Capital: Critique of Political Economy

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Capital: Critique of Political Economy

Author

Karl Marx

Original title

Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen konomie

Country

Germany

Language

German, subsequently translated into many languages

Genre

Economics
Political theory

Publisher

Verlag von Otto Meisner

Publication date

1867, 1885, 1894

Text

Capital: Critique of Political Economy at Wikisource

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Capital: Critique of Political Economy (1867-1883) (German: Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen
konomie; (German pronunciation:[das kapital]) by Karl Marx is a foundational theoretical text
in communist philosophy, economics and politics. Marx aimed to reveal the economic patterns
underpinning the capitalist mode of production, in contrast to classical political economists such
as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill.
Contents
[hide]

1Themes

2Capital: Critique of Political Economy

o

2.1Capital, Volume I

2.2Capital, Volume II

2.3Capital, Volume III

3Intellectual influences

4Capital, Volume IV

5Publication

6Translations

7See also

8Online editions
o

8.1Volumes

8.2Synopses

9Footnotes

10Further reading

11External links

Themes[edit]
In Capital: Critique of Political Economy (1867), Karl Marx proposes that the motivating force
of capitalism is in the exploitation oflabour, whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus

value and then profit both of which concepts have a specific meaning for Marx. The employer is able
to claim the right to profits because he or she owns the productive capital assets (means of
production), which are legally protected by the capitalist state through property rights (the historical
section shows how this right was acquired in the first place chiefly through plunder and conquest and
the activity of the merchant and 'middle-man'). In producing capital (money) as well as commodities
(goods and services), the workers continually reproduce the economic conditions by which they
labour.Capital proposes an explanation of the "laws of motion" of the capitalist economic system,
from its origins throughout its future, by describing the dynamics of the accumulation of capital, the
growth of wage labour, the transformation of the workplace, the concentration of capital, commercial
competition, the banking system, the decline of the profit rate, land-rents, et cetera.
The critique of the political economy of capitalism proposes that:

The commodity is the basic "cell-form" (trade unit) of a capitalist society, but capitalism is
distinguished from other forms of production based on commodities in that here labour
power becomes a commodity like any other. Moreover, because commerce, as a human activity,
implied no morality beyond that required to buy and sell goods and services, the growth of the
market system made discrete entities of the economic, the moral, and the legal spheres of
human activity in society; hence, subjective moral value is separate from objective economic
value. Subsequently, political economy the just distribution of wealth and "political arithmetick"
about taxes became three discrete fields of human activity: Economics, Law, and Ethics,
politics and economics divorced.
[citation needed]

"The economic formation of society [is] a process of natural history", thus it is possible for
a political economist to objectively study the scientific laws of capitalism, given that its expansion
of the market system of commerce had objectified human economic relations; the use
of money (cash nexus) voided religious and political illusions about its economic value, and
replaced them with commodity fetishism, the belief that an object (commodity) has inherent
economic value. Because societal economic formation is a historical process, no one person
could control or direct it, thereby creating a global complex of social connections among
capitalists;
thus, the economic formation (individual commerce) of a society precedes the
human administration of an economy (organised commerce).
[citation needed]

The structural contradictions of a capitalist economy, the gegenstzliche Bewegung,

describe the contradictory movement originating from the two-fold character of labour, and so
the class struggle between labour and capital, the wage labourer and theowner of the means of
production. These capitalist economic contradictions operate "behind the backs" of the
capitalists and the workers, as a result of their activities, and yet remain beyond their
immediate perceptions as men and women and as social classes.
[1]

The economic crises (recession, depression, etc.) that are rooted in the contradictory
character of the economic value of the commodity (cell-unit) of a capitalist society, are the
conditions that propitiate proletarian revolution; which the Communist Manifesto (1848)
collectively identified as a weapon, forged by the capitalists, which the working class "turned
against the bourgeoisie, itself".

In a capitalist economy, technological improvement and its consequent increased production

augment the amount of material wealth (use value) in society, whilst simultaneously diminishing
the economic value of the same wealth, thereby diminishing the rate of profit
a paradox characteristic of economic crisis in a capitalist economy; "poverty in the midst of
plenty" consequent to over-production and under-consumption.

After two decades of economic study and preparatory work (especially regarding the theory
of surplus value) the first volume appeared in 1867: The production process of capital. After Marx's
death in 1883, Friedrich Engels introduced, from manuscripts and the first volume; Volume II: The
circulation process of capital in 1885; and Volume III: The overall process of capitalist production in
1894. These three volumes are collectively known as Das Kapital.

Capital: Critique of Political Economy[edit]

Capital, Volume I[edit]
Main article: Capital, Volume I
Capital, Volume I (1867) is a critical analysis of political economy, meant to reveal the contradictions
of the capitalist mode of production, how it was the precursor of the socialist model of production,
and of the class struggle rooted in the capitalist social relations of production. The first of three
volumes of Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen konomie (Capital: Critique of Political Economy) was
published on 14 September 1867, dedicated to Wilhelm Wolff, and was the sole volume published in
Marxs lifetime.

Capital, Volume II[edit]

Main article: Capital, Volume II
Capital, Volume II, subtitled The Process of Circulation of Capital, was prepared by Friedrich
Engels from notes left by Karl Marx and published in 1885. It is divided into three parts: The
Metamorphoses of Capital and Their Circuits, The Turnover of Capital, and The Reproduction and
Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital. In Volume II, the main ideas behind the marketplace are
to be found: how value and surplus-value are realized. Its dramatis personae, not so much the
worker and the industrialist (as in Volume I), but rather the money owner (and money lender), the
wholesale merchant, the trader and the entrepreneur or 'functioning capitalist.' Moreover, workers
appear in Volume II, essentially as buyers of consumer goods and, therefore, as sellers of the
commodity labour power, rather than producers of value and surplus-value (although, this latter
quality, established in Volume I, remains the solid foundation on which the whole of the unfolding
analysis is based). Reading Volume II is of monumental significance to understanding the theoretical
construction of Marx's whole argument. Marx himself quite precisely clarified this place, in a letter
sent to Engels on 30 April 1868: 'In Book 1. . . we content ourselves with the assumption that if in the
self-expansion process 100 becomes 110, the latter will find already in existence in the market the
elements into which it will change once more. But now we investigate the conditions under which
these elements are found at hand, namely the social intertwining of the different capitals, of the
component parts of capital and of revenue (= s).' This intertwining, conceived as a movement of
commodities and of money, enabled Marx to work out at least the essential elements, if not the
definitive form of a coherent theory of the trade cycle, based upon the inevitability of periodic
disequilibrium between supply and demand under the capitalist mode of production (Mandel, 1978,
Intro to Vol. II of Capital). Volume II of Capital has indeed been not only a 'sealed book', but also a
forgotten one. To a large extent, it remains so to this very day. Part 3 is the point of departure for
a topic given its Marxist treatment later in detail by, among others, Rosa Luxemburg.

Capital, Volume III[edit]

Main article: Capital, Volume III
Capital, Volume III, subtitled The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, was prepared by
Friedrich Engels from notes left by Karl Marx and published in 1894. It is in seven parts:
1. The conversion of Surplus Value into Profit and the rate of Surplus Value into the rate of
Profit
2. Conversion of Profit into Average Profit

3. The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall

4. Conversion of Commodity Capital and Money Capital into Commercial Capital and MoneyDealing Capital (Merchant's Capital)
5. Division of Profit Into Interest and Profit of Enterprise, Interest Bearing Capital.
6. Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground Rent.
7. Revenues and Their Sources
The work is best known today for part 3, which in summary says that as the organic fixed capital
requirements of production rise as a result of advancements in production generally, the rate of
profit tends to fall. This result, which orthodox Marxists believe is a principal contradictory
characteristic leading to an inevitable collapse of the capitalist 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.

Intellectual influences[edit]
The purpose of Capital: Critique of Political Economy (1867) was a scientific foundation for the
politics of the modern labour movement; the analyses were meant "to bring ascience, by criticism, to
the point where it can be dialectically represented" and so "reveal the law of motion of modern
society" to describe how the capitalist mode of production was the precursor of the socialist mode of
production. The argument is a critique of the classical economics of Adam Smith, David
Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, and Benjamin Franklin, drawing on the dialectical method that G.W.F.
Hegel developed in The Science of Logic and The Phenomenology of Spirit;
other intellectual influences upon Capitalwere the French socialists Charles Fourier, Comte de SaintSimon, Sismondi and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; and the Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle.
At university, Marx wrote a dissertation comparing the philosophy of nature in the works of the
philosophers Democritus (ca. 460370 BC) and Epicurus (341270 BC). The logical architecture
of Capital: Critique of Political Economy is derived in part from the Politics and the Nicomachean
Ethics by Aristotle, including the fundamental distinction between use value and exchange value,
the "syllogisms" (C-M-C' and M-C-M') for simple commodity circulation, and the circulation
of value as capital. Moreover, the description of machinery, under capitalist relations of production,
as "self-acting automata" derives from Aristotles speculations about inanimate instruments capable
of obeying commands as the condition for the abolition of slavery. In the nineteenth century, Karl
Marxs research of the available politico-economic literature required twelve years, usually in
the British Library, London.
[2]

[3]

[4]

Capital, Volume IV[edit]

Karl Marx, Theorien ber den Mehrwert, 1956

Karl Kautsky, editor ofTheories of Surplus Value

At the time of his death (1883) Karl Marx had prepared the manuscript for Capital, Volume IV, a
critical history of theories of surplus valueof his time, the nineteenth century. The philosopher Karl
Kautsky (18541938) published a partial edition of Marx's surplus-value critique, and later published
a full, three-volume edition as Theorien ber den Mehrwert (Theories of Surplus Value, 19051910);
the first volume was published in English as A History of Economic Theories (1952).
[5]

Publication[edit]
Capital, Volume I (1867) was published in Marxs lifetime, but he died, in 1883, before completing
the manuscripts for Capital, Volume II(1885) and Capital, Volume III (1894), which friend and
collaborator Friedrich Engels edited and published as the work of Karl Marx. The first translated
publication of Capital: Critique of Political Economy was in Imperial Russia, in March 1872. It was
the first foreign publication; the English edition appeared in 1887.

Despite Tsarist censorship proscribing "the harmful doctrines of socialism andcommunism", the
Russian censors considered Capital as a "strictly scientific work" of political economy the content of
which did not apply to monarchic Russia, where "capitalist exploitation" had never occurred, and was
officially dismissed, given "that very few people in Russiawill read it, and even fewer will understand
it"; nonetheless, Karl Marx acknowledged that Russia was the country where Capital "was read and
valued more than anywhere." The Russian edition was the fastest selling. 3,000 copies were sold in
1 year while the German edition took 5 years to sell 1,000, the Russian translation thus selling 15
times as fast as the German.
[6]

[7]

In the wake of the global economic collapse of 2008-9, Marx's Capital was purportedly in high
demand in Germany. In 2012, Red Quill Books released "Capital: In Manga!", a comic book
version of Volume I which is an expanded English translation of the wildly successful 2008
Japanese pocket version "Das Kapital" Manga de Dokuha.
[8]

[9]

[10]

Translations[edit]
The foreign editions of Capital: Critique of Political Economy (1867), by Karl Marx, include a Russian
translation by the revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin (18141876). Eventually Marx's work was translated
into all major languages. An English translation by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling was reissued
in the 1970s by Progress Publishers in Moscow; a more recent English translation was made by Ben
Fowkes and David Fernbach (the Penguin edition). The definitive critical edition of Marx's works,
"MEGA II" (Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe), includes Das Kapital in German (and French, for the first
volume) and shows all the versions and alterations made to the text, plus a very extensive apparatus
of footnotes and (cross-)references.

See also[edit]

Accumulation by dispossession

Analytical Marxism

tienne Balibar

Eduard Bernstein

G.A. Cohen

Capital (economics)

Capital accumulation

Capitalism

Commodity fetishism

Cost of capital

Crisis theory

Culture of capitalism

History of theory of capitalism

Immiseration thesis

Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

Krisis Groupe

Labor theory of value

Law of accumulation

Law of value

Marx's theory of alienation

Primitive accumulation of capital

Profit

Relations of production

Return on capital

Surplus labour

Surplus value

Valorisation

Value added