Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. I. The Process of Capitalist Production

By Karl Marx

One of Econlib’s aims is to put online the most significant works in the history of economic thought, and there can be no doubting the significance of Marx’s influence on both economic theory in the late 19th century and on the creation of Marxist states in the 20th century. From the time of the emergence of modern socialism in the 1840s (especially in France and Germany), free market economists have criticised socialist theory and it is thus useful to place that criticism in its intellectual context, namely beside the main work of one of its leading theorists,
Karl Marx.In 1848, when Europe was wracked by a series of revolutions in which both liberals and socialists participated and which both lost out to the forces of conservative monarchism or Bonapartism,
John Stuart Mill published his
Principles of Political Economy. The chapter on Property shows how important Mill thought it was to confront the socialist challenge to classical liberal economic theory. In hindsight it might appear that Mill was too accommodating to socialist criticism, but I would argue that in fact he offered a reasonable framework for comparing the two systems of thought, which the events of the late 20th century have finally brought to a conclusion which was not possible in his lifetime. Mill states in
Book II Chapter I “Of Property” that a fair comparison of the free market and socialism would compare both the ideal of liberalism with that of socialism, as well as the practice of liberalism versus the practice of socialism. In 1848 the ideals of both were becoming better known (and there were some aspects of the ideal of socialism which Mill found intriguing) but the practice of each was still not conclusive. Mill correctly observed that in 1848 no European society had yet created a society fully based upon private property and free exchange and any future socialist experiment on a state-wide basis was many decades in the future. After the experiments in Marxist central planning with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Chinese Communists in 1949, and numerous other Marxist states in the post-1945 period, there can be no doubt that the reservations Mill had about the practicality of fully-functioning socialism were completely borne out by historical events. What Mill could never have imagined, the slaughter of tens of millions of people in an effort to make socialism work, has ended for good any argument concerning the Marxist form of socialism.Econlib now offers online two important defences of the socialist ideal, Karl Marx’s three volume work on
Capital and the
collection of essays on Fabian socialism edited by George Bernard Shaw. These can be read in the light of the criticism they provoked among defenders of individual liberty and the free market: Eugen Richter’s anti-Marxist
Pictures of the Socialistic Future, Thomas Mackay’s
2 volume collection of essays rebutting Fabian socialism,
Ludwig von Mises post-1917 critique of
Socialism. One should not forget that
Frederic Bastiat was active during the rise of socialism in France during the 1840s and that many of his essays are aimed at rebutting the socialists of his day. The same is true for Gustave de Molinari and the other authors of the
Dictionnaire d’economie politique (1852). Several key articles on communism and socialism from the
Dictionnaire are translated and reprinted in Lalor’s
Cyclopedia.For further reading on Marx’s
Capital see David L. Prychitko’s essay
“The Nature and Significance of Marx’s
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy“.For further readings on socialism see the following entries in the
Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:
Eastern Europe,
Marxism, and
Socialism.Also related:

Poor Law Commissioners’ Report of 1834,
edited by Nassau W. Senior, et al.

The Illusion of the Epoch: Marxism-Leninism as a Philosophical Creed by H. B. Acton

The Perfectibility of Man, by John Passmore
David M. Hart

March 1, 2004

Book Cover

Translator/Editor

Frederick Engels, Ernest Untermann, eds. Samuel Moore, Edward Aveling, trans.

First Pub. Date

1867

Publisher

Chicago: Charles H. Kerr and Co.

Pub. Date

1906

Comments

First published in German. Revised and Amplified According to the Fourth German Edition by Ernest Untermann Das Kapital, based on the 4th edition.

Copyright

The text of this edition is in the public domain. Picture of Marx courtesy of The Warren J. Samuels Portrait Collection at Duke University.

EDITOR’S NOTE TO THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

by Ernest Untermann

The original plan of Marx, as outlined in his preface to the first German edition of
Capital, in 1867, was to divide his work into three volumes. Volume I was to contain Book I, The Process of Capitalist Production. Volume II was scheduled to comprise both Book II, The Process of Capitalist Circulation, and Book III, The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. The work was to close with volume III, containing Book IV, A History of Theories of Surplus-Value.

When Marx proceeded to elaborate his work for publication, he had the essential portions of all three volumes, with a few exceptions, worked out in their main analyses and conclusions, but in a very loose and unfinished form. Owing to ill health, he completed only volume I. He died on March 14, 1883, just when a third German edition of this volume was being prepared for the printer.

Frederick Engels, the intimate friend and co-operator of Marx, stepped into the place of his dead comrade and proceeded to complete the work. In the course of the elaboration of volume II it was found that it would be wholly taken up with Book II, The Process of Capitalist Circulation. Its first German edition did not appear until May, 1885, almost 18 years after the first volume.

The publication of the third volume was delayed still longer. When the second German edition of volume II appeared, in July, 1893, Engels was still working on volume
III. It was not until October, 1894, that the first German edition of volume III was published, in two separate parts, containing the subject matter of what had been originally planned as Book III of volume II, and treating of The Capitalist Process of Production as a whole.

The reasons for the delay in the publication of volumes II and III, and the difficulties encountered in solving the problem of elaborating the copious notes of Marx into a finished and connected presentation of his theories, have been fully explained by Engels in his various prefaces to these two volumes. His great modesty led him to belittle his own share in this fundamental work. As a matter of fact, a large portion of the contents of
Capital is as much a creation of Engels as though he had written it independently of Marx.

Engels intended to issue the contents of the manuscripts for Book IV, originally planned as volume III, in the form of a fourth volume of
Capital. But on the 6th of August, 1895, less than one year after the publication of volume III, he followed his co-worker into the grave, still leaving this work incompleted.

However, some years previous to his demise, and in anticipation of such a eventuality, he had appointed Karl Kautsky, the editor of
Die Neue Zeit, the scientific organ of the German Socialist Party, as his successor and familiarized him personally with the subject matter intended for volume IV of this work. The material proved to be so voluminous, that Kautsky, instead of making a fourth volume of
Capital out of it, abandoned the original plan and issued his elaboration as a separate work in three volumes under the title
Theories of Surplus-value.

The first English translation of the first volume of
Capital was edited by Engels and published in 1886. Marx had in the meantime made some changes in the text of the second
German edition and of the French translation, both of which appeared in 1873, and he had intended to superintend personally the edition of an English version. But the state of his health interfered with this plan. Engels utilised his notes and the text of the French edition of 1873 in the preparation of a third German edition, and this served as a basis for the first edition of the English translation.

Owing to the fact that the title page of this English translation (published by Swan Sonnenschein & Co.) did not distinctly specify that this was but volume I, it has often been mistaken for the complete work, in spite of the fact that the prefaces of Marx and Engels clearly pointed to the actual condition of the matter.

In 1890, four years after the publication of the first English edition, Engels edited the proofs for a fourth German edition of volume I and enlarged it still more after repeated comparison with the French edition and with manuscript notes of Marx. But the Swan Sonnenschein edition did not adopt this new version in its subsequent English issues.

This first American edition will be the first complete English edition of the entire Marxian theories of Capitalist Production. It will contain all three volumes of
Capital in full. The present volume, I, deals with The Process of Capitalist Production in the strict meaning of the term “production.” Volume II will treat of The Process of Capitalist Circulation in the strict meaning of the term “circulation.” Volume III will contain the final analysis of The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, that is of Production and Circulation in their mutual interrelations.

The
Theories of Surplus-Value, Kautsky’s elaboration of the posthumous notes of Marx and Engels, will in due time be published in an English translation as a separate work.

This first American edition of volume I is based on the revised fourth German edition. The text of the English version of the Swan Sonnenschein edition has been compared page for page with this improved German edition, and about ten pages of new text hitherto not rendered in English are thus presented to American readers. All the footnotes have likewise been revised and brought up to date.

For all further information concerning the technical particulars of this work I refer the reader to the prefaces of Marx and Engels.

ERNEST UNTERMANN.

Orlando, Fla., July 18, 1906.

This is the more necessary, as even the section of Ferdinand Lassalle’s work against Schulze-Delitzsch, in which he professes to give “the intellectual quintessence” of my explanations on these subjects, contains important mistakes. If Ferdinand Lassalle has borrowed almost literally from my writings, and without any acknowledgement, all the general theoretical propositions in his economic works,
e.g., those on the historical character of capital, on the connection between the conditions of production and the mode of production, &c., &c., even to the terminology created by me, this may perhaps be due to purposes of propaganda. I am here, of course, not speaking of his detailed working out and application of these propositions, with which I have nothing to do.

On p. 618 the author explains what he comprises under this head.

Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Ackerbaus, &c., von Gustav von Gülich. 5 vols., Jena, 1830-45.

See my work “Critique, &c.,” p. 70.

The mealy-mouthed babblers of German vulgar economy fell foul of the style of my book. No one can feel the literary shortcomings in “Das Kapital” more strongly than I myself. Yet I will for the benefit and the enjoyment of these gentlemen and their public quote in this connection one English and one Russian notice. The “Saturday Review,” always hostile to my views, said in its notice of the first edition: “The presentation of the subject invests the driest economic questions with a certain peculiar charm.” The “St. Petersburg Journal” (Sankt-Peterburgskie Viedomosti), in its issue of April 20, 1872, says: “The presentation of the subject, with the exception of one or two exceptionally special parts, is distinguished by its comprehensibility by the general reader, its clearness, and in spite of the scientific intricacy of the subject, by an unusual liveliness. In this respect the author in no way resembles…the majority of German scholars who…write their books in a language so dry and obscure that the heads of ordinary mortals are cracked by it.”

Editor’s Preface To The First English Translation

“Le Capital,” par Karl Marx. Traduction de M. J. Roy, entièrement revisée par l’auteur. Paris. Lachâtre.” This translation, especially in the latter part of the book, contains considerable alterations in and additions to the text of the second German edition.

At the quarterly meeting of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, held this afternoon, a warm discussion took place on the subject of Free Trade. A resolution was moved to the effect that “having waited in vain 40 years for other nations to follow the Free Trade example of England, this Chamber thinks the time has now arrived to reconsider that position.” The resolution was rejected by a majority of one only, the figures being 21 for, and 22 against.—
Evening Standard, Nov. 1, 1886.

These were inserted by me in the English text of the Swan Sonnenschein edition, and will be found on pages 539, 640-644, 687-689, and 692 of this American edition.—E. U.

These were ten new notes, which I interested in the respective places of the Swan Sonnenschein edition.—E. U.

Part I, Chapter I.

Categories: Karl Marx