Capital

Excerpt from Capital: A Critique of Political Economy; The Process of Capitalist Production The present volume consists, mainly, of the first nine chapters of Volume I., of Marx's Capital, which are now, not for the first time, however, reprinted. These chapters have long been recognized to contain the theoretical part of the Marxian system, in so far as it applies to political economy, i.e., the laws of value, surplus-value, and money. Former editions being now out of print, or otherwise unobtainable, it is considered desirable to issue the present book, which is intended to be used as a text-book for economic classes and the like, as being more convenient to the needs of group-students than the bulky volume of Capital, and, particularly in view of the uniform non-success which has attended the numerous attempts to popularize, or simplify Capital, more desirable than these. The practical application of the theories here expounded must, of course, be studied in the complete work, and in the voluminous post-Marxian literature. One thing more: Marxian economics can be understood only, and should be studied only as forming part of a complete whole - a system - which has been called, not very happily, the Socialist Philosophy. For this reason there has been included the famous 32nd chapter of Capital, and the following extract from the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, is presented as indicating the manner in which Marx himself approached this problem. "The first work undertaken for the solution of the question that troubled me, was a critical revision of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Law'; the introduction to that work appeared in the 'Deutsch-Franzosisch Jahrbucher,' published in Paris in 1844. I was led by my studies to the conclusion that legal relations as well as forms of state could neither be understood by themselves, nor explained by the so-called general progress of the human mind, but that they are rooted in the material conditions of life, which are summed up by Hegel after the fashion of the English and French of the eighteenth century under the name 'civic society;' the anatomy of that civic society is to be sought in political economy. The study of the latter which I had taken up in Paris, I continued at Brussels whither I emigrated on account of an order of expulsion issued by Mr. Guizot. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.