Book Description

Capital. Critique of Political Economy (German: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie) by Karl Marx is a foundational theoretical text in materialist 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, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. Marx did not live to publish the planned second and third parts, but they were both completed from his notes and published after his death by his colleague Friedrich Engels.First published in German. Das Kapital, based on the 2nd edition. Translated by Ernest Untermann (1909).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 are 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 -- though 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, Introdution to Volume 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 Rosa Luxemburg, among others.