Capital, Vol. III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 3 illegible passages, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~490,000 words · 2,342 passages
Cite this work
- APAKarl Marx. (n.d.). Capital, Vol. III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/karl-marx/capital-vol-iii-the-process-of-capitalist-production-as-a-whole
- MLAKarl Marx. Capital, Vol. III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/karl-marx/capital-vol-iii-the-process-of-capitalist-production-as-a-whole.
- ChicagoKarl Marx. Capital, Vol. III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/karl-marx/capital-vol-iii-the-process-of-capitalist-production-as-a-whole.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The third volume of Capital: how surplus value is distributed among capitalists, and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
Context and history
Marx never published it: he left it in manuscripts that Engels edited and brought out in 1894, eleven years after his death, and how much of it is Engels's own hand is argued over to this day. This is the volume where Marx moves back from values to prices and accounts for commercial profit, interest and ground rent; it also holds the famous chapter on the falling rate of profit and the counteracting causes.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The reader will observe by the following statements that the work of editing the third was essentially different from that of the second volume. Nothing was available for the third volume but a first draft, and it was very incomplete. The beginnings of the various sections were, as a rule, pretty carefully elaborated, or even polished as to style. But the farther one proceeded, the more sketchy and incomplete was the analysis, the more excursions it contained into side issues whose proper place in the argument was left for later decision, the longer and more complex became the sentences, in which the rising thoughts were deposited as they came. In several places, the handwriting and the treatment of the matter clearly revealed the approach and gradual progress of those attacks of ill health, due to overwork, which at first rendered original work more and more difficult for the author and finally compelled him from time to time to stop work altogether. And no wonder. Between 1863 and 1867, Marx had not only completed the first draft of the two last volumes of Capital and made the first volume ready for the printer, but had also mastered the enormous work connected with the foundation and expansion of the International Workingmen's Association. The result was the appearance of the first symptoms of that ill health which is to blame for the fact that Marx did not himself put the finishing touches to the second and third volumes. I began my work on these volumes by first dictating the entire manuscript of the original, which was often hard to decipher even for me, into readable copy. This required con-12 Preface. siderable time to begin with. It was only then that the real work of editing could proceed. I have limited this to the necessary minimum. Wherever it was sufficiently clear, I preserved the character of the first draft as much as possible.…