Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (German:Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie), also known asCapital orDas Kapital (German pronunciation:[daskapiˈtaːl]), is the most significant work byKarl Marx and the cornerstone ofMarxian economics, published in three volumes in 1867, 1885, and 1894. The culmination of his life's work, the text contains Marx's analysis ofcapitalism, to which he sought to apply his theory ofhistorical materialism in acritique of classical political economy.Das Kapital's second and third volumes were completed from manuscripts after Marx's death in 1883 and published byFriedrich Engels.
Marx's study of political economy began in the 1840s, influenced by the works of the classical political economistsAdam Smith andDavid Ricardo. His earlier works, includingEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 andThe German Ideology (1846, with Engels), laid the groundwork for his theory of historical materialism, which posits that theeconomic structure of a society (in particular, theforces andrelations of production) is the most crucial factor in shaping its nature. Rather than a simple description of capitalism as aneconomic model,Das Kapital instead examines the system as a historical epoch and amode of production, and seeks to trace its origins, development, and decline. Marx argues that capitalism is nottranshistorical, but a form of economic organization which has arisen and developed in a specific historical context, and which contains contradictions which will inevitably lead to its decline and collapse.
Central to Marx's analysis of capitalism inDas Kapital is his theory ofsurplus value, the unpaid labor which capitalists extract from workers in order to generateprofit. He also introduces the concept ofcommodity fetishism, describing how capitalist markets obscure the social relationships behind economic transactions, and argues that capitalism is inherently unstable due to thetendency of the rate of profit to fall, which leads to cyclicaleconomic crises.Volume I focuses on production and labor exploitation,Volume II examines capital circulation and economic crises, andVolume III explores the distribution of surplus value among economic actors. According to Marx,Das Kapital is ascientific work based on extensive research, and a critique of both capitalism and thebourgeois political economists who argue that it is efficient and stable.
Das Kapital initially attracted little mainstream attention, but gained prominence as socialist and labor movements expanded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Beyond these movements,Das Kapital has profoundly influenced economic thought and political science, and today is the most cited book in thesocial sciences published before 1950.[1] Evencritics of Marxism acknowledge its significance in the development of theories of labor dynamics, economic cycles, and the effects of industrial capitalism. Scholars continue to engage with its themes, particularly in analyses of global capitalism, inequality, and labor exploitation.
InDas Kapital (1867), Marx proposes that the motivating force ofcapitalism is in theexploitation oflabor, whose unpaid work is the ultimate source ofsurplus value. Theowner of the means of production is able to claim the right to this surplus value because they are legally protected by theruling regime throughproperty rights and the legally established distribution ofshares 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 producingcapital, 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 ofwage labour, the transformation of the workplace, the concentration of capital, commercial competition, thebanking system, thedecline 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 nomorality 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, subjectivemoral value is separate from objective economic value. Subsequently,political economy (the justdistribution of wealth) and "political arithmetic" (about taxes) were reorganized into three discrete fields of human activity, namelyeconomics,law andethics—politics and economics were divorced.
"The economic formation of society [is] a process of natural history". Thus, it is possible for apolitical economist to objectively study the scientific laws of capitalism, given that its expansion of the market system of commerce hadobjectified human economic relations. The use ofmoney (cash nexus) voided religious and political illusions about itseconomic value and replaced them withcommodity 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 theclass struggle betweenlabour andcapital, thewage labourer and theowner of themeans 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 immediateperceptions as men and women and associal 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 toproletarianrevolution—whichThe Communist Manifesto (1848) collectively identified as a weapon forged by the capitalists which the working class "turned against thebourgeoisie itself".
In a capitalist economy,technological improvement and its consequent increased production augment the amount ofmaterial wealth (use value) in society while simultaneously diminishing theeconomic value of the same wealth, therebydiminishing the rate of profit—aparadox 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 ofsurplus value), the first volume appeared in 1867 asThe 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 asDas Kapital.
Das Kapital, Volume I (1867) is a critical analysis of political economy, meant to reveal the contradictions of thecapitalist mode of production, how it was the precursor of thesocialist mode of production and of theclass struggle rooted in the capitalist social relations of production. The first of three volumes ofDas Kapital was published on 14 September 1867, dedicated toWilhelm Wolff and was the sole volume published in Marx's lifetime.[3]
Das Kapital, Volume II, subtitledThe 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
TheReproduction and Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital.
InVolume 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 thecommoditylabour power, rather than producers of value andsurplus-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 findalready 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 thecapitalist mode of production (Ernest Mandel, Intro to Volume II ofCapital, 1978). Part 3 is the point of departure for the topic ofcapital accumulation which was given its Marxist treatment later in detail byRosa Luxemburg, among others.[4]
Das Kapital, Volume III, subtitledThe 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 intoProfit and the rate of Surplus Value into the rate of Profit
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, therate of profittends to fall. This result whichorthodox 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 capitalistmode of production—result incrises 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]
Volume 3 is subtitled "The process of capitalist production as a whole" and is concerned primarily with the internal differentiation of the capitalist class. The first three parts are concerned with the division of surplus value amongst individual capitals, where it takes the form of profit. The following parts are concerned with merchants' capital, interest-bearing capital and landed capital. The last part draws the whole account together. The aim of the volume as a whole is to locate and describe the concrete forms which grow out of the movements of capital as a whole. Thus, the various forms of capital approach step by step the form which they assume on the surface of society in the action of different capitals on one another in competition and in the ordinary consciousness of the agents of production themselves (25) (Clarke).[citation needed]
At university, Marx wrote a dissertation comparing thephilosophy of nature in the works of the philosophersDemocritus (circa 460–370 BC) andEpicurus (341–270 BC). The logical architecture ofDas Kapital is derived in part from thePolitics and theNicomachean Ethics by Aristotle, including the fundamental distinction betweenuse value andexchange value,[8] thesyllogisms (C-M-C' andM-C-M') for simple commodity circulation and the circulation ofvalue ascapital.[9][10] Moreover, the description ofmachinery under capitalist relations of production as "self-actingautomata" derives from Aristotle's speculations about inanimate instruments capable of obeying commands as the condition for the abolition ofslavery. In the 19th century, Marx's research of the available politico-economic literature required twelve years, usually in theBritish Library in London.[11]
At the time of his death (1883), Marx had prepared the manuscript forDas Kapital, Volume IV, a critical history of theories ofsurplus value of his time, the 19th century, based on the earlier manuscriptTheories of Surplus Value (1862–63). The philosopherKarl Kautsky (1854–1938) published a partial edition of Marx's surplus-value critique and later published a full, three-volume edition asTheorien über den Mehrwert (Theories of Surplus Value, 1905–1910). The first volume was published in English asA History of Economic Theories (1952).[12] TheCommunist Party of the Soviet Union published its own edition of Volume IV in which it claimed that Kautsky's edition bastardized the original text, with their version containing more of the original, unedited material.[13]
The first translated publication ofDas Kapital was in theRussian Empire in March 1872.[14] It was the first foreign publication with the French edition beginning publication in August 1872[15] and the English edition appearing 15 years later in 1887.[14] It was even published before the first modern Russian translation of the whole Bible in 1876.[16] DespiteRussian censorship proscribing "the harmful doctrines ofsocialism andcommunism", the Russian censors consideredDas Kapital as a "strictly scientific work" ofpolitical economy, the content of which did not apply tomonarchic Russia, where "capitalistexploitation" had never occurred and was officially dismissed, given "that very few people inRussia will read it, and even fewer will understand it". Nonetheless, Marx acknowledged that Russia was the country whereDas 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.[14] This edition was in part worked on byrevolutionary socialistMikhail Bakunin, but "he quit after completing part of the first chapter" and it was completed byNikolai Danielson andGerman Lopatin among others.[17]
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.[15] 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),[18] includesDas 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 professorPiyush Dasgupta. It was published in six volumes by Baniprakash, Kolkata, India between 1974 and 1983.[19][20]
In 2012,Red Quill Books releasedCapital: In Manga!,[21] a comic book version of Volume I which is an expanded English translation of the successful 2008 Japanese pocket versionDas Kapital known asManga de Dokuha.[22]
The English translation of volume 1 bySamuel Moore andEleanor Marx's partnerEdward Aveling, overseen by Engels, was published in 1887 asCapital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production bySwan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, & Co.[23] This was reissued in the 1970s byProgress Publishers in Moscow, while a more recent English translation was made by Ben Fowkes and David Fernbach (the Penguin edition). In 2024, Princeton University Press published the first English translation of the second German edition of Capital, Volume 1, edited and translated by Paul North and Paul Reitter. Volumes 2 and 3 are forthcoming.[24]
What is extraordinary aboutDas 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. [...] IfDas 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.[26] 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.[26]
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.[27] Marxists generally reply that onlysocially 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-calledimmiseration thesis is presumed to mean that theproletariat is absolutely immiserated.[28][29][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.[30] Marx himself frequently polemicized against the view "that the amount of real wages ... is a fixed amount."[31]
^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.
^Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen (1896).Karl Marx and the Close of his System. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. p. 19.ISBN978-1466347687.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.'{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
^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 theOeconomic and theChrematisitic. In thePolitics, 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.
^abcFiges, Orlando (1998). "1.4.ii: Marx Comes to Russia".A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924. New York, N.Y: Penguin Books. p. 139.ISBN9780140243642.
^Jones, Gareth Stedman (2017). "In retrospect: Das Kapital".Nature.547 (7664). Springer Science and Business Media LLC:401–402.doi:10.1038/547401a.ISSN0028-0836.
^abWayne, Michael (2012).Marx's 'Das Kapital' For Beginners. Danbury, Connecticut: Red Wheel/Weiser.ISBN9781934389638.
^Brown, Morgan (2017).A Rationalist Critique of Deconstruction: Demystifying Poststructuralism and Derrida's Science of the "Non". The Culture & Anarchy Press. p. 119.ISBN9781365481901.
^Boxill, Bernard (1992).Blacks and Social Justice. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 277.ISBN978-0847677573.
^Sowell, Thomas (March 1960). "Marx's "Increasing Misery" Doctrine".The American Economic Review.50:111–120.
Christopher J. Arthur andGeert Reuten (1998) edsThe Circulation of Capital: Essays on Volume Two of Marx's Capital, London & New York, Macmillan & St. Martin's Press
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 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 asTheories of Surplus Value; other editions published later:
