“Let us imagine, for a change, an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and expending their many different forms of labour-power in full self-awareness as one single social labour force.”

- Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I.

I n t r o d u c t i o nDuring the financial crisis, sales of Karl Marx’ seminal work Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (known in English simply as ‘Capital’) rocketed dramatically, suggesting that people were looking for an alternative to capitalism, or even just an alternative perspective. I also started to actually read Marx around that time.

With Volume I of Capital published in 1867 we see the concept of the means of production scattered through out it. It is integral. What is it? The means of production is the shovel and the pick, the factory and the mine, and even computer I sit typing this on right now. In Clause IV of the old 1918 text of the Labour Party constitution, now edited out, the aim of seizing and ownership of the means of production is described as...

“To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”

The simplification/condensation of subjects as complex as these is considered integral to your practice as an illustrator, and so I set about creating this book as a story about a society securing, by hand or by brain, the full fruits of their industry through the Means of Production, and those peoples relation to that abstract concept.