Credit Crunch and "The Revolutionary Idea of Karl Marx" by Alex Callinicos

With parallel to the current credit crunch and global financial crisis, lately an interest into economy and finance has arisen in me. I started to wonder how economy works. In the last couple of months, I read couple of popular economic books such as The Undercover Economist. Unfortunately they failed to answer some of my questions. So i decided read something from a critics of liberal capitalist economic system such as Karl Marx. As many of you know, as a philosopher, academic and theoritical revolutionist, he is one of the most influential person of the modern times. My research on the net led me to an interesting free online e-book "The Revolutionary Idea of Karl Marx" by an British academic Alex Callinicos. You can download it from following address :

http://www.istendency.net/pdf/revideas.pdf

This book gave me an absolutely different perspective on original idea of Karl Marx. As he pointed out in his latest years ("All I know is that I am not a Marxist") many of of Marx's ideas are misunderstood, twisted or not implemented in the correct way. In this biography Callinicos explains the revolutionary idea and life of Karl Marx in a plain way. Even more, in a way, the book gives an insight to the fundamental reasons of latest financial global crisis as Trotsky also pointed out:

"Capitalism does live by crises and booms just as human being lives by inhaling and exhaling... Crises and booms were inherent in capitalism from birth; they will accompany it to its grave." (This quote from Trotsky always comes to my mind whenever a financial expert on TV try to explain the fundamental reason of latest crisis and bonus culture in the city.)

Although i think some of Karl Marx's ideas are irrelevant now, it is still a great book to read to understand modern politics, economy and class based social life.