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Das Kapital

Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (German: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie), also known as Capital, is a foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy and critique of political economy written by Karl Marx, published as three volumes in 1867, 1885, and 1894. The culmination of his life's work, the text contains Marx's analysis of capitalism, to which he sought to apply his theory of historical materialism "to lay bare the economic laws of modern society", following from classical political economists such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. The text's second and third volumes were completed from Marx's notes after his death and published by his colleague Friedrich Engels. Das Kapital is the most cited book in the social sciences published before 1950.[1]

Das Kapital
First edition title page of Volume I (1867). Volume II and Volume III were published in 1885 and 1894, respectively.
AuthorKarl Marx
Original titleDas Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie
TranslatorSamuel Moore and Edward Aveling
CountryGermany (North German Confederation)
LanguageGerman
Published1867–1894
PublisherVerlag von Otto Meisner
Published in English
1887
Media typePrint
TextDas Kapital at Wikisource

Marx's theory of historical materialism posits that the economic structure of society – in particular, the forces and relations of production – are the crucial factors in shaping its nature. Rather than a simple description of capitalism as an economic model, Das Kapital instead examines capitalism as a historical epoch and a mode of production, and seeks to trace its origins, development, and decline. Marx argues that capitalism is a form of economic organization which has arisen and developed in a specific historical context, and which contains tendencies and contradictions which will inevitably lead to its decline and collapse. According to Marx, Das Kapital is also a scientific work based on research and reasoning, and containing a critique of both capitalism and bourgeois political economists who argue that capitalism is a harmonious, efficient and stable system.

Themes edit

In Das Kapital (1867), Marx proposes that the motivating force of capitalism is in the exploitation of labor, whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value. The owner of the means of production is able to claim the right to this surplus value because they are legally protected by the ruling regime through property rights and the legally established distribution of shares which are by law distributed only to company owners and their board members. The historical section shows how these rights were acquired in the first place chiefly through plunder and conquest and the activity of the merchant and "middle-man". In producing capital, the workers continually reproduce the economic conditions by which they labour. Das Kapital proposes an explanation of the "laws of motion" of the capitalist economic system from its origins to 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:

  • Wage-labour is the basic "cell-form" (trade unit) of a capitalist society. 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 arithmetic" (about taxes) were reorganized into three discrete fields of human activity, namely economics, law and ethics—politics and economics were divorced.
  • "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. The economic formation (individual commerce) of a society thus precedes the human administration of an economy (organised commerce).
  • The structural contradictions of a capitalist economy (German: gegensätzliche 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 the owner 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.[2]
  • The economic crises (recession, depression, et cetera) that are rooted in the contradictory character of the economic value of the commodity (cell-unit) of a capitalist society are the conditions that lead to 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 while 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 as The Production Process of Capital. After Marx's death in 1883, Engels introduced Volume II: The Circulation Process of Capital in 1885; and Volume III: The Overall Process of Capitalist Production in 1894 from manuscripts and the first volume. These three volumes are collectively known as Das Kapital.

Synopsis edit

Capital, Volume I edit

Das Kapital, 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 mode of production and of the class struggle rooted in the capitalist social relations of production. The first of three volumes of Das Kapital was published on 14 September 1867, dedicated to Wilhelm Wolff and was the sole volume published in Marx's lifetime.[3]

Capital, Volume II edit

Das Kapital, Volume II, subtitled The Process of Circulation of Capital, was prepared by Engels from notes left by Marx and published in 1885. It is divided into three parts:

  1. The Metamorphoses of Capital and Their Circuits
  2. The Turnover of Capital
  3. The Reproduction and Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital.

In Volume II, the main ideas behind the marketplace are to be found, namely how value and surplus-value are realized. Its focuses aren't 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.

Marx wrote 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)".[citation needed] 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 (Ernest Mandel, Intro to Volume II of Capital, 1978). Part 3 is the point of departure for the topic of capital accumulation which was given its Marxist treatment later in detail by Rosa Luxemburg, among others.[4]

Capital, Volume III edit

Das Kapital, Volume III, subtitled The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, was prepared by Engels from notes left by Marx and published in 1894. It is divided into 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 Money-Dealing 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[citation needed] 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.[5]

The third volume is highly controversial, peculiarly the tenth chapter, as some economists feel like Marx contradicted himself with the Marxian fundamental value theory while trying to tackle the transformation problem.[6]

Intellectual influences edit

The purpose of Das Kapital (1867) was a scientific foundation for the politics of the modern labour movement. The analyses were meant "to bring a science, by criticism, to the point where it can be dialectically represented" and so "reveal the law of motion of modern society"[citation needed] to describe how the capitalist mode of production was the precursor of the socialist mode of production. The argument is an analysis 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 Science of Logic and The Phenomenology of Spirit. Other intellectual influences on Capital were the French socialists Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

At university, Marx wrote a dissertation comparing the philosophy of nature in the works of the philosophers Democritus (circa 460–370 BC) and Epicurus (341–270 BC). The logical architecture of Das Kapital is derived in part from the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, including the fundamental distinction between use value and exchange value,[7] the syllogisms (C-M-C' and M-C-M') for simple commodity circulation and the circulation of value as capital.[8][9] Moreover, the description of machinery under capitalist relations of production as "self-acting automata" derives from Aristotle's speculations about inanimate instruments capable of obeying commands as the condition for the abolition of slavery. In the 19th century, Marx's research of the available politico-economic literature required twelve years, usually in the British Library in London.[10]

Capital, Volume IV edit

 
Karl Marx, Theorien über den Mehrwert, 1956
 
Karl Kautsky, editor of Theories of Surplus Value

At the time of his death (1883), Marx had prepared the manuscript for Das Kapital, Volume IV, a critical history of theories of surplus value of his time, the 19th century, based on the earlier manuscript Theories of Surplus Value (1862–63). The philosopher Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) published a partial edition of Marx's surplus-value critique and later published a full, three-volume edition as Theorien über den Mehrwert (Theories of Surplus Value, 1905–1910). The first volume was published in English as A History of Economic Theories (1952).[11]

Translations edit

The first translated publication of Das Kapital was in the Russian Empire in March 1872. It was the first foreign publication and the English edition appeared in 1887.[12] Despite Russian censorship proscribing "the harmful doctrines of socialism and communism", the Russian censors considered Das Kapital 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 Russia will read it, and even fewer will understand it". Nonetheless, Marx acknowledged that Russia was the country where Das Kapital "was read and valued more than anywhere". For instance, the Russian edition was the fastest selling as 3,000 copies were sold in one year while the German edition took five years to sell 1,000, therefore the Russian translation sold fifteen times faster than the German original.[13]

The foreign editions of Capital. Critique of Political Economy (1867) by Karl Marx include a Russian translation by the revolutionary socialist Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876). Marx revised, rewrote, and monitored a French translation, published in 44 installments from August 1872 through May 1875, and then as a single work with a printing of ten thousand copies, the largest up until then.[14] Eventually, Marx's work was translated into all major languages. The definitive critical edition of Marx's works, known as MEGA II (Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe), [15] includes Das Kapital in German (only the first volume is in French) and shows all the versions and alterations made to the text as well as a very extensive apparatus of footnotes and cross-references.

The first unabridged translation of Das Kapital to Bengali was done by professor Piyush Dasgupta. It was published in six volumes by Baniprakash, Kolkata, India between 1974 and 1983.[16][17]

In 2012, Red Quill Books released Capital: In Manga!,[18] a comic book version of Volume I which is an expanded English translation of the successful 2008 Japanese pocket version Das Kapital known as Manga de Dokuha.[19]

English Translations edit

The English translation of volume 1 by Samuel Moore and Eleanor Marx's partner Edward Aveling, overseen by Engels, was published in 1887 as Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production by Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, & Co.[20] This was reissued in the 1970s by Progress Publishers in Moscow, while a more recent English translation was made by Ben Fowkes and David Fernbach (the Penguin edition).

Reviews edit

In 2017, the historian Gareth Stedman Jones wrote in the Books and Arts section of the scientific journal Nature:[21]

What is extraordinary about Das Kapital is that it offers a still-unrivalled picture of the dynamism of capitalism and its transformation of societies on a global scale. It firmly embedded concepts such as commodity and capital in the lexicon. And it highlights some of the vulnerabilities of capitalism, including its unsettling disruption of states and political systems. [...] If Das Kapital has now emerged as one of the great landmarks of nineteenth-century thought, it is [because it connects] critical analysis of the economy of his time with its historical roots. In doing so, he inaugurated a debate about how best to reform or transform politics and social relations, which has gone on ever since.

Positive reception also cited the soundness of the methodology used in producing the book, which is called immanent critique. This approach, which starts from simple category and gradually unfolds into complex categories, employed "internal" criticism that finds contradiction within and between categories while discovering aspects of reality that the categories cannot explain.[22] This meant that Marx had to build his arguments on historical narratives and empirical evidence rather than the arbitrary application of his ideas in his evaluation of capitalism.[22]

On the other hand, Das Kapital has also received criticism. There are theorists who claimed that this text was unable to reconcile capitalist exploitation with prices dependent upon subjective wants in exchange relations.[23] Marxists generally reply that only socially necessary labor time, that is, labor which is spent on commodities for which there is market-demand, can be considered productive labour and therefore exploited on Marx's account. There are also those who argued that Marx's so-called immiseration thesis is presumed to mean that the proletariat is absolutely immiserated.[24][25][failed verification] The existing scholarly consensus tends towards the opposite view that Marx believed that only relative immiseration would occur, that is, a fall in labor's share of output.[26] Marx himself frequently polemicized against the view "that the amount of real wages ... is a fixed amount."[27]

See also edit

Footnotes edit

  1. ^ Green, Elliott (12 May 2016). "What are the most-cited publications in the social sciences (according to Google Scholar)?". LSE Impact Blog. London School of Economics. from the original on 25 December 2018. Retrieved 14 November 2017.
  2. ^ Marx, Karl. Capital: The Process of Capitalist Production. 3d German edition (tr.). p. 53.
  3. ^ Marx, Karl (1867). Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Oekonomie. Vol. 1: Der Produktionsprozess des Kapitals (1 ed.). Hamburg: Verlag von Otto Meissner. doi:10.3931/e-rara-25773.
  4. ^ Marx, Karl (1885). Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Oekonomie; herausgegeben von Friedrich Engels. Vol. 2: Der Zirkulationsprozess des Kapitals (1 ed.). Hamburg: Verlag von Otto Meissner. doi:10.3931/e-rara-25620.
  5. ^ Marx, Karl (1894). Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Oekonomie; herausgegeben von Friedrich Engels. Vol. 3: Der Gesamtprozess der kapitalistischen Produktion (1 ed.). Hamburg: Verlag von Otto Meissner. doi:10.3931/e-rara-25739.
  6. ^ Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen (1896). Karl Marx and the Close of his System. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. p. 19. ISBN 978-1466347687. The value [of labour] was declared to be 'the common factor which appears in the exchange relation of commodities' (i. 13). We were told, in the form and with the emphasis of a stringent syllogistic conclusion, allowing of no exception, that to set down two commodities as equivalents in exchange implied that 'a common factor of the same magnitude' existed in both, to which each of the two 'must be reducible' (i. 11). (...) And now in the third volume (...) that individual commodities do and must exchange with each other in a proportion different from that of the labour incorporated in them, and this not accidentally and temporarily, but of necessity and permanently. I cannot help myself; I see here no explanation and reconciliation of a contradiction, but the bare contradiction itself. Marx's third volume contradicts the first. The theory of the average rate of profit and of the prices of production cannot be reconciled with the theory of value. This is the impression which must, I believe, be received by every logical thinker. And it seems to have been very generally accepted. Loria, in his lively and picturesque style, states that he feels himself forced to the 'harsh but just judgment' that Marx 'instead of a solution has presented a mystification.'
  7. ^ Marx, Karl; Fowkes, Ben, trans. (1977). Capital. Vol. 1. New York: Knopf Doubleday. p. 68, 253. f. 6. Marx credits Aristotle for being the "first to analyze [...] the form of value". In addition, he identifies the categories of use and exchange value with the Aristotlean distinction between the Oeconomic and the Chrematisitic. In the Politics, the former is defined as value in use while the latter is defined as a practice in which exchange value becomes an end unto itself.
  8. ^ Meikle, Scott (1997). Aristotle's Economic Thought. London: Clarendon Press.
  9. ^ McCarthy, George (1992). Marx and Aristotle: Nineteenth Century German Social Theory and Classical Antiquity. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
  10. ^ Marx, Karl; Fowkes, Ben, trans. (1977). Capital. Vol. 1. New York: Knopf Doubleday. pp. 446.
  11. ^ Columbia Encyclopedia (1994). 5th Edition. p. 1707.
  12. ^ Ostler, Nicholas (2005). Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. HarperCollins: London and New York.
  13. ^ Figes, Orlando. A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924 (1996). London. p. 139.
  14. ^ "The Originality of Marx's French Edition of Capital: An Historical Analysis – IMHO Journal". imhojournal.org. Retrieved 19 February 2023.
  15. ^ Bearbeitung des Bandes: Waltraud Falk (Leiter)Karl Marx. Capital a critical analysis of capitalist production. London 1887.
  16. ^ 'ডাস ক্যাপিটাল'
  17. ^ Chakraborty, Achin; Chakrabarty, Anjan; Dasgupta, Byasdeb; Sen, Samita, eds. (2019). 'Capital' in the East: Reflections on Marx. Singapore: Springer. p. 33. ISBN 9789813294677.
  18. ^ Yasko, Guy (2012). Capital: In Manga!. Red Quill Books. ISBN 978-1-926958-19-4. from the original on 25 February 2016. Retrieved 25 February 2016.
  19. ^ "Marx's 'Das Kapital' comic finds new fans in Japan" 6 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine. Japan Today. 23 December 2008. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  20. ^ "Marx, Karl (1818–1883). Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production. London: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, & Co., 1887". from the original on 24 June 2018. Retrieved 23 June 2018.
  21. ^ Jones, Gareth Stedman Jones (27 July 2017). "In retrospect: Das Kapital" 2 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Nature. Vol. 547. pp. 401–402. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
  22. ^ a b Wayne, Michael (2012). Marx's 'Das Kapital' For Beginners. Danbury, Connecticut: Red Wheel/Weiser. ISBN 9781934389638.
  23. ^ Brown, Morgan (2017). A Rationalist Critique of Deconstruction: Demystifying Poststructuralism and Derrida's Science of the "Non". The Culture & Anarchy Press. p. 119. ISBN 9781365481901.
  24. ^ Boxill, Bernard (1992). Blacks and Social Justice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 277. ISBN 978-0847677573.
  25. ^ Sowell, Thomas (March 1960). "Marx's "Increasing Misery" Doctrine". The American Economic Review. 50: 111–120.
  26. ^ Lapides, Kenneth (December 2007). Marx's Wage Theory in Historical Perspective. Author. ISBN 9781587369742. from the original on 31 July 2020. Retrieved 31 May 2019.
  27. ^ Marx, Karl (1865). Value, Price, and Profit. from the original on 30 May 2019. Retrieved 31 May 2019.

Further reading edit

External links edit

  • Althusser, Louis (21 April 1969). "How to Read Marx's Capital".
  • "Wage Labour and Capital". An earlier work by Marx that deals with many of the ideas later expanded in Das Kapital.
  • Engels, Friedrich (1867) "Synopsis of Capital".
  • Harvey, David. "Reading Marx's Capital". University open courses.
  • Liberation School. (2021). "Reading Capital with Comrades" podcast class series
  • Ehrbar, Hans G. "Annotations, Explanations and Clarifications to Capital". It helps with understanding the early concepts.
  • Choonara, Joseph. "Capital" 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine. Socialist Worker. First in a series of accessible columns on Das Kapital.
  • "PolyluxMarx—A Capital Workbook in Slides" (covers Volume I of Das Capital in PowerPoint slides) (in German, English, Spanish, Slovak, Portuguese, and Arabic).
  • Harvey, David (12 July 2018). "Why Marx's Capital Still Matters". Jacobin. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
  • Segrillo, Angelo. Karl Marx's Capital (Vols. 1, 2, 3) Abridged. São Paulo: FFLCH/USP, 2020.
Online editions
  • Capital, Volume I (1867); published in Marx's lifetime:
  • Capital Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital from the Marxists Internet Archive.
  • Capital, Volume II (1885); manuscript not completed by Marx before his death in 1883; subsequently edited and published, by friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels as the work of Marx:
  • Capital, Volume III (1894); manuscript not completed by Marx before his death in 1883; subsequently edited and published, by friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels as the work of Marx:
    • Capital Volume III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole at the Marxists Internet Archive.
    • Capital, Volume III 1974 Progress Publishers edition, downloadable PDF from the Internet Archive.
  • Capital, Volume IV (1905–1910); critical history of theories of surplus value; manuscript written by Marx; partial edition edited and published after Marx's death by Karl Kautsky as Theories of Surplus Value; other editions published later:
Synopses
  • "Reading Marx's Capital". Series of video lectures by professor David Harvey.
  • Friedrich Engels (1975). On Marx's Capital. Progress Publishers. Includes Engels' Synopsis of Capital.
  • Otto Ruhle's Abridgement of Karl Marx's Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Workers' Liberty. p. 48.

kapital, other, uses, disambiguation, capital, book, redirects, here, other, books, capital, disambiguation, books, capital, critique, political, economy, german, kritik, politischen, ökonomie, also, known, capital, foundational, theoretical, text, materialist. For other uses see Das Kapital disambiguation Capital book redirects here For other books see Capital disambiguation Books Capital A Critique of Political Economy German Das Kapital Kritik der politischen Okonomie also known as Capital is a foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy and critique of political economy written by Karl Marx published as three volumes in 1867 1885 and 1894 The culmination of his life s work the text contains Marx s analysis of capitalism to which he sought to apply his theory of historical materialism to lay bare the economic laws of modern society following from classical political economists such as Adam Smith Jean Baptiste Say David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill The text s second and third volumes were completed from Marx s notes after his death and published by his colleague Friedrich Engels Das Kapital is the most cited book in the social sciences published before 1950 1 Das KapitalFirst edition title page of Volume I 1867 Volume II and Volume III were published in 1885 and 1894 respectively AuthorKarl MarxOriginal titleDas Kapital Kritik der politischen OekonomieTranslatorSamuel Moore and Edward AvelingCountryGermany North German Confederation LanguageGermanPublished1867 1894PublisherVerlag von Otto MeisnerPublished in English1887Media typePrintTextDas Kapital at WikisourceMarx s theory of historical materialism posits that the economic structure of society in particular the forces and relations of production are the crucial factors in shaping its nature Rather than a simple description of capitalism as an economic model Das Kapital instead examines capitalism as a historical epoch and a mode of production and seeks to trace its origins development and decline Marx argues that capitalism is a form of economic organization which has arisen and developed in a specific historical context and which contains tendencies and contradictions which will inevitably lead to its decline and collapse According to Marx Das Kapital is also a scientific work based on research and reasoning and containing a critique of both capitalism and bourgeois political economists who argue that capitalism is a harmonious efficient and stable system Contents 1 Themes 2 Synopsis 2 1 Capital Volume I 2 2 Capital Volume II 2 3 Capital Volume III 3 Intellectual influences 4 Capital Volume IV 5 Translations 5 1 English Translations 6 Reviews 7 See also 8 Footnotes 9 Further reading 10 External linksThemes editIn Das Kapital 1867 Marx proposes that the motivating force of capitalism is in the exploitation of labor whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value The owner of the means of production is able to claim the right to this surplus value because they are legally protected by the ruling regime through property rights and the legally established distribution of shares which are by law distributed only to company owners and their board members The historical section shows how these rights were acquired in the first place chiefly through plunder and conquest and the activity of the merchant and middle man In producing capital the workers continually reproduce the economic conditions by which they labour Das Kapital proposes an explanation of the laws of motion of the capitalist economic system from its origins to 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 Wage labour is the basic cell form trade unit of a capitalist society 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 arithmetic about taxes were reorganized into three discrete fields of human activity namely economics law and ethics politics and economics were divorced 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 The economic formation individual commerce of a society thus precedes the human administration of an economy organised commerce The structural contradictions of a capitalist economy German gegensatzliche 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 the owner 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 2 The economic crises recession depression et cetera that are rooted in the contradictory character of the economic value of the commodity cell unit of a capitalist society are the conditions that lead to 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 while 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 as The Production Process of Capital After Marx s death in 1883 Engels introduced Volume II The Circulation Process of Capital in 1885 and Volume III The Overall Process of Capitalist Production in 1894 from manuscripts and the first volume These three volumes are collectively known as Das Kapital Synopsis editCapital Volume I edit Das Kapital 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 mode of production and of the class struggle rooted in the capitalist social relations of production The first of three volumes of Das Kapital was published on 14 September 1867 dedicated to Wilhelm Wolff and was the sole volume published in Marx s lifetime 3 Capital Volume II edit Das Kapital Volume II subtitled The Process of Circulation of Capital was prepared by Engels from notes left by Marx and published in 1885 It is divided into three parts The Metamorphoses of Capital and Their Circuits The Turnover of Capital The Reproduction and Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital In Volume II the main ideas behind the marketplace are to be found namely how value and surplus value are realized Its focuses aren t 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 Marx wrote 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 citation needed 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 Ernest Mandel Intro to Volume II of Capital 1978 Part 3 is the point of departure for the topic of capital accumulation which was given its Marxist treatment later in detail by Rosa Luxemburg among others 4 Capital Volume III edit Das Kapital Volume III subtitled The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole was prepared by Engels from notes left by Marx and published in 1894 It is divided into seven parts The conversion of Surplus Value into Profit and the rate of Surplus Value into the rate of Profit Conversion of Profit into Average Profit The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall Conversion of Commodity Capital and Money Capital into Commercial Capital and Money Dealing Capital Merchant s Capital Division of Profit Into Interest and Profit of Enterprise Interest Bearing Capital Transformation of Surplus Profit into Ground Rent Revenues and Their SourcesThe work is best known today citation needed 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 5 The third volume is highly controversial peculiarly the tenth chapter as some economists feel like Marx contradicted himself with the Marxian fundamental value theory while trying to tackle the transformation problem 6 Intellectual influences editThe purpose of Das Kapital 1867 was a scientific foundation for the politics of the modern labour movement The analyses were meant to bring a science by criticism to the point where it can be dialectically represented and so reveal the law of motion of modern society citation needed to describe how the capitalist mode of production was the precursor of the socialist mode of production The argument is an analysis 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 Science of Logic and The Phenomenology of Spirit Other intellectual influences on Capital were the French socialists Charles Fourier Henri de Saint Simon Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondi and Pierre Joseph Proudhon At university Marx wrote a dissertation comparing the philosophy of nature in the works of the philosophers Democritus circa 460 370 BC and Epicurus 341 270 BC The logical architecture of Das Kapital is derived in part from the Politics and the Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle including the fundamental distinction between use value and exchange value 7 the syllogisms C M C and M C M for simple commodity circulation and the circulation of value as capital 8 9 Moreover the description of machinery under capitalist relations of production as self acting automata derives from Aristotle s speculations about inanimate instruments capable of obeying commands as the condition for the abolition of slavery In the 19th century Marx s research of the available politico economic literature required twelve years usually in the British Library in London 10 Capital Volume IV edit nbsp Karl Marx Theorien uber den Mehrwert 1956 nbsp Karl Kautsky editor of Theories of Surplus ValueAt the time of his death 1883 Marx had prepared the manuscript for Das Kapital Volume IV a critical history of theories of surplus value of his time the 19th century based on the earlier manuscript Theories of Surplus Value 1862 63 The philosopher Karl Kautsky 1854 1938 published a partial edition of Marx s surplus value critique and later published a full three volume edition as Theorien uber den Mehrwert Theories of Surplus Value 1905 1910 The first volume was published in English as A History of Economic Theories 1952 11 Translations editThe first translated publication of Das Kapital was in the Russian Empire in March 1872 It was the first foreign publication and the English edition appeared in 1887 12 Despite Russian censorship proscribing the harmful doctrines of socialism and communism the Russian censors considered Das Kapital 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 Russia will read it and even fewer will understand it Nonetheless Marx acknowledged that Russia was the country where Das Kapital was read and valued more than anywhere For instance the Russian edition was the fastest selling as 3 000 copies were sold in one year while the German edition took five years to sell 1 000 therefore the Russian translation sold fifteen times faster than the German original 13 The foreign editions of Capital Critique of Political Economy 1867 by Karl Marx include a Russian translation by the revolutionary socialist Mikhail Bakunin 1814 1876 Marx revised rewrote and monitored a French translation published in 44 installments from August 1872 through May 1875 and then as a single work with a printing of ten thousand copies the largest up until then 14 Eventually Marx s work was translated into all major languages The definitive critical edition of Marx s works known as MEGA II Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe 15 includes Das Kapital in German only the first volume is in French and shows all the versions and alterations made to the text as well as a very extensive apparatus of footnotes and cross references The first unabridged translation of Das Kapital to Bengali was done by professor Piyush Dasgupta It was published in six volumes by Baniprakash Kolkata India between 1974 and 1983 16 17 In 2012 Red Quill Books released Capital In Manga 18 a comic book version of Volume I which is an expanded English translation of the successful 2008 Japanese pocket version Das Kapital known as Manga de Dokuha 19 English Translations edit The English translation of volume 1 by Samuel Moore and Eleanor Marx s partner Edward Aveling overseen by Engels was published in 1887 as Capital A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production by Swan Sonnenschein Lowrey amp Co 20 This was reissued in the 1970s by Progress Publishers in Moscow while a more recent English translation was made by Ben Fowkes and David Fernbach the Penguin edition Reviews editIn 2017 the historian Gareth Stedman Jones wrote in the Books and Arts section of the scientific journal Nature 21 What is extraordinary about Das Kapital is that it offers a still unrivalled picture of the dynamism of capitalism and its transformation of societies on a global scale It firmly embedded concepts such as commodity and capital in the lexicon And it highlights some of the vulnerabilities of capitalism including its unsettling disruption of states and political systems If Das Kapital has now emerged as one of the great landmarks of nineteenth century thought it is because it connects critical analysis of the economy of his time with its historical roots In doing so he inaugurated a debate about how best to reform or transform politics and social relations which has gone on ever since Positive reception also cited the soundness of the methodology used in producing the book which is called immanent critique This approach which starts from simple category and gradually unfolds into complex categories employed internal criticism that finds contradiction within and between categories while discovering aspects of reality that the categories cannot explain 22 This meant that Marx had to build his arguments on historical narratives and empirical evidence rather than the arbitrary application of his ideas in his evaluation of capitalism 22 On the other hand Das Kapital has also received criticism There are theorists who claimed that this text was unable to reconcile capitalist exploitation with prices dependent upon subjective wants in exchange relations 23 Marxists generally reply that only socially necessary labor time that is labor which is spent on commodities for which there is market demand can be considered productive labour and therefore exploited on Marx s account There are also those who argued that Marx s so called immiseration thesis is presumed to mean that the proletariat is absolutely immiserated 24 25 failed verification The existing scholarly consensus tends towards the opposite view that Marx believed that only relative immiseration would occur that is a fall in labor s share of output 26 Marx himself frequently polemicized against the view that the amount of real wages is a fixed amount 27 See also editAccumulation by dispossession Analytical Marxism Etienne Balibar Eduard Bernstein G A Cohen Capital accumulation 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 Vladimir Lenin Marx s theory of alienation Primitive accumulation of capital Relations of production Return on capital Surplus labour Valorisation Value addedFootnotes edit Green Elliott 12 May 2016 What are the most cited publications in the social sciences according to Google Scholar LSE Impact Blog London School of Economics Archived from the original on 25 December 2018 Retrieved 14 November 2017 Marx Karl Capital The Process of Capitalist Production 3d German edition tr p 53 Marx Karl 1867 Das Kapital Kritik der politischen Oekonomie Vol 1 Der Produktionsprozess des Kapitals 1 ed Hamburg Verlag von Otto Meissner doi 10 3931 e rara 25773 Marx Karl 1885 Das Kapital Kritik der politischen Oekonomie herausgegeben von Friedrich Engels Vol 2 Der Zirkulationsprozess des Kapitals 1 ed Hamburg Verlag von Otto Meissner doi 10 3931 e rara 25620 Marx Karl 1894 Das Kapital Kritik der politischen Oekonomie herausgegeben von Friedrich Engels Vol 3 Der Gesamtprozess der kapitalistischen Produktion 1 ed Hamburg Verlag von Otto Meissner doi 10 3931 e rara 25739 Bohm Bawerk Eugen 1896 Karl Marx and the Close of his System CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform p 19 ISBN 978 1466347687 The value of labour was declared to be the common factor which appears in the exchange relation of commodities i 13 We were told in the form and with the emphasis of a stringent syllogistic conclusion allowing of no exception that to set down two commodities as equivalents in exchange implied that a common factor of the same magnitude existed in both to which each of the two must be reducible i 11 And now in the third volume that individual commodities do and must exchange with each other in a proportion different from that of the labour incorporated in them and this not accidentally and temporarily but of necessity and permanently I cannot help myself I see here no explanation and reconciliation of a contradiction but the bare contradiction itself Marx s third volume contradicts the first The theory of the average rate of profit and of the prices of production cannot be reconciled with the theory of value This is the impression which must I believe be received by every logical thinker And it seems to have been very generally accepted Loria in his lively and picturesque style states that he feels himself forced to the harsh but just judgment that Marx instead of a solution has presented a mystification Marx Karl Fowkes Ben trans 1977 Capital Vol 1 New York Knopf Doubleday p 68 253 f 6 Marx credits Aristotle for being the first to analyze the form of value In addition he identifies the categories of use and exchange value with the Aristotlean distinction between the Oeconomic and the Chrematisitic In the Politics the former is defined as value in use while the latter is defined as a practice in which exchange value becomes an end unto itself Meikle Scott 1997 Aristotle s Economic Thought London Clarendon Press McCarthy George 1992 Marx and Aristotle Nineteenth Century German Social Theory and Classical Antiquity New York Rowman and Littlefield Marx Karl Fowkes Ben trans 1977 Capital Vol 1 New York Knopf Doubleday pp 446 Columbia Encyclopedia 1994 5th Edition p 1707 Ostler Nicholas 2005 Empires of the Word A Language History of the World HarperCollins London and New York Figes Orlando A People s Tragedy The Russian Revolution 1891 1924 1996 London p 139 The Originality of Marx s French Edition of Capital An Historical Analysis IMHO Journal imhojournal org Retrieved 19 February 2023 Bearbeitung des Bandes Waltraud Falk Leiter Karl Marx Capital a critical analysis of capitalist production London 1887 ড স ক য প ট ল Chakraborty Achin Chakrabarty Anjan Dasgupta Byasdeb Sen Samita eds 2019 Capital in the East Reflections on Marx Singapore Springer p 33 ISBN 9789813294677 Yasko Guy 2012 Capital In Manga Red Quill Books ISBN 978 1 926958 19 4 Archived from the original on 25 February 2016 Retrieved 25 February 2016 Marx s Das Kapital comic finds new fans in Japan Archived 6 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine Japan Today 23 December 2008 Retrieved 24 April 2019 Marx Karl 1818 1883 Capital A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production London Swan Sonnenschein Lowrey amp Co 1887 Archived from the original on 24 June 2018 Retrieved 23 June 2018 Jones Gareth Stedman Jones 27 July 2017 In retrospect Das Kapital Archived 2 August 2017 at the Wayback Machine Nature Vol 547 pp 401 402 Retrieved 30 July 2017 a b Wayne Michael 2012 Marx s Das Kapital For Beginners Danbury Connecticut Red Wheel Weiser ISBN 9781934389638 Brown Morgan 2017 A Rationalist Critique of Deconstruction Demystifying Poststructuralism and Derrida s Science of the Non The Culture amp Anarchy Press p 119 ISBN 9781365481901 Boxill Bernard 1992 Blacks and Social Justice Lanham MD Rowman amp Littlefield Publishers p 277 ISBN 978 0847677573 Sowell Thomas March 1960 Marx s Increasing Misery Doctrine The American Economic Review 50 111 120 Lapides Kenneth December 2007 Marx s Wage Theory in Historical Perspective Author ISBN 9781587369742 Archived from the original on 31 July 2020 Retrieved 31 May 2019 Marx Karl 1865 Value Price and Profit Archived from the original on 30 May 2019 Retrieved 31 May 2019 Further reading editAlthusser Louis Balibar Etienne 2009 Reading Capital London Verso Althusser Louis October 1969 How to Read Marx s Capital Archived 26 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine Marxism Today pp 302 305 Originally appeared in French in L Humanite on 21 April 1969 Eugen Bohm von Bawerk 1896 Karl Marx and the Close of His System Bottomore Thomas ed 1998 A Dictionary of Marxist Thought Oxford Blackwell Euchner Walter Schmidt Alfred eds 1968 Kritik der politischen Okonomie heute 100 Jahre Kapital in German Frankfurt Europaische Verlagsanstalt Wien Europa Verlag DNB 457299002 Fine Ben 2010 Marx s Capital 5th ed London Pluto Harvey David 2010 A Companion to Marx s Capital London Verso Harvey David 2006 The Limits of Capital London Verso Lapides Kenneth Marx s Wage Theory in Historical Perspective Mandel Ernest Marxist Economic Theory Vols 1 and 2 New York Monthly Review Press Marx Karl McLellan David ed 2008 Capital An Abridged Edition Oxford Oxford Paperbacks Abridged edition ISBN 978 0 19 953570 5 Heinrich Michael 2004 translation 2012 An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx s Capital translated by Alexander Locasio Monthly Review Press ISBN 1583672885 Postone Moishe 1993 Time Labor and Social Domination A Reinterpretation of Marx s Critical Theory Cambridge Cambridge University Press Morishima Michio 1973 Marx s Economics a dual theory of worth and growth Cambridge university Press Variety Artworks 2012 Capital In Manga Archived 27 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine Ottawa Red Quill Books ISBN 978 1 926958 19 4 Cleaver Harry 1979 Reading Capital Politically University of Texas Press 1st ed AK Press 2nd edition ISBN 1902593294 Wheen Francis 2006 Marx s Das Kapital A Biography New York Atlantic Monthly Press ISBN 978 0 8021 4394 5 Roberts William Clare 2016 Marx s Inferno The Political theory of Capital Princeton University Press ISBN 9780691172903External links edit nbsp Wikisource has original text related to this article Das Kapital nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Das Kapital Althusser Louis 21 April 1969 How to Read Marx s Capital Wage Labour and Capital An earlier work by Marx that deals with many of the ideas later expanded in Das Kapital Engels Friedrich 1867 Synopsis of Capital Harvey David Reading Marx s Capital University open courses Liberation School 2021 Reading Capital with Comrades podcast class series Ehrbar Hans G Annotations Explanations and Clarifications to Capital It helps with understanding the early concepts Choonara Joseph Capital Archived 30 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine Socialist Worker First in a series of accessible columns on Das Kapital PolyluxMarx A Capital Workbook in Slides covers Volume I of Das Capital in PowerPoint slides in German English Spanish Slovak Portuguese and Arabic Harvey David 12 July 2018 Why Marx s Capital Still Matters Jacobin Retrieved 24 April 2019 Segrillo Angelo Karl Marx s Capital Vols 1 2 3 Abridged Sao Paulo FFLCH USP 2020 Online editionsCapital Volume I 1867 published in Marx s lifetime Capital Volume I The Process of Production of Capital from the Marxists Internet Archive nbsp Capital Volume I public domain audiobook at LibriVox Capital Volume I 1974 Progress Publishers edition downloadable PDF from the Internet Archive Capital Volume II 1885 manuscript not completed by Marx before his death in 1883 subsequently edited and published by friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels as the work of Marx Capital Volume II The Process of Circulation of Capital from the Marxists Internet Archive Capital Volume II 1974 Progress Publishers edition downloadable PDF from the Internet Archive Capital Volume III 1894 manuscript not completed by Marx before his death in 1883 subsequently edited and published by friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels as the work of Marx Capital Volume III The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole at the Marxists Internet Archive Capital Volume III 1974 Progress Publishers edition downloadable PDF from the Internet Archive Capital Volume IV 1905 1910 critical history of theories of surplus value manuscript written by Marx partial edition edited and published after Marx s death by Karl Kautsky as Theories of Surplus Value other editions published later Capital Volume IV Theories of Surplus Value at Marxists Internet Archive Part I Part II Part III 1975 Progress Publishers editions downloadable PDF from the Internet Archive Synopses Reading Marx s Capital Series of video lectures by professor David Harvey Friedrich Engels 1975 On Marx s Capital Progress Publishers Includes Engels Synopsis of Capital Otto Ruhle s Abridgement of Karl Marx s Capital A Critique of Political Economy Workers Liberty p 48 Portals nbsp Books nbsp Business nbsp Communism nbsp Money nbsp Philosophy nbsp Politics nbsp Socialism nbsp Society Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Das Kapital amp oldid 1203313475, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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