The problem with Das Kapital or the Communist Manifesto is that the context within which they were written has shifted. So reading them as a way to influence your thoughts on contemporary economics would seem an odd exercise to me. It would be like reading Wealth of Nations with the hope that it would help you sort out the current state of the economy.
Both Marx and Smith have no idea what's happened since the 20th century. Some of their ideas have been synthesized and implemented. Others have been discarded. Marx never really saw communism attempted on a large scale, and Smith was essentially a pre-capitalist.
But I suppose that reading all of these titles is an exercise of exploring fundamentals of how we have come to today.
I will give Free to Choose a spin. There's a single copy of the first edition available for circulation at the Toronto Public Library, and it isn't even checked out. I'll have it before the weekend.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
Last edited by Baraka_Guru; 06-08-2009 at 12:44 PM..
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