Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 3

PENGUIN

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CLASSICS

CAPITAL

VOLUME 3

KARL MARX was born at Trier in 1818 of a German-Jewish family

converted to Christianity. As a student in Bonn and Berlin he was influenced by Hegel's dialectic, but he later reacted against idealist philosophy and began to develop his theory of historical materialism. He related the state of society to its economic foundations and mode of production, and recommended armed revolution on the part of the proletariat. In Paris in 1844 Marx met Friedrich Engels, with whom he formed a life-long partnership. Together they prepared the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) as a statement of the Communist League's policy. In 1848 Marx returned to Germany and took an active part in the unsuccessful democratic revolution. The following year he arrived in England as a refugee and lived in London until his death in 1883. Helped financially by Engels, Marx and his family nevertheless lived in great poverty. After years of research (mostly carried out in the British Museum), he published in 1867 the first volume of his great work, Capital. From 1864 to 1872 Marx played a leading role in the International Working Men's Association, and his last years saw the development of the first mass workers' parties founded on avowedly Marxist principles. Besides the two posthumous volumes of Capital compiled by Engels, Karl Marx's other writings include The German Ideology, The Poverty of Philosophy, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, The Civil War in France, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy and Theories of Surplus- Value.

ERNEST MANDEL was born in 1923. He was educated at the Free

University of Brussels, where he was later Professor for many years,

and the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. He gained his PhD from the Free University of Berlin. He was a Member of the Economic Studies Commission of FGTB (Belgian TUC) from 1954 to 1963 and was chosen for the annual Alfred Marshall Lectures by

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Mandel, Introduction to Capital Volume 2, Pelican Marx Library, London, 1978, pp. 62 if. . . �\:,· t:33 �· This argument was first directed against L�emburg by Bukharm (see Imperialism and the Accumulation of Capital, op. CIt., p. 1 15) and by Henryk

82

Introduction

This objection, however, is unjustified. While it is true that the contemporary history of capitalism, indeed the history of any mode of production in any epoch, cannot be satisfactorily ex­ plained if the class struggle (and especially its outcome after certain decisive battles) is not treated as a partially autonomous factor, it - is likewise true that the whole meaning of Marxism disappears if this partial autonomy is transformed into an abso­ lute one. It is precisely the merit of Luxembu,rg, as well as of several of her subsequent antagonists in the ' collapse. controversy ', to have related the ups and downs of the class struggle to the inner laws of motion of the system. If one were to assume that either the infinite adaptability of the capitalist system, or the political astuteness of the bourgeoisie, or the inability of the proletariat to raise its consciousness to sufficient levels (not to speak of the alleged growing ' integration ' of the working class into bourgeois society), could, in the long run and for an undefined length of time, neutralize or reverse that system's inner laws of motion and intrinsic contradictions, i.e. prevent them from asserting them­ selves, then the only scientifically correct conclusion would be that these laws of motion do not correspond to the system's essence : in other words, that'Marx was basically mistaken when he thought he had discovered that essence. (This is something different, of course, from ; the possibility. of temporary ups and downs in the sharpening of contradictions, which are not only possible but even inevitable, as Marx himself pointed out in his treatment of the tendency for the average rate of profit to decline.) A second attempt to produce a scientifically rigorous ' collapse theory ' (though in the event it was less rigorous, it should be said, than Luxemburg's) was made during and immediately after the First World War by certain leading radical Marxist economists who greatly influenced Lenin when he was drafting his Imperial­ ism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. The most prominent of these were the Russian Nikolai Bukharin and the Hungarian Eugen Varga.134 While avoiding any ' mono-causal ' reduction of the _

Grossmann (Das Akkumulations- und Zusammenbruchsgesetz des kapital­ istischen Systems, Frankfurt, 1967, p. 22), who both accused her of ' mech­ anical ' economic determinism. Claudio Napoleoni formulates a similar reproach in Colletti (ed.), op. cit., pp. lii-liii. 1 34. Bukharin, op. cit., pp. 1 1 3-25 ; Eugen Varga, Die Niedergangsperiode des Kapitalismus, Hamburg, 1922, pp. 7-14.

Introduction 83 f�foblein to a single decisive factor, these a�thors f?rmulat�d the

capitalism had entered an IrreversIble perIod of in· uypot-hesis that . d mamlestatlOn of a11 resu�tiI� g from a co�bme decline, �'bist6fical . n reductI : � radictlOns con ned arpe � of �a!�ets ; declme 0:-.-Eljs� sh --- '

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. "-;WoiId trade ; declme of the mternatlOnal dIvI�lOn of l�bour , and even � pa!tIal r.everslOn to economy, ;�aecline of money

, 'Batter and pre-capitalist forms of productIOn m capIta�Ist coun­ 'tties ; decline of material pro,ductio� ; �ollapse of the credIt system ; . absolute decline in the standard of hvmg o � the workers ; !ecurrent 'Wars and civil wars ; recurrent revolutIOnary explOSIOns and �victori ous socialist revolutions. , . ' : t" While this analysis may offer a relatively convmcmg deSCrIptIOn ·: a:nd explanation of what actually·occ�rred in . I 9 1 4 (or even 1 9 1 2)­ �f921 and again in 1 930-40 (or even m certam parts of t�e world "iri\}945�8), it gets into serious trouble once confro�ted WIth .p0 �t­ '·Second World War developments in the internatIOnal capItalIst {ebori omy. Tending to theoretical eclecticism, it lacks the deep�r r:igc>ur needed to tie all these various devel c:pmen�s to the .basic , ''laws of motion of the system. In partIcular, It avoIds any discus­ factors, enumerated by countervailing 'sioD. of the reasons why the for t�e a�erage tendency the neutralize to temporarily able as 'Marx -rate of profit to fall, would definitely cease to be effecti".e m the . �.�ep()ch of capitalist decline ; why th� huge devalorI ��tlOn and ' 'dest'ruction of capital which occurred m the 1 929-32 CrISIS and the ' Second World War, coupled with a huge upsurge in the rate of ':strrplus-value (as a result both of catastroph�c . working-c1a� s . :i(jefeats and of a powerful increase in the productIVIty of labour In 4�partment II, as a result of a new technol� gical revoh�tio�), - ;�c6uld not lead to a new upsurge in the producttve forces - mevlt­ �'ably ending in a new reassertion of sharpened contradictions of "the system. 135 ;:zlOne offshoot of the Bukharin-Varga theory of the IrreversIble . �,iaecline of the capitalist system since 1 9 14 is the concept of �Ygerieral crisis of capitalism ', in which the emp� asis has become 2ptogressively shifted from the inne� l �ws of J?otton of �he system "towards the outside - challenges it IS mcreasmgly meetmg as the \�y.__ .

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135. It is true that Varga took a more cautious attitude after the Second ' \Voild War' however this seems to represent a ' bridge' position on the way 'to' the . h�onicist �onceptions of the theoreticians of ' state m�n�poly " ,*pifalism'. See inter alia his Essais sur l'economie politique du capltallsme, Moscow, 1967.

84

Introduction

Introduction 85

result of a chain of victorious socialist revolutions, which have led to a shrinking of the geographical area in which it can operate. In its initial form, the concept of a general crisis of capitalism which originated from the victory of the October Revolution in Russia - still established an interrelation between that outside challenge and the ensuing sharpening of the system's inner con­ tradictions.136 But this has become less and less the case in later variants, especially the ' state monopoly capitalism ' theory fully developed after the Second World War. Here the ' basic ' contradiction is clearly defined as that between the ' socialist camp ' and the ' capitalist camp ', and no longer as the increasingly explosive inner contradictions of the capitalist system itself. The paradox is even pushed to the point where Soviet authors seriously assert that, as a result of the ' competition between the two systems ', capitalism is ' condemned ' to continu­ ous growth P37 In this way, the theory of collapse is ' dialectically ' turned into its very opposite : the possibility for capitalism to survive for ever. The system's capacity to eliminate for an in­ definite period the most serious effects of its inner contradictions is postulated - until such time as the economic, social and cultural superiority of the socialist camp finally asserts itself. It is hardly necessary to point out that this intellectual contortion is struc­ turally related to the specific interests of the Soviet bureaucracy ­ both its attempts to maintain conditions of peaceful coexistence with international capitalism, and its concern tp maintain the sub­ ordination of a large section of the international labour movement to its own diplomatic manoeuvres - and, as such, represents a typical phenomenon of ideological mystification. A third - once again, more rigorous - attempt to theorize the , inevitability of capitalism's collapse was offered in the late twenties by the Polish Marxist Henryk Grossmann. This was essentially a ' generalization - one could even say an extreme extrapolation - of Marx's law for the tendency of the average rate of profit to decline. Grossmann tried to prove that, in the long run, countervailing forces cannot prevent the law from asserting

itself with increasing strength - up to the point where all accumu­ lated capital tends to be unable to become valori:z;ed, i.e. to the point where the total mass of surplus-value cannot ensure sufficient accumulation, even if the subsistence of the capitalist class itself falls to zero.138 There are many weaknesses in this theory, which have been pointed out by a number of critics.139 The main one is that Grossmann does not really prove that all the countervailing forces gradually lose their capacity to neutralize the declining rate of profit. He especially underestimates the effects of massive devalorization (and destruction) of capital, which has historically proven to be much larger in scope than he visualizes (his book was finished before the 1 929-32 crisis unfolded to its full depth - and, of course, before the frightful destruction of the Second WorId War). Therefore, Grossmann's somewhat arbitrary numerical starting­ point, - the reproduction schemas which Otto Bauer worked out in his reply to Luxemburg's The Accumulation of Capital140 - leads to results which ignore the effects of devalorization cycles of capital. Such a hypothesis is untenable in the light of the real history of capitalism (which is a crisis-ridden history that has witnessed twenty-one crises of overproduction since the establish­ ment of the world market for industrial goods). Marx explicitly points out this devalorization-of-capital function of capitalist crises in Chapter 1 5 of Volume 3 of Capital. Hence, one can only consider Grossmann's successive figures as representing not an­ nual totals but averages for seven/ten-year cycles. Thus the final collapse of the system is postponed till the twenty-second century (after thirty-seven seven/ten-year cycles). If the initial proportions between department I and department II were more realistic - and they should have been, in the light of the real history of the capi­ talist mode of production which, in the 1 920s, had nowhere even approached a situation in which two-thirds of current production occurred in department I - the postponement of the ' collapse ' would be even more pronounced : it would occur only after . fifty or sixty cycles, i.e. after 400 or 500 years. Inadvertently, Gross-

1 36. See, for example, Eugen Varga, Grundfragen der Okonomik und Politik des Imperialismus nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg, Berlin, 1955. 1 37. See, for example, N. Inosemzev, Der heutige Kapitalismus, Berlin, 1973, pp. 59, 94-5, 106-7. For a more general critique of the theory of ' state monopoly capitalism', see Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, op. cit., pp. 5 1 322 ; and Jacques Valier, LePCF et Ie capitalisme monopoliste d'etat, Paris, 1976.

1 38. Grossmann, op. cit. (original edition Leipzig, 1929). 1 39. The most systematic critiques of Grossmann are to be found in Fritz Sternberg, Eine Umwalzung der Wissenschaft?, Berlin, 1930; and Nathalia Moszkowska, Zur Kritik Moderner Krisentheorien, Prague, 1935. 140. Otto Bauer, 'Die Akkumulation des Kapitals ', in Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 31 (191 3), part 1 .

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Introduction

mann, obsessed by his mono-causal explanation for the inevita bil­ ity of collapse, was led to demonstrate precisely the opposite of what he intended : the extreme longevity rather than the final collapse of the system, as a function of its inner laws of moti on . One might be tempted to treat the Baran/Sweezy theory of the growing difficulty of ' surplus realization ' by monopoly capitali sm as either a variant of Luxemburg's collapse theory or a fourth distinct collapse theory . of its own.141 This, however, is not the case, since Baran and Sweezy, while underlining the growin difficulties for ' surplus realization ', at the same time stress theg system 's capacity to integrate the working class socially and thereby ensure its perpetuity - albeit under conditions of perman­ ent quasi-stagnation - rather than its inevitable collapse . Like the more extreme proponents of the ' state monopoly capitali sm ' theory, these authors have to project the system's real enemies outside the system itself: third-world peasants ; margina lized super-exploited layers ; and so on. But they are nowher e able to demonstrate that these social forces anywhere have a potential social and economic strength comparable to that of the modern proletariat. Since such forces are not vital to the system 's basic productive relations, they can be variously ignored , or integrated, or crushed, without making the system incapable of functioning.142 So this is not really a ' collapse of capitalism ' theory ,at all. As in the case of the mono-causal theo ries of crisis, there are " obviously correct elements in e�ch of the three version s of collapse theory outlined above. These have to be tied togethe r in order to furnish a coherent theory of the inevitable collapse of capitalism, consistent with all the inner laws of motion and contrad ictions of that mode of production, as unfolded by Marx's analysis in

Capital.

One element in Grossmann's analysis is import ant, if not de-

141 . Baran and Sweezy, op. cit. , Chapters 3 and 4. There is a clear filiation between the Baran/Sweezy concept of capitalism tending towards economic stagnation, and the theories of neo-Keynesian (and sometimes semi-Marxist) authors like Michael Kalecki (Studies in Economic Dynamics, London, 1943 ; Essays in the Theory 0/ Economic Fluctuations. London, 1939), J. Steindl (Maturity and Stagnation in American Capitalism, Oxford, 1 952) or Joan Robinson. 14-2. It is no accident that most ' third-worIdist ' Marxists tend to exaggerate the ability of capitalism to ' restructure' itself on a world scale by purely economic processes, in order to overcome the current depression of the nineteen-seventies and eighties.

Introduction 87 the starting-point for such a synthesis : this is the point in , in addition to the tendency of the rate of surplus-value )WllLen irne �Kal�cl1:ne, the mass of surplus-value ceases to �ow and be ns to 1.�,.. I'f1'tpo first gradually, then permanently. This would obvI�:)U�ly most serious blow to a continuous process of capItalIst ���a(;cu.ml11at10n. Grossmann, however, fails to point out the con­ in surplus-value proJCF't:: I.I;i' content of such an incipient decline which I have tried to specify in Late Capitalism : a le,vel ; ��l'\f:me:chlani'za1tI'l::>n, of semi�automation - let us say, of spreadmg automation - of a growing number of branches of output; in .. :"which the total input of productive , labour- ours starts to declme, YiJ.tencein which total valu�-pro uctlOn de�lmes. , " 'g:�'kThis does not automatIcally Imply an lm,!" e�late dec Ine In the , :�: bs(jlute mass of surplus,;,value, since the bIg Increase m produc­ labour inherent in ' robotism ' ,can reduce necessary ". �#yity ' of " labour-time proportionally to the reduc,tI�n of ab �olute value , , �pr()duction. In the long run, however, thI� IS ImpOSSIble WIthout i;:more and more severe reductions even , m re�l wag�s, After a " ;"C'ertail1 point, moreover, it becomes phYSIC �y ImpossI le. o the . textension of automation beyond a given ceIlIng leads, mevItably, ,first to' a reduction in the total volume of value produced, then to , "a:;reduction in the total volume of surplus-value pr� uced. ThIS "_,:�:3in�Jurn unleashes' a fourfold combined ' collap�e, CrISIS ' : � h�ge ;crisis of decline in the rate of profit ; a hug� cnsIs of realIzat� on , b� robotIs� Ithe . increase in the productivity of labou: Imphed '.expands the mass of use-values produ�ed In an eyen hIgher ratIo .than it reduces real wages, and a growmg proportIOn of these use­ ��alues becomes unsaleable) ; a huge social c�isi� ;143 and a ,huge , :crisis of' reconversion ' (in other words, of capItalIsm s capacI�� to ' adapt) . through devalorization - the specific forms �f �ap�tal , ) destruction threatening not only the survival of human CIVIlIzatIOn but even the physical survival of mankind or of life on our :planet;l44

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teduce the absolute number of workers, and actually enable the countiY �o -accomplish its entire production in a �h�rter period of time, would pr0d.uce� a , 'revolution since it would put the majorIty of the populatIon out of action. / ;144, I �ot deal here with the problem of ' limits of growth ', which some ' pOOple have argued are inherent not in the capitalist mo�e o� production as , . ,'such but in large-scale industrial production itself, seen as mevltably depletmg natUral resources. Marx was very much aware of this problem (see below, pp. 949--50; and Capital Volume 1, op. cit., pp. 636-8). He saw it, however, as a

88

Introduction

A way out is obviously possible, via the massive transformation of ' services ' into commodity-producing branches (which add to total value production). Indeed, it is already starting in such key services as health, education, banking and public administration. This indicates how wrong it is to speak of late capitalism as a post-industrial society.14s On the contrary, we are only now entering the age of full industrialization of a whole series of branches which have escaped that process up to now. But this only postpones the time of reckoning. For the industrialization of service sectors reproduces there, after a certain transition period, the very same processes of massive mechanization, semi-automa­ tion and full automation for which micro-processors have already provided the necessary technical tools (the same applies, inciden­ tally, to the process of industrialization of underdeveloped coun­ tries as a way out of the structural crisis). So it is impossible to see how capitalism can escape its final fate : economic collapse. In addition, with the development of semi-automation and automation, a new significant reversal occurs of the revolution constantly produced by capitalism in labour organization and the actual labour process. A massive reintroduction of intellectual labour into the process of production is inevitable, alongside an at least relative decline in the extreme parcellization of labour characteristic of Taylorism. The more wage-labour is employed for supervising functions and the maintenance of delicate- and cqstly equipment, the more its own skill, level of culture and degree of involvement in the production process becomes an indispensable element of reproduction of capital. Hence, not only are the cooperative qualities of objectively socialized labour inside the factory developed to a higher degree. The consciousness of the workers that they are able to run factories instead of by-product of the specific (and distorted) forms of technological development characteristic of capitalism, not as an inevitable product of the application of the natural sciences to production. This implies that the problem is soluble in a different social framework, without mankind having to forgo the advantages of freeing itself from uncreative mechanical labour. Some of the most acute non-Marxist critics of contemporary capitalist society from an ecological standpoint have come to similar conclusions : see, for example, Barry Com­ moner, The Closing Circle, London, 1 972 ; Harry Rothman, Murderous Providence, London, 1972. 145. See, for instance, Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, New York, 1973.

Introduction

89

���pitalists or caJ?i�alist man�ge:s takes .a giant leap forw.ard. Thus -�ihe : growing cnsis . of capIt�hs! relatIOns of pro��ctIOn (both . . . � obj ectively and s�bJectIvely, I.e. m terms of theIr legItImacy m the �yes of the workmg class and of larger and . larger sect?rs of the - � population as a whole), and the challenge WhICh workers struggles pose for these, become an integral part of the system's tendency towards collapse. '; But it is evident that such a trend towards upgrading labour in productive sectors with the hi�hest t�chnological ?evelop�e�t must, of necessity, be accompamed QY Its v�ry ?-egatIOn : a nse m mass unemployment, in the extent of margmahzed sectors of the population, in the number of those who ' drop out ' and of all those whom the ' final ' development of capitalist technology expels from the process o� p�oducti �n. This means .onl� t�at the growing challenges to capltahst relat�ons of productIOn mSIde t�e factory are accompanied by growmg challenges to all baSIC bourgeois relations and values in society as a whole, and these too 'cbnstitute an important and periodically explosive element of"the tendency of capitalism to final collapse. . - As I said earlier, not necessarily of collapse in favour of a - higher form of social organization or civilization. Precisely as a Junction of capitalism's very degeneration, phenomena of _-�ultural decay, of retrogression in the fields of ideology and - '�espect for human rights, multiply alongside the uninte:rupt�d succession of multiform crises with which that degeneratIOn WIll :face us (has already faced us). Barbarism, as one possible result of the collapse of the system, is a much more concrete and precise perspective today than it was in the twenties and thirties. Even the horrors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima will appear mild compared to the horrors with which a continuous decay of the system will - confront mankind. Under these circumstances, the struggle for a socialist outcome takes on the significance of a struggle for the Very survival of human civilization and the human race. The proletariat, as Marx has shown, unites all the objective prereq�is­ -ites for successfully conducting that struggle ; today, that remams truer than ever. And it has at least the potential for acquiring the 'subjective prerequisites too, for a victory of world socialism. • 'Whether that potential will actually be realized will depend, in the last analysis, upon the conscious efforts of organized revoluti �nary. Marxists, integrating themselves with the spontaneous pen OdIC striving of the proletariat to reorganize society along socialist

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90 Introduction lines, and leading it to precise goals : the conquest of state power and radical social revolution. I see no more reason to be pessimis­ tic today as to the outcome of that endeavour than Marx was at the time he wrote Capital.

Preface

ER N E S T M A N D E L

NOTE

In this edition numbered footnotes are those of the original text. Those marked by asterisks, etc., are the translator's.

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At long last I am able to make public this third volume of Marx's great work, which concludes the theoretical part. When I published the second volume in 1 885, I believed that the third would most probably involve only technical difficulties, save perhaps for a few sections of particular importance. This was indeed the case, and yet I had no idea at that time of the difficulties that precisely these sections, the most important of all, had in store for me. Other · unsuspected obstacles, too, contributed to the great delay in producing this volume. First and foremost, I have been worried by persistent eye trouble, which has for years reduced the time I can spend working on written material to a minimum. Even now, I can only rarely take up my pen in artificial light. Then there were other tasks, which could not be pushed aside : new editions and translations of earlier works by Marx and myself, as well as revisions, prefaces and supplementary material, which often required further study, etc. Above all, here, I must mention the English edition of Volume 1, for whose text I bear ultimate responsibility and which therefore took a great deal of my time. Anyone who has at all followed the colossal increase in socialist literature over the last decade, and particularly the number of translations of earlier works by Marx and myself, will realize how fortunate I am that the number of languages in which I could be of use to translators, and thus could not refuse the task of revising their work, is very limited. But the growth of this literature was. only a symptom of a corresponding expansion of the international working-class movement. .And this, too, imposed new obligations on me. From the earliest days of our public activity, a sizable portion of the work of maintaining contact between the individual socialist and workers' movements in different lands has fallen to Marx and myself, and this work has grown .in proportion to the strength of the movement as a

92 Preface whole. But while Marx took the main burden of this work, too, on himself, until his death, I have since had to deal with this ever mounting task alone. It is true that direct communication between the separate national parties has meanwhile become the norm, and is indeed becoming ever more so ; yet my help is still required far more frequently than I would prefer, in the interests of my theoretical work. For someone like myself, however, who has been active in this movement for more than fifty years, the work arising therefrom is an inescapable duty and one that must immediately be fulfilled. Like the sixteenth century, our stirring age too sees pure theoreticians in the sphere of public affairs only on the side of re­ action ; and this very purity is the reason why these gentlemen are not genuine theorists at all but rather mere reactionary apologists. The fact that I live in London means that in winter my party activity is largely limited to correspondence, but in summer it also requires a large number of personal meetings. And this circum­ stance, as well as the need to follow the progress of the movement in an ever growing number of countries and an even more rapidly growing number of journals, means that I can undertake the kind of work that brooks no interruption only in winter, particularly in the first three months of the year. After one is seventy, the Meynert fibres of association in the brain operate only with a certain annoying caution, and interruptions in difficult theoretical work can no longer be overcome as quickly or as easily as in the past. This has meant that the work of one winter, in so far as it was not fully completed, had for the most part to be started all over again the following winter, and this was the case in particular with Part Five, the most difficult part. The reader will see from the information that follows that the editorial work for this volume was very different from that required for Volume 2. There was only one draft, and even this contained very major gaps. As a rule, the beginning of each section had been more or less carefully elaborated, and generally polished stylisti­ cally as well. But as the section in question went on, the draft would become ever more sketchy and fragmented, and contain ever more digressions on side issues that had emerged in the course of the investigation, the proper place for these being left to be settled later. The sentences, too, in which thoughts written down' in statu nascendi* found their expressI on, became ever * Just

as they arose.

Preface

93

longer and more intricate. At several points both handwriting and presentation betrayed only too clearly the onset and gradual progress of one of those bouts of illness, brought on by overwork, ,that made Marx's original work more and more difficult and �eventually, at times, quite impossible. And no wonder ! Between ,18 63 and 1 867 Marx not only drafted the two last volumes of ,Capital, * as well as preparing the finished text of Volume 1 for publication, but he also undertook the gigantic work connected '' with the foundation and development of the International Work­ ,tng'Men's' Association. This is why we can already see in 1 864 and 1 865 the first signs of the illnesses that were responsible for Marx's failure to put the finishing touches to Volumes 2 and 3 him­ self. My first job was to dictate the entire manuscript, which in its priginal form even I found it difficult to decipher, and have a readable copy made, somethi�g that already took a fair amount of time. Only when this was done could I embark on the actual editing. I confined this simply to what was most necessary, and wherever clarity permitted I retained the character of the original ,draft, not even deleting certain repetitions where these grasped the subj ect-matter from a different angle or expressed it in another way, as was Marx's custom. Wherever my alterations or additions �re not simply editorial in character, or where I have had to take 'the factual material Marx provided and apply it to independent conclusions of my own, even if as far as possible in Marx's spirit, I have put the entire passage in pointed brackets and indicated it with my initials. Here and there my footnotes lack such brackets but wherever they are followed by my initials I bear responsibility for the whole note. t As goes without saying in the case of a first draft, the manuscript contained several references to points that were to be developed later. These promises were not always kept. I have let the references *Engels is evidently referring to Volumes 2 and 3 here, although in thi� sartie Preface he goes on to refer to Theories 0/ Surplus- Value as Volume '4' of Capital, and Marx had always seen ' the history of the theory ' as an ' integrl:il concluding part of his magnum opus. The drafting of Volume 2, however, was ':rather more protracted than Engels presents it here ; he himself gives the J ull details of this in his Preface to Volume 2 (Pelican edition, pp. 83 ff. ). ' tIn the present edition, all Engels's substantial interpolations in th� main Dody of the text are placed simply in parentheses and followed by his initials. This has not been done with his footnotes, but these too are always followed by his initials. Square brackets contain interpolations by the translator.

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Preface

stand, as they show the author's intentions as far as future elab­ oration is concerned. To come now to the details. �or �a:t