Das Kapital order, was held by Marx and Engels to—as a result of various contradictions in the capitalist mode of production—result in crises whose resolution necessitates the emergence of an entirely new mode of production as the culmination of the same historical dialectic that led to the emergence of capitalism from prior forms. The purpose of "Das Kapital" (1867) was a scientific foundation for the politics of the modern labour movement. The analyses were meant "to bring a science, by criticism, to the point where it can be dialectically represented" and so "reveal the law of motion of modern society" to describe
Karl Marx in film "Sweet Movie", directed by Dušan Makavejev, a boat with a giant Karl Marx figurehead sailing along a river is a consistent narrative motif. The film includes several characters, such as 'Mr. Kapital' (played by John Vernon), who refer to Marx and Marxist themes. Alexander Kluge's "News from Ideological Antiquity: Marx – Eisenstein – Das Kapital", is an experimental film which explores “the Marxian attention to the production, distribution and consumption at work behind the phenomenological surface of everyday life and experience.” The film is composed of what the Marxist critic Frederic Jameson calls "fragments", akin to "Freudian free association", rather