Capital, Volumes I–III
Marx analyzes capitalist production as a historical social relationship. Volume I studies commodity, value, labor-power, surplus value, accumulation, and the making of wage labor. Volume II examines circulation and reproduction; Volume III considers profit, credit, rent, and transformations of economic forms.
Understanding the text
German and French versions of Volume I differ. Posthumous volumes reflect Engels’s editorial decisions; they are not three simultaneously completed books. The working-day investigation confronts the wage contract with actual conflict and factory legislation. Competition imposes pressures that cannot be explained solely by individual greed. Connecting conceptual distinctions with these historical investigations is essential to assessing Marx’s account.
Volume I published by Marx; II and III edited by Engels from manuscripts.
Key points
- 01
Exploitation and contract
Legally free wage exchange can enable appropriation of surplus labor. The distinction between performed labour and purchased labour-power is decisive here.
- 02
Fetishism
Relations among people appear as natural properties of things and prices. Fetishism is therefore more than an individual psychological mistake about prices.
- 03
Historical accumulation
Production, competition, and dispossession reproduce capitalist relationships. Accumulation also depends on historically produced legal and political conditions, including dispossession.
Explore the ideas in depth
What does a commodity conceal?
Enter the first chapter without conflating price, usefulness, and value.
An object with several aspects
Distinguish what makes something useful from how it enters exchange. These questions involve different relationships.
Comparing labor
Ask how concretely different activities become comparable in a commodity society. Do not immediately substitute a definition of price.
Making relations visible
Fetishism explains a social appearance, not merely an individual mistake. Find institutions making that appearance durable.
Questions to carry into your reading
- Must a useful thing have a price?
- Which relationships does a price conceal?
A commodity is a social form as well as an object.
How to read it
Understand distinctions before equations and examine the historical investigations used; always identify volume and edition.
Editions & sources
Summaries and key points are original editorial interpretations. They accompany reading the work and do not replace an edition of the text. Editorial method ↗