“Wage Labor and Capital” by Marx. It’s short, but covers the major points.

Hadas Thier wrote a book called A People’s Guide to Capitalism that came recommended by Michael Roberts (thenextrecession guy) and she was recently interviewed by Grace Blakely on her podcast.

I grabbed a copy. I’m only 4 or 5 chapters out of 10 or so, but I think it’s a great book. It’s basically a very compressed version of Capital with modern language and examples etc.

I’d absolutely recommend.

That’s a pretty good idea for a book, someone should totally write that.

I haven’t read it, but I’ve never gotten the impression that Adam Smith is “total bullshit”. Of course, it’s important to contextualize his stuff as written before socialism was really a thing in response to the shortcomings of capitalism, but those could still be dismissed as “growing pains” for another 90 years till Marx really refined the critical analysis of capitalism. Yes there were socialists before Marx, but he was the one that turned the corner from an analytical/scientific perspective.

Which leads me also say that what you’re asking is literally Das Capital, although I’d never recommend just picking it up and reading it out of the blue (long and boring). Lots of Engels’ work makes things more accessible.

You could check out some of Marx’ essays, those are much more accessible than just picking up capital.