[nilaykumar]

A cursory look at the table of contents of Volume 1 turns up various topics such as:

- the length and regulation of the working day for factory workers

- the division of labor

- the economic impacts of increasing automation/mechanization

- wages (the factor payments for labor)

These are all topics that I think reasonably fall under the umbrella of economics. Certainly Capital is not a book on positive economics. It is, throughout, quite normative, and expressly interested in the combination of politics and economy.

Reading Capital may not help you understand how modern mainstream economists think, but it will definitely get you thinking about the same kinds of problems that they deal with. For example: how regulations might be used to enforce a 40 hour work week. Of course, capitalism has quite outgrown Marx's mid-19th century conception of it. It's an old book. But I find it difficult to understand how a book critiquing the work of the first economists is not a text about economics.