This text presents an examination of Karl Marx’s final and mostly unexplored phase of intellectual development and suggests a reassessment of some of his key ideas. It challenges the long-lasting misrepresentation of Marx as a Eurocentric and economistic thinker. It reconsiders Marx’s ideas in light of his late remarks on non-Western societies and the critique of Europe-an colonialism and shows how Marx avoided economic determinism unlike many of his followers. The article shows that Marx highlighted the specificity of historical conditions and the centrality of human intervention in the shap-ing of reality and the achievement of revolution and change.

Decades pass and, although Capital has often been described as an outdated text, the debate surrounding this book persists. Despite being 157 years old, Karl Marx’s critique of political economy retains all the qualities of a great classic: it sparks new insights with every reading and continues to shed light on key aspects of both the past and the present.

Even though Karl Marx is considered the main critic of capitalism, he rarely used this term. The word was also absent from the early great classics of political economy. Not only did it not find a place in the works of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, but it was also not even used by John Stuart Mill, nor by the generation of economists contemporary with Marx. They rather used capital–commonly used since the 13th century–and capitalism.