Das Kapital

Sarah Woods' dramatisation of Karl Marx's iconic work imagines what he would make of our 21st Century global economy. With present day themes weaved in, it begins with 'the commodity'.

'The commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human needs of whatever kind.'

This is the story of the ultimate commodity: The smartphone. In 2018, at least half of the adult population owned one - estimated to rise to 70 per cent by 2020 - that's 6.1 billion people.

It's a story that takes us from the cobalt mines of Africa to the tech firms of the UK. And what Marx's analysis reveals, is that the objects we each carry in our pockets aren't in fact phones at all.

Marx is a figure who divides opinion, but Das Kapital is one of the most influential books of the modern world. It informed and inspired a political movement that shaped the 20th Century and remains a key text in the study of modern economics.

It's one of the few books that can claim to have changed the world.