Marx was not destined to get this, the third, edition ready for press himself. The
powerful thinker, to whose greatness even his opponents now make obeisance, died on
March 14, 1883.

Upon me who in Marx lost the best, the truest friend I had — and had for forty years —
the friend to whom I am more indebted than can be expressed in words — upon me now
devolved the duty of attending to the publication of this third edition, as well as of
the second volume, which Marx had left behind in manuscript. I must now account here to
the reader for the way in which I discharged the first part of my duty.

It was Marx's original intention to re-write a great part of the text of Volume I, to
formulate many theoretical points more exactly, insert new ones and bring historical and
statistical materials up to date. But his ailing condition and the urgent need to do the
final editing of Volume II induced him to give up this scheme. Only the most necessary
alterations were to be made, only the insertions which the French edition (“Le Capital.”
Par Karl Marx. Paris, Lachâtre 1873) already contained, were to be put in.

Among the books left by Marx there was a German copy which he himself had corrected here
and there and provided with references to the French edition; also a French copy in
which he had indicated the exact passages to be used. These alterations and additions
are confined, with few exceptions, to the last [Engl. ed.: second last] part of the
book: “The Accumulation of Capital.” Here the previous text followed the original draft
more closely than elsewhere, while the preceding sections had been gone over more
thoroughly. The style was therefore more vivacious, more of a single cast, but also more
careless, studded with Anglicisms and in parts unclear; there were gaps here and there
in the presentation of arguments, some important particulars being merely alluded to.

With regard to the style, Marx had himself thoroughly revised several sub-sections and
thereby had indicated to me here, as well as in numerous oral suggestions, the length to
which I could go in eliminating English technical terms and other Anglicisms. Marx would
in any event have gone over the additions and supplemental texts and have replaced the
smooth French with his own terse German; I had to be satisfied, when transferring them,
with bringing them into maximum harmony with the original text.

Thus not a single word was changed in this third edition without my firm conviction that
the author would have altered it himself. It would never occur to me to introduce into
“Das Kapital” the current jargon in which German economists are wont to express
themselves — that gibberish in which, for instance, one who for cash has others give him
their labour is called a labour- giver (Arbeit geber ) and one whose labour is taken
away from him for wages is called a labour- taker (Arbeit nehmer ). In French, too, the
word “ travail ” is used in every-day life in the sense of “occupation.” But the French
would rightly consider any economist crazy should he call the capitalist a donneur de
travail (a labour-giver) or the worker a receveur de travail (a labour-taker).

Nor have I taken the liberty to convert the English coins and moneys, measures and
weights used throughout the text to their new-German equivalents. When the first edition
appeared there were as many kinds of measures and weights in Germany as there are days
in the year. Besides there were two kinds of marks (the Reichsmark existed at the time
only in the imagination of Soetbeer, who had invented it in the late thirties), two
kinds of gulden and at least three kinds of taler, including one called neues
Zweidrittel . In the natural sciences the metric system prevailed, in the world market —
English measures and weights. Under such circumstances English units of measure were
quite natural for a book which had to take its factual proofs almost exclusively from
British industrial relations. The last-named reason is decisive even to-day, especially
because the corresponding relations in the world market have hardly changed and English
weights and measures almost completely control precisely the key industries, iron and
cotton.

In conclusion a few words on Marx's art of quotation, which is so little understood.
When they are pure statements of fact or descriptions, the quotations, from the English
Blue books, for example, serve of course as simple documentary proof. But this is not so
when the theoretical views of other economists are cited. Here the quotation is intended
merely to state where, when and by whom an economic idea conceived in the course of
development was first clearly enunciated. Here the only consideration is that the
economic conception in question must be of some significance to the history of science,
that it is the more or less adequate theoretical expression of the economic situation of
its time. But whether this conception still possesses any absolute or relative validity
from the standpoint of the author or whether it already has become wholly past history
is quite immaterial. Hence these quotations are only a running commentary to the text, a
commentary borrowed from the history of economic science, and establish the dates and
originators of certain of the more important advances in economic theory. And that was a
very necessary thing in a science whose historians have so far distinguished themselves
only by tendentious ignorance characteristic of careerists. It will now be
understandable why Marx, in consonance with the Afterword to the second edition, only in
very exceptional cases had occasion to quote German economists.

There is hope that the second volume will appear in the course of 1884.

Frederick Engels

London

November 7, 1883