workers see through capitalist ideology, understanding that Marx’s theory of value explains why the phenomenal forms appearing in capitalist accounts are distortions of the underlying social reality, and that demystified accounting is integral to his concept of socialism on Day One. To get to Day One, the book concludes, Marx left Marxists the tasks of critical accounting.