June 7, 1950
Dear J:
Instead of writing section 3 of the development of Marx's Capital, dealing with the Structure of Capital as it evolved in the '60s, formally, I decided, after all, to revert to letter writing. This will give the chance to be very discursive so that all details, whether or not there is a direct connection of the event with the logical development of the theory, can be mentioned and be present before our eyes when we get to rewriting strictly logically.
Marx best of all expressed the start of the '80s: "In my opinion, the biggest things that are happening in the world today are on the one hand the movement of the slaves in America started by the death of John Brown, and on the other the movement of serfs in Russia" (1/11/60).1 By the following year the movement of the slaves had become the Civil War, and Marx, having finished with his reply to Vogt, began, or rather "continued" with the Critique.2 This first draft of Capital was written between August 1861 and June 1863.
1862-3 are crucial years in the construction of Capital. The first letter in 1862 which deals with the work asks about the various categories of workers: "Can you not write me about all categories of workers (except the warehouse)* in your factory, for example, noting their mutual proportions?".3 Marx goes on to explain Engels that this is necessary for his book in order to show that in machine production the division of labor as described by Smith does not hold true. Let us jump immediately to the manner in which he analyzed the division of labor and distinguished from Smith's conception in 1867 since this takes us directly into the factory and will explain his continued insistence in the next year's (1863) letter on machinery, its wear and tear; accumulation and its reproduction; the worker's precise activity in the factory and in agriculture; Marx's running to take a course in machine shop work and his connection of rent with the organic composition of capital, all of which made him "turn everything around", discard Critique, and give us Capital.4
Marx says that because Smith wrongly identified the division of labor in society with that in the factory he missed the following sharp distinctions: (1) while the division of labor in society is between commodity owners; each being independent; the connection between detail laborers in the factory is that only in common can they produce a commodity; (2) while the division of labor in society is brought about by purchase and sales of separate branches of industry, the detail operations in the workshop is brought about by the sale of several workmen to one capitalist; (3) while division of labor in society implies dispersion among many independent producers, division of labor in workshop implies concentration of means of production in the hands of one capitalist; (4) while chance and caprice play a part in distruction in society in the workshop "the iron law of proportionality subjects definite numbers of workmen to definite functions; (5) while in society competition is the only recognized authority "Division of labour within the workshop implies the undisputed authority of the capitalist over men that are but parts of a mechanism that belongs to him".5 Anarchy in the market and despotism in the shop mutually condition one another, even as in earlier forms of society the "authoritative plan" of the administrative caste was the rule: "Side by side with the masses thus occupied with one and the same work, we find the 'chief inhabitant', who is judge, police, and tax-gatherer in one; the bookkeeper who keeps accounts of the tillage and registers everything relating there to another official who prosecutes criminals.... the boundary man,... the overseer who distributes the water from the common tanks for irrigation; the Brahmin...; the schoolmaster...; a smith and a carpenter...; the potter...; the barber, the washerman... the silversmith, here and there the poet who in some communities replaces the silversmith, in others the schoolmaster" (351, IP);6 (6) but while division of labor in society is common to all kinds of economic formations, that in the workshop is the particular creation of capitalism alone.
The reason I went into this detail in what we know from Capital is to emphasize the precision, the concreteness of his theory, and the fact that the change in structure began against the background of civil war with the categories of workers and continued to remain with the proletariat in the workshop. Let us return to 1862 and follow him. That letter was written on March 6, 1862.7 On June 18, 1862 he follows with a letter on Darwin, "Remarkable that Darwin in the animal and plant kingdom reveals anew his English society with its division of labor, competition, opening of markets, 'inventions' and Malthusian 'struggle for existence'.8 This is the Hobbesian bellum omnium contra omnes,9 and this bears a resemblance to Hegel in his 'Phenomenology' in which civil society is described as the 'spiritual kingdom of animals' while with Darwin the animal kingdom represents civil society" (Rus. ed.).10 That same letter says that he has finally worked out the rent theory and revealed the falseness of Ricardo's theory.11 Also he is working on Quesnay's Tableau Economique, that is, is working out his theory of accumulation.12 Some letter! (Yet it does not appear in English!).
Before we get the details of his rent and accumulation theory in August, Lassalle visits him, Marx tries to show him the importance of the Civil War in America but Lassalle will not be drawn into it. Marx reports to Engels on July 30, 1862: "As to 'America', it, says he, is completely uninteresting. The Yankees have no 'ideas'. 'Individual freedom' is only a 'negative idea', etc. and such similar old, long rotted speculative rubbish".13 (Incidentally, the English "C.W. in the U.S." translates "completely uninteresting" as "interesting"!). As soon as Lassalle leaves, Marx writes (August 2, 1862) Engels his new theory of rent.14 The letter is of course well known to you but I wish to go over it in detail and I hope you'll bear with me so that I can get in the new light in which I see what appeared familiar before and yet the relationship between the rate of profit and the theory of rent escaped me before.
Watch then with me the method of his explanation of his theory of rent. The first thing he mentions is the division he had introduced into the concept of capital: constant and variable capital, and what he emphasizes on the question of constant capital is that its value reappears in the value of the product.
Next Marx explains the distinction between the rate of surplus value and the rate of profit, the emphasis once again being on constant capital, that is that equal exploitation of workers brings about different rate of profit since the rate of profit is surplus value to total capital. In other words, the organic composition of capital is decisive. Or, to put it another way, it is not competition, an outside factor which bring about the average rate of profit, which is of the essence, but what is of the essence is that which is of the very organism of capital.
We must internalize this immediately or fall into the pitfall of the Marxists of the "past half century" who had not understood Marx's Capital, as Lenin said with such a start in 1915.15 "Competition", writes Marx "does not therefore reduce commodities to their value but to their cost price, which is above, below, or equal to their value, according to the organic composition of the respective capitals".16 Competition that is being a market, not a production phenomenon, cannot effect value. We understand that and therefore the very next paragraph appears so easy, but that's where the pitfall is:
"Ricardo confuses value with cost price. He therefore believes that if absolute rent existed (i.e. a rent independent of the different productivity of different kinds of land), agricultural produce, etc. would always be sold above its value because it would be sold above its cost price (the capital advanced plus the average profit). This would overthrow his fundamental law. So he denies the existence of absolute rent and only assumes differential rent".17
The pitfall is to acknowledge: well, of course, price is different from value but since it is also the phenomenal expression of value and in their totality all prices must equal all value, therefore it doesn't really matter. That would mean that you sink into the violent abstractions which have Ricardo a prisoner. It isn't true that it doesn't matter. It isn't even true that it affects only the capitalists. It affects production. Marx goes on to say that what we must keep before our eyes is the organic composition of capital "which does away with a mass of what have seemed hitherto to be contradictions and problems". Then he says if we assumed the "not agricultural" capital to have an organic composition of 80c:20v, and that of the "Agricultural capital" to be 60s:40v, and since s.v. comes only from v, then agricultural product, assuming 100% exploitation, would be 140, and industrial product, 120. But the farmer must sell at value, instead of cost price because "landed property prevents the farmer, the equivalent of the brother capitalists, from adjusting the value of the product to its cost price. Competition between capital cannot enforce this. The landowner intervenes and extracts the difference between value and cost price".18 In other words here we have the solutions of problems which will reappear in the 20th century in a new form: that of monopoly, "imperfect competition" and what is known as the "stickiness of prices".
And now hold onto your seat for in dealing with these problems in the realm of agriculture and absolute rent, he gives the answer to what will become very obscure over again in the 20th century with its distorted view of nationalizations, plans and collectivization. He says for absolute rent to disappear not even nationalization of land is needed (though in another place he says that would be a neat way of solving it but that the bourgeoisie has grown too old to carry out this mission which is really its problem); all that is needed is a technological revolution of such scope as would make the organic composition of capital in agriculture equal that in industry!
"If the proportion in agriculture equals c 80 v 20 (as assumed above) absolute rent disappears. There only remains differential rent...".19
Now after solving this problem he says "Here you have - roughly for the thing is rather complicated - the criticism of Ricardo's theory. This much you will admit, that attention to the organic composition of capital does away with a mass of what have seemed hitherto to be contractions and problems..." And here the English translation stops. The date is 1934. Collectivization of agriculture equals "socialism".20
But the original letter does not stop there, but continues significantly in a manner similar to his analysis of the concentration of capital in the hands of "a single corporation". Here he says: "Factually landed property can disappear also in the case where the capitalist and the landed proprietor are united in one person etc. But here I cannot stop to consider these details".21
(However, one precious statement he still does make here, after showing differential rent to be nothing more than super profit existing in any sphere of industry which functions under better than average conditions: "Only in agriculture this gets a base since it has under it such as solid and (relatively) basic foundation, as different degrees of natural fruition of different sorts of earth".22 Doesn't this sound like the objective basis which certain ideas get (as state capitalism and Stalinism) and which turn it at one and the same time into a fetishism and the counter-revolution).
To have disclosed the secret of rent in the organic composition of capital (Until my new grasp of it I had never been able to explain why the Theory of the Law of the Decline in the Rate of Profit finds its place in Vol. III23 which deals only with forms of appearance, with the sole exception of the concluding part) meant that the solution of the landed property lay not so much in a second edition of the bourgeois revolution in which the proletariat would participate, but rather in the relations of production in agriculture itself, in which the agricultural proletariat does not merely "participate", but is the whole of it.
In any case we know that from now on, 1862, his old concept of the structure of Capital, as 1) Capital, 2) Landed Property, 3) Wage labor, is entirely superseded, and landed property is relegated to Vol. III as a concrete form "growing out of the movements of capitalist production as a whole".24 (It also means, for us living after WWII, while the colonial world is in turmoil and China after some 3 decades of civil war still has vitality to challenge the US and the UN, the theoretical answer to the emptily abstract permanent revolution of LT, but I cannot stop to work it out here).25
Now let us return to the second point he had made in this first letter explaining his new theory of rent. He had mentioned, first, the organic composition of capital, and, secondly, Ricardo's confusion of value with price. We can see now that it would be entirely inadequate, in fact philistine-like, to satisfy ourselves with the statement that since price is only the phenomenal manifestation of value, and since in their totality all prices equal all value, therefore, it is really of no great import. To have made a distinction between value and price where Ricardo saw and identity meant all sorts of new developments out of this split in the category for while form is 'only' the manifestation of essence, it is also in opposition to essence, and yet it is also notion, the universal form. And this distinction of value and price will affect not only the structure of Capital "in general", but it will return to taunt Marx even after the publication of Vol. I in 1867 and will be responsible in such great measure for those changes in the French edition.26 In the week intervening, while Lassalle who had visited him had left, and while awaiting Engels's view of his new discovery, argued with Engels as to his pessimism on the American civil war:
"I do not at all share your view on the American civil war*. I do not think that all is up*... In my view the whole history will soon take another turn*. The North will finally begin to carry on the war seriously and will thus need revolutionary means, throwing over the leadership of the border slaves statesmen.* One regiment composed of Negroes would call forth miraculous influence on the nerves of the South".27 (*Incidentally, the English translation of the letters on the C.W. is very poor; also the stars in this passage as throughout this letter signify that Marx used these English expressions originally all of which is missing in English translations also in the letter on Capital, and misses much thereby).
I keep emphasizing the Civil War in the US because the very same letters which deal with the new discoveries on organic structure, cost and price, categories of workers, reproduction and accumulation, deal with the civil war, and all of this we will have to work out more precisely, as some will also deal with the form of bourgeois rule which will get repeated in the Paris Commune, and the 2nd edition of Capital. In 1862, while he argues with Lassalle from a completely opponents angle, Marx writes: "It seems to me that you let yourself be swayed a little too much by the military aspect of things... The manner in which the North wages war is only to be expected from a bourgeois republic... To be sure, it is possible that it will come to a sort of revolution in the North itself first". And again: "As regards the Yankees, I am assuredly still of my previous opinion that the North will finally prevail; certainly the Civil War may go through all sorts of episodes, even armistices, perhaps, and be long drawn out".28 All this in September 10, 1862, and when Engels persists in sending the pessimistic news: "Of course like other people I see the repulsive side of the form the movement takes among the Yankees; but I find the explanation of it in the nature of 'bourgeois' democracy. The events over there are a world upheaval, nevertheless..." (10.29.62).29
On August 20, 1862 he asks Engels to come to London since "I have overthrown so much of the old that I should like preliminarily discuss with you these points... One of these points which as a practical man you will no doubt know..." is wear and tear of machinery which he connects both with the accumulation fund and the rate of profit.30 So we now have the following new points: (1) theory of rent; (2) the organic composition of capital in the (1), and; (3) distinction between value and price, and; (4) wear and tear of machinery. He now (Dec, 28, 1862) feels he can finish the book. He writes Kugelman: "The second part is at last finished, apart from making a fair copy in the final polishing for the press. It will be about 30 printed sheets. It is actually a continuation of Part I, but will appear independently under the title Capital, with A Contribution to the Critique of Pol. Eco. only as a subtitle".31 But he no sooner gets to the rewriting, and appreciates the part on machinery when he meets new problems.
1863 begins with his writing to Engels (1/24/63) "Approaching the chapter of my book on Machines I find myself in great difficulty. It has never been clear to me how the self-acting mule changed the process of spinning, or, more correctly - inasmuch as still earlier steam power had been employed in what, then, does the interference of the motive force of the spinner express itself in relation to the force of power?".32
Four days later he follows it up with:
"The question is as follows: of what was the work of the so-called spinner comprise before the invention of the self-acting mule? I understand the self-acting mule, but I do not understand what preceded him.I am enlarging presently the chapter on machines. There are many problems there which I had evaded (oboshel33) in the first draft... In order to clarify myself I reread in full my notebooks (extracts) on technology and am attending a practical course (experimental only) for workers... I understand the mathematical laws, but the simplest technical reality demanding perception is harder to me than to the biggest blockhead".34
While he is taking the practical machine course the Polish insurrection burst forth and Marx writes Engels (2/13/63) "One thing is clear: in Europe once again there has more or less fairly opened the era of revolution".35
A few months later Marx has worked out his entire theory of reproduction and on July 6, 1863 sends Engels his Tableau Economique.36 It is shortly after this, on August 15, 1863, that he writes how he has had "to turn everything around": "...when I look at this compilation now and see how I have had to turn everything around and how I had to make even the historical part out of material of which some was quite unknown, then Itzig really does seem funny to me with "his" economy already in his pocket...".37
Now let us see the "everything" that he has had to run around. (We will have to go by Engels' preface to Vol. II and Leontiev's "Marx's Capital").38
On August 1861 Marx began his Capital, or rather his continuation of the Critique. He worked on it two years; here is the structure of the magazine:
(1) pp. 1-220 (Notebooks I-V) and again pp. 1159-1472 (Notebooks XIX-XXIII) are matters which comprised Vol. I, "beginning", writes Engels "with the transformation of money into capital and continuing to the end of the volume, and is the first draft of this subject" (Vo. II, p. 8).39
Now what happened in the big gap, between pp. 220 to 1159? The big gap is divided into two:
(2i) pp. 220-972 (Notebooks VI-XV) comprise The Theories of Surplus Value.40
In other words, he is following the structure of Critique, and just as he followed each category, commodity, money, with excurses on the theory of it (history to him then means history of theory), so he now follows the chapter on capital, that is the transformation of money into capital, not yet the actual process of production, with theories of surplus value.
BUT there is one change, Notebook 5 had already begun, so Leontiev tells us, p. 102, "a detailed examination of the technique of capitalist production, which he continues in Notebooks XIX and XX".41 In other words, he had begun the technique, just reaching the progress of production, and broke off to write the theories. The date therefore becomes very important. Leontiev claims that he wrote the whole Theories of Surplus Value in the short period April to August 1862. Let us not forget that that is the period he began to write those letters on rent and categories of workers, and followed them with those on machinery.
(2ii) Now pp. 973-1158 (Notebooks XVI-XVIII) take up questions to be dealt with in Vol. III, capital, rate of profit, etc.
It is at this point that he begins to see things differently Notebook XVII, that is the last of those with subjects dealt with in Vol. III, and before he returns to Notebooks XIX-XXIII or those continuing with subject covered in Vol. I, he writes a new variant of Capital. It will be substantially what will remain in 1867. It was written at the end of 1862. Here it is:
"First section: Process of production of capital to be divided in the following way: 1. Introduction. Commodity, money. 2. Conversion of money into capital. 3. Absolute surplus value: (a) Process of labor and process of increase of value; (b) Constant and variable capital; (c) Absolute surplus value; (d) struggle for normal working day; (3) Simultaneous working days (quantity of workers employed simultaneously). Sum of surplus and rate of surplus value (magnitude and degree). 4. Relative surplus value: (a) Simple cooperation; (b) Division of labor; (c) Machinery, etc. 5. Combination of absolute and relative surplus value. Correlation (proportion) between wage labor and surplus value. Formal and real subjugation of labor to capital. Productive and unproductive labor. 6. Conversion of surplus value back into capital. Primitive accumulation. Colonial theory of Wakefield. 7. Result of the process of production. The change in the appearance of the law of appropriation can be given under 6 or 7. 8. Theories of surplus value. 9. Theories of productive labor".42
Note well #7 "Result of the process of production. The change in the appearance of the law of appropriation can be given under 6 or 7". This is the famous "Chapter 6" which I am always quoting which was meant to be the original end of Vol. I, and to which I'll return in a moment. It is clear that "8 and 9" are not Part of Vol. I, but are the Theories of S.V or Book IV.
There is no doubt that when he continues with Notebook XIX or with material for Vol. I, that this new concept of the structure of Capital predominates and it is in these circumstances that he writes the famous Ch. 6. that will have to be translated by us in full as an appendix to our book.43 Here I wish only to recapitulate 2 points: (1) its structure: it is divided in 3 parts thus: "1. Capitalist production is the production of surplus value value. 2. It is, finally, the production and reproduction of the whole relationship thanks to which this direct process of production is characterized as specifically capitalistic".44 3. Commodities as products of capital, of capitalist production. And (2) The labor process as the process of alienation, which can be seen from "the very simple elementary form of value" or the necessity to augment it or "process of augmentation of value" which is dominant, and yet how decisive in it is the negative element of it: "This is the process of alienation of his own labor. The worker here from the beginning stands higher than the capitalist to the extent that the latter goes with his roots into this process of alienation & finds in it absolute satisfaction while the worker as its victim from the very beginning rises against it and perceives it...".45 It is expressed here every bit as actively as he did in the early 1843 MS. with the added value that it is not abstract but very concrete.46 Moreover, here too is something we have not yet analyzed, and that is that the commodity is not a product of the market, but "In the process of production there arises the commodity".47 The direct connection here is that the two-fold character of labor makes the product a commodity, and the market only expresses that.
Now with this new conception he puts the MS 1861-3 away and begins rewriting all over again. "Between 1863 and 1867", writes Engels in the Preface to Vol. III, "Marx 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".48
Just as the first draft was written while the Civil War in America and the insurrection in Poland are in full swing, the second draft of Capital is written at the same time as the founding of the First International.49
We know Marx in the Preface to Capital:
"As in the 18th c. the Am. war of independence sounded the tocsin for the European middle-class, so in the 19th century, the American c.w. sounded it for the European working class".50 And while the civil war was still in progress we know that it is the English working class which prevents the English bourgeoisie from intervening on the side of the south, and that it is the agitation both of the English proletariat, and the French, and the emigres in London reacting to the civil war which make the revival of the working class movement take the leap to international organization. Marx is right there and in his inaugural address to the First he summarizes the period from the defeat of the 1848 revolutions up to the present (1864).51 For us tracing the different structures of Capital what is important are the two points he mentions as showing that it wasn't only a period of defeats, but also of gains: (1) The movement of the workers that brought about the enactment of the Ten Hours Bill, and (2) the fact that "however excellent in principle and however useful in practice, cooperative labor, if kept within the narrow circle of the casual efforts of private workmen, will never be able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to free the masses, nor even to perceptibly lighten the burden of their miseries".52
In 1865 he "works like a horse" (Letter, 5/20/65) but does not finish rewriting, and he forbids the publication of "Value, Price and Profit" or his debate with Weston so long as Capital itself is not yet ready.53 The only other letter that year that deals with Capital (11/20/65) he asks Engels about the weekly wages of spinners, and in the same letter comments: "For the full exposure of the English hypocrisie* there lacked only - after the American war - Irish history and the Jamaica butcheries!*".54 The revolt of the West Indies Negroes becomes part of the history surrounding and sending out "impulse" to Marx rewriting Capital along the lines of his new structure.
But the decisive thing that happens during this period is the study of the Blue Books and the one new element comes from the working out of the Working Day. On February 10, 1866 he writes Engels that he is so ill that he could not work on the strictly theoretic work. "For this my brain functions extremely weakly. But historically I developed a part about the 'working day', which had not gone into my first plan".55 That "sickness" is some leap, for it ends once and for all the conception of history of pol. eco.56 as history of theory, and makes the only history in Capital the history of production relations. 3 days later he complains that "Although the MS is ready, but it has such a gigantic scope in its present form that no one besides me, not even you, could publish it".57 (This letter to Engels is in English; the one on the Working Day is not).
By the end of that year, 10/13/66, we have the full structure of all volumes: "The whole work falls into the following parts:
Book I) Process of production of capitalBook II) Process of Circulation of capitalBook III) Forms and aspects of the process as a wholeBook IV) To the History of theory".
In the rest of that letter to Kugelman he deals with his new analysis of commodity, with which I dealt in the previous section.58
What remains now is not any change in the basic structure of Capital, but the "additions" which he considered of such "scientific value" that he wanted readers to study them in the French edition, even if they had read the original first German edition.59 We have spoken of them a lot, but separately, as we needed them, that is either of concentration and statification, or form of value, but now let us take them as a whole. Before that one word should be said and said firmly as to the parts of even the first volume of Capital which have not yet been published. These are:
1) Chapter 6, or original ending of Capital, Vol. I, which he had changed both for logical and scientific reasons as well as the fact that he felt himself "on the verge of the grave" (Letter of 4/30/67 to Meyer60) and must have been impelled to include all theory into the first volume for fear he'd never live to finish the other.
2) A Chapter on the Form of Value which contains the manner in which he rewrote the section between the first and second editions; we have the first version and the final version, but we do not have his notebook on it, which, as Leontiev puts it: "the central content of which is the investigation of the forms of value and represents a rough draft of the variant of the reworking of the text of the first edition while preparing the second edition" (Arkhiv Marxsa-Engelsa (II, III), 1933).61
3) Notebooks VI-XVI of the Theories of S.V. which Kautsky had evidently left out entirely.62
Now these god-damn Stalinists keep talking of these works, and when they liquidated Riazanov they accused him of "hiding" them, but they themselves fail to publish.63 All these years! They published a single one, the Ch.6, and that only in German and Russian, and said Riazanov should not have commented so much, etc. and gotten busy publishing more of the archives, but since then they have done nothing, except revising of course.
Without these basic works, and only working by deducing from seeing first and last version, without seeing the reworking itself, here then is what happened between 1867 and 1873. (And in the background and later very much in the forefront we remember that the Paris Commune was born, and just as in the Civil War in France64 he keeps repeating that that is the political form at last discovered to work out the economic emancipation of the proletariat so in the Congresses of the First, he emphasizes: (1) that what he writes is what the workers themselves "with their right instinct" in Baltimore worked out, and (2) "One day the working class must hold political power in its hands in order to establish a new organization of labor" (Speech to Hague Congress)).65
I'm getting very tired and since I'm writing all this without so much as a rough draft or notes before me this must be a very disorganized letter indeed. In any case I'll hurry to the conclusion, hoping this hurried part to take up again soon.
First to be considered since even our present English edition does not have the final form of Capital is the change in the structure itself. It concerns:
(1) Part I does not have 4 sections in the final edition but only 3 sections, the "Fetishism of Commodities" not constituting a separate section 4), but part of Section 3.
(2) Part II, The Transformation of Money into Capital was finally considered by Marx as one chapter, with 3 subheads, instead of 3 chs.
(3) Part VIII, The Primitive Acc. of Capital was converted by him, as integral part of Part VII, all of it, except the last ch., constituting 1 ch., & the last ch. the 2nd or final ch.
It should be noted that I am not merely considering the French or 1875 edition but the 1883 edition on which Marx was working while he XXX66 Even the Dona Torr edition, which is the best English edition since, although it retains the miserable translation, it lists the important changes does not mention all of them.67 Those it does mention are: (I'm dealing only with major points, not stylistic or minor points).
(1) the large section added by Marx on the capitalist mode of appropriation, pp. 640-4, which includes: "So long as the laws of ex. are maintained in very act of ex.68 - taken by itself - the mode of appropriation can be completely revolutionized without in any way affecting the property rights which correspond to commodity production".
(2) the section in acc., pp. 687-8 that includes the famous "In a given society the limit would not be reached until the moment when the entire social capital was united in the hands either of a single capitalist or a single capitalist company". And the equally important part in it is that whether the centralization "is accomplished by the violent method of annexation" or "by the smoother method of joint-stock company formation - the economic effect remains the same".69
We are acquainted with Engels's footnote as to American trusts but not the Karl Kautsky 1914 (before WWI broke out there was a "popular edition" of Capital by KK) notation to the same parapg of centralization as a single capital. The KK footnote reads:
"Since that time the economy of cartels has spread throughout Europe, and in America the form of trusts has become factually the form of big capital in general".70(3) Since my interest in coal, I have been attracted also to one of the minor additions, dealing with the latest discovery (1874) or revolution in the process of puddling in the coal and iron industry which has "caused a great extension in the instruments of labor and in the amount of material which could be worked with a given amount of labour... This is the history of all the inventions and discoveries which arise as a result of accumulation".71 This addition does not appear in Kerr edition, but does in D.T.72
Finally, we turn to the Afterword to the second edition (Why, pray, is that omitted from the English?), written by Marx on January 24, 1873, and including all of the material of the 2nd preface, as well as the following:
"I must first of all point out to the readers of the first edition the changes introduced into the second edition. The more precise subdivisions of the book are visible immediately. The additional footnotes are everywhere noted as additions to the second edition. As regards the text itself, the most important are comprised in the following:"
"Ch. I, l-c the analysis of value from the analysis of equalization, which every ex. v. is expressed, is done with great scientific accuracy, and also it is directly shown in the first edition the simple designated connection between the substance of value and the determination of the magnitude by the socially necessary labor time. Ch. I, 3, 'Form of Value', is entirely worked over, which was necessary as a consequence of its dual exposition in the first edition... The last part of the first chapter: 'Commodity Fetishism' etc. is changed to a significant degree. Ch. III, 1 ('Measure of value') has been carefully looked over since it was done carelessly in the first edition, and readers were referred to the exposition of the given topic in the 'Critique', Berlin, 1859).73 Significantly reworked was Ch. VII, part 2".74
(I do not have the 2nd Rus. ed.75 at hand, but I believe that Ch. VII really means Part VII, section 2. It must mean that since that is the part in Accumulation and we know that most of the changes introduced in 1883 were in that part).
Now that I have all the 'data' out, I should find it easy to return to the logic of form. For now that will do. Good night.
R
1 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of 11th January 1860 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
2 'his reply to Vogt' is a reference to Marx's Herr Vogt, (1860), which Marx wrote as a refutation of Karl Vogt's 1859 pamphlet, Mein Prozess gegen die Allgemeine Zeitung, which slandered Marx.
3 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of March 1862 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
4 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of January 1863 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
5 The division of labour quote is from Chapter 14 'Section 4: Division of Labour in Manufacture, and Division of Labour in Society' of Capital: Volume One.
6 The quote is from Chapter 14 'Section 4: Division of Labour in Manufacture, and Division of Labour in Society' of Capital: Volume One.
7 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of 6th March 1862 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
8 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of 18th June 1862 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
9 'bellum omnium contra omnes' is Latin and translates into English as 'war of all against all'. The term is used by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan, chapters 13 & 14.
10 The quote on Hegel and Darwin is from the letter from Marx to Engels of June 1862. Which is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
11 David Ricardo (1772-1823) was an English economist who helped to develop the labour theory of value. Marx critiqued Ricardo's Theory of Rent in Theories of Surplus Value.
12 Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) was a French medic and economist and author of Tableau Economique, (c. 1759). He was the founder of the Physiocrat school of economics.
13 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of 30th July 1862 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it. Ferdinand Lassalle (1825 - 1864) was a leading figure in the German socialist movement in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1862 he developed a theory (Lassallianism), in explicit opposition to Marx, in which the state was to act as an organ of justice to achieve emancipation for workers. In 1875 the Lassallian Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein (General German Workers' Association) and the Eisenacher Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (German Social-Democratic Labour Party) came together to form the Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (Socialist Worker's Party of Germany). The unity program of the new party, the Gotha Program, was named after the town (Gotha) where the Unity Congress was held. Marx wrote his Critique of the Gotha Program as criticism of Lassallian tendencies in both the Eisenacher and Lassallian wings of the German workers movement. For more on the Critique, Marx and Lassalle see Karl Korsch's Introduction to the Critique of the Gotha Programme.
14 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of 2nd August 1862 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
15 This is a reference to Lenin's aphorism from his Philosophical Notebooks on Hegel.
"Aphorism: It is impossible completely to understand Marx's Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic. Consequently, half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!!"
16 This quote is from the letter from Marx to Engels of August 1862. The English translation of the letter not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
17 This quote is from the letter from Marx to Engels of August 1862. The English translation of the letter not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
18 This quote is from the letter from Marx to Engels of August 1862. The English translation of the letter not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it. The terms in the formulas are c = constant capital, v = variable capital s (and s.v.) = surplus value.
19 This quote is from the letter from Marx to Engels of August 1862. The English translation of the letter not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
20 This quote is from the letter from Marx to Engels of August 1862. The English translation of the letter not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
21 This quote is from the letter from Marx to Engels of August 1862. The English translation of the letter not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
22 This quote is from the letter from Marx to Engels of August 1862. The English translation of the letter not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
23 Volume Three of Capital, which was not published in Marx's lifetime, but was edited and published by Frederick Engels more than a decade after Marx's death.
24 The quote is from the Charles H. Kerr edition of Capital: Volume Three, translated from the German by Ernest Untermann. The quote is from the opening paragraph of Chapter One, the English translation on the MIA is different to the translation used by Dunayevskaya.
25 LT is Leon Trotsky. The theory of permanent revolution was first formulated during the Russo-Japanese War, the loss of which was a spark for the 1905 Russian Revolution. The concept of 'permanent revolution' was advanced in a debate over what form revolution would need to take in Russia. The majority of Russian Marxists agreed that a bourgeois-democratic revolution was necessary to overthrow the Tsarist regime and establish effective capitalist production, including in agriculture. In Results and Prospects, (1906) Trotsky argued that the conditions in Russia meant the capitalist class would prevaricate and that the working-class would need to join the peasantry to make the revolution permanent. Trotsky further elaborated on the concept in his book The Permanent Revolution, (1930). Dunayevskaya critically examined Trotsky's development of the concept in chapter four of Philosophy and Revolution, (1973). Tony Cliff also discusses the development of the concept in chapter six of the first volume of his four-volume biography of Trotsky.
26 Marx considered the French edition of Capital: Volume One, which he personally worked on, to be the most developed edition of Capital. At the time of writing the Preface and Afterword of the French translation are available on the MIA, but not the English translation of the French edition.
27 This quote is from the letter from Marx to Engels of August 1862. The English translation of the letter not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
28 The quotes on the American Civil War are from the letter from Marx to Engels of September 1862. The English translation of the letter not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
29 This quote is from the letter from Marx to Engels of October 1862. The English translation of the letter not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
30 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of 20th August 1862 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
31 Ludwig Kugelman (1830-1902) was a German socialist and friend and correspondent of Karl Marx. He was a fellow member of the First International. The English translation of the letter from Marx to Kugelman of 28th December 1862, which Dunayevskaya was quoting, is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
32 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of 24th January 1863 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
33 The word in brackets is unclear on the digital version of the manuscript. The editor's best guess is that it is an anglicised spelling of a Russian word, but the editor does not know what the original is.
34 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of the end of January 1863 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
35 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of 13th February 1863 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
36 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of 6th July 1863 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
Marx's 'Tableau Economique' is a reference to a diagram created by Marx.
37 Daniel Itzig (1723-1799), was a banker and mint master who served Prussian King Frederick II The Great and his successor Frederick William II. Marx and Engels used the 'Itzig' as a nickname for their political rival Ferdinand Lassalle (see note 13 above).The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels of 15th August 1863 is not currently (January 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
38 Fredrick Engels, Preface to Capital: Volume II, (1885). A. (Lev Abramovich) Leontiev,Marx's Capital, International Publishers, 1946. A. (Lev Abramovich) Leontiev (1901-1974) joined the CPSU in 1919. He taught political economy at a number of Higher Education institutions. He produced a number of textbooks, some of which, like Political economy: a beginner's course, were translated into English. Dunayevskaya critiqued Leontiev, and other Stalinist economists, in an article, 'Stalinists Falsify Marxism Anew', published in the September 1948 edition of Fourth International.
39 Fredrick Engels, Preface to Capital: Volume II, (1885).
40 Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, were written in 1863, but never published in Marx's lifetime.
41 A. Leontiev, Marx's Capital, (1946).
42 Karl Marx, "13. Draft Plans for parts I and III of Capital", in Addenda to Theories of Surplus Value, (1861-63).
43 'the famous Ch. 6.' appears to be a reference to the first draft of what was to become Chapter Six of Capital: Volume One. An English translation of the draft chapter is available on the MIA.
44 The quote is from 'Opening remarks' to The Process of Production of Capital, Draft Chapter 6 of Capital.
45 The quote is from 'Chapter Two' of The Process of Production of Capital, Draft Chapter 6 of Capital.
46 'early 1843 MS.' appears to be a reference to the essay 'Estranged Labour', from Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.
47 This quote appears to be Dunayevskaya's translation of the opening section of 'Chapter One' of The Process of Production of Capital, Draft Chapter 6 of Capital.
48 Fredrick Engels, Preface to Capital: Volume III, (1885).
49 Marx, helped to found the International Workingmen's Association (The First International). He went on to play an active role in the running of the First International.
50 Karl Marx, 'Preface to the First German Edition' of Capital: Volume One, (1867).
51 Karl Marx, Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association, (1864).
52 Karl Marx, Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association, (1864).
53 An Abstract of Karl Marx's letter to Frederick Engels, of 20th May 1865, is available on the MIA.
Marx's Value, Price and Profit, was delivered as speeches to the First International, but not published in Marx's lifetime.
54 'the American war' could be a reference to the American War of Independence, fought against the British, although it seems more likely that it is a reference to the duplicity of the British capitalist class with regard to the American Civil War. The working-class and middle-class liberals were generally opposed to the Confederacy. Workers at the docks in Liverpool and at cotton mills in Lancashire refused to handle cotton from the Southern States. The British Government recognised the Confederacy as a belligerent state, but was officially neutral in the war. Despite its celebrated status as opposing slavery and abolishing the slave trade. Some British entrepreneurs ran the blockade and sent munitions and luxuries to Confederate ports in return for cotton and tobacco. 'Irish history' is most likely a reference to the long history of English, and then British, brutality in Ireland, rather than a reference to any specific incident. 'the Jamaica butcheries' is a reference to an uprising, in October 1865, against the colonial authorities in Jamaica. The revolt, known as the Morant Bay Rebellion, was brutally suppressed and led to direct rule being imposed from Britain.
The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels, of 20th November 1865, is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
55 'The Blue Books' is a reference to a series of British parliamentary and foreign policy documents published in blue cover since the seventeenth century. Marx drew on these in at least one of his speeches to the First International and in several places in Capital, see e.g. footnotes in Chapter Ten and Chapter Fifteen.
The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels, of 10th February 1865, is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA.
56 'pol. eco.' is an abbreviation of 'political economy'.
57 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Engels, of 13th February 1866, is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA.
58 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Kugelman of 13th October 1866 is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
59 On the French edition see footnote 26 above.
60 The English translation of the letter from Marx to Sigfrid Meyer, of 30th April 1867, is not currently (February 2023) available on the MIA, because Lawrence & Wishart, who hold the copyright, have instructed MIA to remove it.
61 Arkhiv Marxsa-Engelsa is the Russian language Marx-Engels archive. On Leontiev see note 38 above.
62 Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, were written in 1863, but never published in Marx's lifetime. On Engels's death in 1895 it had still not been published. In 1905 Karl Kautsky published a version of Theories of Surplus Value, but this version did not include all of the material from Marx's manuscript, and changed the order of presentation of the contents.
63 David Riazanov (1870-1938), began organising the Marx-Engels archives in Moscow in 1918. He was made Director of the Marx-Engels Institute in 1920. In the late 1920s he was viewed with suspicion by Stalin and in 1931 he was arrested and imprisoned. He was later released. After the assassination of politburo member, Sergei Kirov, the Stalinist purges intensified and Riazanov was re-imprisoned. He died in prison in 1938.
64 Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, (1871).
65 The Hague Congress of the First International, held in the Hague in September 1871, was the last conference of a united First International. The conference was acrimonious, with disputes between supporters of Marx, supporters of Mikhail Bakunin (1817-1876), supporters Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) and supporters of Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881), in particular. The Congress voted to expel the Bakuninites and to move the headquarters of the International from London to New York. The speech that Dunayevskaya is quoting from was not given at the Congress, but at a meeting convened in Amsterdam, immediately after the Congress. It is sometimes referred to as the La Liberte Speech.
66 The word is obscured on the text, but was probably 'died'.
Marx died on March 14, 1883, while he was still in the process of revising a new edition of Capital: Volume One, and working on the first edition of Capital: Volume Two. Frederick Engels completed the work on the 1883 edition, and provided some explanation of his procedure in the Preface to that edition.
67 Dona Ruth Anne Torr (1883-1957) was a British Marxist historian, and a translator of some of Marx and Engels writings. She was, in 1920, a founding member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). She was also, in 1946, a founding member of the Communist Party Historians Group (CPHG). She was a minor figure in the CPGB, but a major influence on the CPHG. In Dunayevskaya's guide to teaching Marx's Capital, (Outline of Marx's Capital Volume I), written and used as a guide when she was a member of the Workers' Party but not publicly published, (by News & Letters), until 1979, she recommends teachers to supplement their reading with the Dona Torr edition. As she put it in the Preface:
"All references to CAPITAL, except where otherwise specified, are to the Kerr Edition. If possible the teacher should try to get a copy of the Dona Torr Edition (International Publishers 1939) as that includes Marx's historic preface to the French edition of CAPITAL and other valuable notes."
68 'ex.' is an abbreviation of 'exchange'.
69 The quotes are from 'Section Two' of Chapter Twenty Five: The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation, of Marx's Captial: Volume One. The 'in the hands either of a single capitalist or a single capitalist company' quote from Marx played an important role in the Johnson-Forest Tendency's claim that Marx provided a textual basis for their argument that the USSR was a state-capitalist society, with capital concentrated in the hands of a single capitalist, the Communist Party dominated state. See e.g. the opening section of Dunayevskaya's The Nature of the Russian Economy (1946), and Lecture Twelve of her Outline of Marx's Capital Volume I.
70 Karl Kautsky's abridged 'popular version' of Capital: Volume One was published in Berlin in 1914.
71 The quote appears to be from the Dona Torr edition of Capital: Volume One, it does not appear in the English language version on the MIA.
72 D.T. is an abbreviation of Dona Torr.
73 Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, (1859).
74 The two paragraphs quoted are from the opening two paragraphs of Marx's Afterword to the Second German edition of Capital: Volume One, (1873).
75 '2nd Rus. ed.' is a reference to the Second Russian Edition of Marx's Capital: Volume One.