It was no easy task to prepare the second book of Capital for publi- 
cation, and do it in a way that on the one hand would make it a con- 
nected and as far as possible complete work, and on the other would 
represent exclusively the work of its author, not of its editor. The 
great number of available, mostly fragmentary, texts worked on 
added to the difficulties of this task. At best one single text (Manuscript 
IV) had been revised throughout and made ready for the press, but 
the greater part of even this manuscript had become obsolete through 
subsequent revision. The bulk of the material was not finally pol- 
ished, in point of language, although in substance it was for the great- 
er part fully worked out. The language was that in which Marx used 
to make his excerpts: careless style full of colloquialisms, often con- 
taining coarsely humorous expressions and phrases, interspersed with 
English and French technical terms or with whole sentences and even 
pages of English. Thoughts were jotted down in the form in which 
they developed in the brain of the author. Some parts of the argu- 
ment would be treated in detail, others of equal importance only indi- 
cated. Factual material for illustration would be collected, but barely 
arranged, much less worked out. At conclusions of chapters, in the 
author’s anxiety to get to the next, there would often be only a few 
disjointed sentences to mark the further development here left incom- 
plete. And finally there was the well-known handwriting which the 
author himself was sometimes unable to decipher. 

I have contented myself with reproducing these manuscripts as lit- 
erally as possible, changing the style only in places where Marx 

would have changed it himself and interpolating explanatory sen- 
tences or connecting statements only where this was absolutely neces- 
sary, and where, besides, the meaning was clear beyond any doubt. 
Sentences whose interpretation was susceptible of the slightest doubt 
were preferably copied word for word. The passages which I have re- 
modelled or interpolated cover barely ten pages in print and concern 
only matters of form. 

The mere enumeration of the manuscript material left by Marx for 
Book II proves the unparalleled conscientiousness and strict self- 
criticism with which he endeavoured to elaborate his great economic 
discoveries to the point of utmost completion before he published 
them. This self-criticism rarely permitted him to adapt his presenta- 
tion of the subject, in content as well as in form, to his ever widening 
horizon, the result of incessant study. This material consists of the fol- 
lowing: ; 

First, a manuscript entitled A Contribution to the Critique of Political 
Economy, containing |,472 quarto pages in 23 notebooks, written from 
August 1861 to June 1863.* It is the continuation of a work of the 
same title, the first part of which appeared in Berlin, in 1859.” It 
treats, on pages 1-220 (notebooks I-V) and again on pages 1,159- 
1,472 (notebooks XIX-X XIII), of the subjects examined in Book I of 
Capital, from the transformation of money into capital to the end, 
and is the first extant draft thereof. Pages 973-1,158 (notebooks XVI- 
XVIII) deal with capital and profit, rate of profit, merchant’s capital 
and money capital, that is to say with subjects which later were devel- 
oped in the manuscript for Book III. The themes treated in Book II, 
and very many of those which are treated later, in Book III, are not 
yet arranged separately. They are treated in passing, namely, in the 
section which makes up the main body of the manuscript, viz., pages 
220-972 (notebooks VI-XV), entitled Theories of Surplus Value. This 
section contains a detailed critical history of the pith and marrow of 
political economy, the theory of surplus value, and develops parallel 
with it, in polemics against predecessors, most of the points later in- 
vestigated separately and in their logical connection in the manu- 
script for Books II and III. After eliminating the numerous passages 
covered by Books II and III, I intend to publish the critical part of this 
manuscript as Capital, Book IV.? This manuscript, valuable though 
it is, could be used only very little in the present edition of Book II. 

* See present edition, vols 30-34.- > Ibid., Vol. 29, pp. 257-417. 

Preface 7 

The manuscript chronologically following next is that of Book ITI. 
It was written, at least the greater part of it, in 1864 and 1865. Only 
after this manuscript had been completed in its essential parts did 
Marx undertake the elaboration of Book I, the first volume published 
in 1867. I am now getting this manuscript of Book III in shape for the 
press. 

The following period — after the publication of Book I — is repre- 
sented by a collection of four folio manuscripts for Book II, numbered 
I-IV by Marx himself. Manuscript I (150 pages), presumably written 
in 1865 or 1867, is the first separate, but more or less fragmentary, 
elaboration of Book II as now arranged. Here too nothing could be 
used. Manuscript III is partly a compilation of quotations and ref- 
erences to Marx’s notebooks containing excerpts, most of them relat- 
ing to Part I of Book II, partly elaborations of particular points, espe- 
cially a critique of Adam Smith’s propositions on fixed and circulat- 
ing capital and the source of profit; furthermore an exposition of the 
relation of the rate of surplus value to the rate of profit, which belongs 
in Book III. Little that was new could be garnered from the refer- 
ences, while the elaborations for volumes II and III were superseded 
by subsequent revisions and had also to be discarded for the greater 
part. 

Manuscript IV is an elaboration, ready for the press, of Part I and 
the first chapters of Part II of Book II, and has been used where suit- 
able. Although it was found that this manuscript had been written 
earlier than Manuscript II, yet, being far more finished in form, it 
could be used with advantage for the corresponding part of this book. 
All that was needed was a few addenda from Manuscript II.— The 

_latter is the only somewhat complete elaboration of Book IJ and dates 
from the year 1870. The notes for the final editing, which I shall men- 
tion immediately, say explicitly: ‘““The second elaboration must be 
used as the basis.” 

There was another intermission after 1870, due mainly to Marx’s 
ill health. As usual, Marx employed this time for studies; agronomics, 
rural relations in America and, especially, Russia, the money market 
and banking, and finally natural sciences such as geology and phys- 
iology, and above all independent mathematical works, form the 
content of the numerous excerpt notebooks of this period.’ By the be- 
ginning of 1877 he had recovered sufficiently to resume his main 
work. Dating back to the end of March 1877 there are references and 
notes from the above-named four manuscripts intended as the basis of 

a new elaboration of Book II, the beginning of which is represented 
by Manuscript V (56 folio pages). It comprises the first four chapters 
and is still little worked out. Essential points are treated in footnotes. 
The material is rather collected than sifted, but it is the last complete 
presentation of this, the most important section of Part I. 

A first attempt to prepare from it a manuscript ready for the press 
was made in Manuscript VI (after October 1877 and before July 
1878), embracing only 17 quarto pages, the greater part of the first 
chapter. A second and last attempt was made in Manuscript VII, 
“July 2, 1878”, only 7 folio pages. 

About this time Marx seems to have realised that he would never 
be able to finish the elaboration of the second and third books in 
a manner satisfactory to himself unless a complete revolution in his 
health took place. Indeed, manuscripts V-VIII show far too frequent 
traces of an intense struggle against depressing ill health. The most 
difficult bit of Part I had been worked over in Manuscript V. The re- 
mainder of Part I and all of Part II, with the exception of Chapter 
XVII, presented no great theoretical difficulties. But Part III, deal- 
ing with the reproduction and circulation of social capital, seemed to 
him to be very much in need of revision; for Manuscript II had first 
treated reproduction without taking into consideration money circu- 
lation, which mediates it, and then gone over the same matter again, 
but with money circulation taken into account. This was to be elimi- 
nated and the whole part to be reconstructed in such a way as to con- 
form to the author’s enlarged horizon. Thus Manuscript VIII came 
into existence, a notebook containing only 70 quarto pages. But the 
vast amount of matter Marx was able to compress into this space 
is clearly demonstrated when we compare that manuscript with 
Part ITI, in print, after leaving out the pieces inserted by me from Man- 
uscript IT. 

This manuscript is likewise merely a preliminary treatment of the 
subject, its main object having been to ascertain and develop the 
points of view newly acquired in comparison with Manuscript II, 
with those points ignored about which there was nothing new to 
say. An essential portion of Chapter XVII, Part II, which anyhow is 
more or less relevant to Part III, was included and expanded. The 
logical sequence is frequently interrupted, the treatment of the sub- 
ject gappy in places and very fragmentary, especially the conclusion. 
But what Marx intended to say is said there, somehow or other. 

This is the material for Book II, out of which I was supposed ‘“‘to 

Preface 9 

make something”’, as Marx remarked to his daughter Eleanor shortly 
before his death. I have construed this task in its narrowest meaning. 
So far as this was at all possible, I have confined my work to the mere 
selection of a text from the available versions. I always based my 
work on the last available edited manuscript, comparing this with the 
preceding ones. I only encountered real difficulties, i. e., of more than 
a merely technical nature, in the first and third parts, but these were 
indeed considerable. I have endeavoured to solve them exclusively in 
the spirit of the author. 

I have mostly translated quotations in the text [into German] 
whenever they are cited in confirmation of facts or when, as in pas- 
sages from Adam Smith, the original is available to everyone who 
wants to go thoroughly into the matter. This was impossible only in 
Chapter X, because it is precisely the English text that is criticised. 
The quotations from Book I are paged according to its second edi- 
tion, the last one to appear in Marx’s lifetime.” 

For Book ITI, only the following materials are available, apart from 
the first elaboration in manuscript form of A Contribution to the Cri- 
tique..., from the above-mentioned parts of Manuscript ITI, and from 
a few occasional short notes scattered through various excerpt note- 
books: the folio manuscript of 1864-65, referred to previously, which 
is about as fully worked out as Manuscript II of Book II; further- 
more, a notebook dated 1875: The Relation of the Rate of Surplus 
Value to the Rate of Profit, which treats the subject mathematically 
(in equations). The preparation of this book for publication is pro- 
ceeding rapidly. So far as I am able to judge up to now, it will present 
mainly technical difficulties, with the exception, it is true, of a few 
very important sections. 

I consider this an opportune place to refute a certain charge which 
has been raised against Marx, first only in whispers, sporadically, but 
more recently, after his death, proclaimed an established fact by Ger- 
man armchair and State socialists* and by their followers — the 
charge that Marx plagiarised the work of Rodbertus. I have already 

* In the Engels-authorised English edition of Volume I of Capital (Volume 35 of the 
present Collected Works) the division into parts and chapters is different from that in 
the German edition. Therefore references to the English edition are given in the. foot- 
notes here. 

stated elsewhere ') what was most urgent in this regard, but not until 
now have I been able to adduce conclusive proof. 

As far as I know this charge was made for the first time in 
R. Meyer’s Emancipationskampf des vierten Standes, p. 43: 

“It can be proved that Marx has gathered the greater part of his critique from these 
publications” (the works of Rodbertus dating back to the last half of the thirties). 

I may well assume, until further evidence is produced, that the 
whole “proof” of this assertion consists in Rodbertus having assured 
Herr Meyer that this was so. 

In 1879 Rodbertus himself appears on the scene° and writes the 
following to J. Zeller (Xeitschrift für die gesammte Staatswissenschaft, Tu- 
bingen, 1879, p. 219), with reference to his work Zur Erkenntniss unsrer 
staatswirtschaftlichen Kustinde, 1842: 

“You will find that this” // the line of thought developed in it // “Shas been very 
nicely used ... by Marx, without, however, giving me credit for it.” 

The posthumous publisher of Rodbertus’ works, Th. Kozak, re- 
peats his insinuation without further ceremony (Das Kapital von 
Rodbertus. Berlin, 1884, Introduction, p. XV). 

Finally in the Briefe und sozialpolitische Aufsdtze von Dr. Rodbertus- 
Jagetzow, published by R. Meyer in 1881, Rodbertus says point- 
blank: 

“Today I find I have been robbed by Schaffle and Marx without having my name 
mentioned”’ (letter No. 60, p. 134). 

And in another place, Rodbertus’ claim assumes a more definite 
form: 

“In my third social letter I have shown virtually in the same way as Marx, only 
more briefly and clearly, whence the surplus value of the capitalist originates’ (letter 
No. 48, p. 111). 

Marx had never heard anything about any of these charges of pla- 
giarism. In his copy of the Emancipationskampf only that part had been 
cut open which related to the International. The remaining pages 
were not opened until I cut them myself after his death. He never saw 

0 In the preface to Das Elend der Philosophie. Antwort auf Proudhons Philosophie des 
Elends von Karl Marx. Deutsch von E. Bernstein und K. Kautsky. Stuttgart, 1885.* 

* See present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 278-91. 

Preface 11 

the Tubingen Zeitschrift. The Briefe, etc., to R. Meyer likewise re- 
mained unknown to him, and I did not learn of the passage referring to 
the “robbery” until Dr. Meyer himself was good enough to call my 
attention to it in 1884. However, Marx was familiar with letter No. 
48. Dr. Meyer had been so kind as to present the original to the 
youngest daughter of Marx. When some of the mysterious whispering 
about the secret source of his criticism having to be sought in Rod- 
bertus reached the ear of Marx, he showed me that letter with the re- 
mark that here he had at last authentic information as to what Rod- 
bertus himself claimed; if that was all Rodbertus asserted he, Marx, 
had no objection, and he could well afford to let Rodbertus enjoy the 
pleasure of considering his own presentation the briefer and clearer 
one. In fact, Marx considered the matter settled by this letter of Rod- 
bertus. 

He could think so all the more since I know for certain that he was 
not in the least acquainted with the literary activity of Rodbertus un- 
til about 1859, when his own critique of political economy had been 
completed, not only in its fundamental outlines, but also in its more 
important details. Marx began his economic studies in Paris, in 1843, 
starting with the great Englishmen and Frenchmen. Of German econ- 
omists he knew only Rau and List, and he did not want any more of 
them. Neither Marx nor I heard a word of Rodbertus’ existence until 
we had to criticise, in the Neue Rheinische Keitung,* 1848, the speeches 
he made as Berlin Deputy and his actions as Minister. We were both 
so ignorant that we had to ask the Rhenish deputies who this Rod- 
bertus was that had become a Minister so suddenly. But they too 
could not tell us anything about the economic writings of Rodbertus. 
That on the other hand Marx knew very well already at that time, 
without the help of Rodbertus, not only whence but also how “the 
surplus value of the capitalist” originated is proved by his Poverty of 
Philosophy, 1847," and by his lectures on wage labour and capital, de- 
livered in Brussels the same year and published in Nos. 264-69 of the 
Neue Rheinische Zeitung, in 1849.° It was only around 1859, through 
Lassalle, that Marx learned of the existence of an economist named 
Rodbertus and thereupon Marx looked up the “third social letter’ in 
the British Museum. 

* See present edition, Vol. 7, pp. 174, 188, 195, 273, 419, 425, 427; Vol. 8, 
p. 4. - > Ibid., Vol. 6, pp. 105-212. - © Ibid., Vol. 9, pp. 197-228. 

These were the actual circumstances. And now let us see what 
there is to the content, of which Marx is charged with ‘“‘robbing” 
Rodbertus. 

“In my third social letter’’, says Rodbertus, “I have shown in the same way as 
Marx, only more briefly and clearly, whence the surplus value of the capitalist origi- 
nates.” 

This, then, is the crux of the matter: The theory of surplus value. 
And indeed, it would be difficult to say what else there is in Marx that 
Rodbertus might claim as his property. Thus Rodbertus declares 
here that he is the real originator of the theory of surplus value and 
that Marx robbed him of it. 

And what has the third social letter to say about the origin of sur- 
plus value? Simply this: That “rent’’, his term which lumps together 
ground rent and profit, does not arise from an “‘addition of value’”’ to 
the value of a commodity, but 

“from a deduction of value from wages; in other words, because wages represent 
only a part of the value of a product”, 

and if labour is sufficiently productive 

“wages need not be equal to the natural exchange value of the product of labour in 

Ma 

order to leave enough of this value for the replacing of capital’ (!) “and for rent’’. 

We are not informed however what sort of a ‘“‘natural exchange 
value” ofa product it is that leaves nothing for the “replacing of capi- 
tal’’, consequently, for the replacement of raw material and the wear 
and tear of tools. 

It is our good fortune to be able to state what impression this 
stupendous discovery of Rodbertus produced on Marx. In the man- 
uscript A Contribution to the Critique..., Notebook X, pp. 445 et seqq. we 
find a ‘“‘Digression. Herr Rodbertus. A New Ground-Rent Theory”’. 
This is the only point of view from which Marx considers the third so- 
cial letter there. The Rodbertian theory of surplus value in general is 
dismissed with the ironical remark: ““Mr. Rodbertus first investigates 

* [J.K.] Rodbertus, Sociale Briefe an von Kirchmann. Dritter Brief: Widerlegung der Ri- 
cardo’schen Lehre von der Grundrente und Begrtindung einer neuen Rententheorie, Berlin, 1851, 

S. 87. 

Preface 13 

the situation in a country where there is no separation between land 
ownership and ownership of capital, and then comes to the tmportant* 
conclusion that rent (by which he means the entire surplus value) is 
simply equal to the unpaid labour or the quantity of products which 
it represents.” 

Capitalistic man has been producing surplus value for several hun- 
dred years and has gradually arrived at the point of pondering over 
its origin. The view first propounded derived directly from commer- 
cial practice: surplus value arises out of an addition to the value of the 
product. This view was current among the mercantilists. But James 
Steuart already realised that in that case what the one gains the other 
necessarily loses. Nevertheless, this view persisted for a long time af- 
terwards, especially among the socialists. But it was thrust out of clas- 
sical science by Adam Smith. 

He says in the Wealth of Nations, Vol. I, Ch. VI’: 

“As soon as STOCKS has accumulated in the hands of particular persons, some of 
them will naturally employ it in setting to work industrious people, whom they will 
supply with materials and subsistence, in order to make a profit by the sale of their 
work, or by what their labour adds to the value of the materials.... The value which the 
workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into tivo parts, of which 
the one pays their wages, the other the profits of their employer upon the whole stock of 
materials and wages which he advanced.” 

And a little further on he says: 

‘As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, 
like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its 
natural produce....” The labourer “...must give up to the landlord a portion of what his 
labour either collects or produces. This portion, or, what comes to the same thing, the 
price of this portion, constitutes the rent of land.” 

Marx comments on this passage in the above-named manuscript 
A Contribution to the Critique..., etc., p. 253: “Thus Adam Smith con- 
ceives surplus value—that is, surplus labour, the excess of labour per- 
formed and objectified in the commodity over and above the paid la- 
bour, the labour which has received its equivalent in the wages — as 
the general category, of which profit proper and rent of land are merely 
branches.’” 

Adam Smith says furthermore (Vol. I, Ch. VIII) *: 

@ Marx has “right’’. - See present edition, Vol. 31, p. 251.-‘ Engels uses the German 
word Kapital and gives “stock” in parentheses.-’ See present edition, Vol. 30, 
p. 388. 

“As soon as land becomes private property, the landlord demands a share of almost 
all the produce which the labourer can either raise, or collect from it. His rent makes 
the first deduction from the produce of the labour which is employed upon land. It seldom 
happens that the person who tills the ground has the wherewithal to maintain himself 
till he reaps the harvest. His maintenance is generally advanced to him from the STOCK 
of a master, the farmer who employs him, and who would have no interest to employ 
him, unless he was to share in the produce of his labour, or unless his stock was to be re- 
placed to him with a profit. This profit makes a second deduction from [the produce of] the 
labour which is employed upon land. The produce of almost all other labour is liable to 
the like deduction of profit. In all arts and manufactures the greater part of the work- 
men stand in need of a master to advance them the materials of their work, and their 
wages and maintenance till it be completed. He shares in the produce of their labour, or in 
the value which it adds to the materials upon which it is bestowed; and in this share 
consists his profit.” 

Marx’s comment (manuscript, p. 256): “Here therefore Adam 
Smith in plain terms describes rent and profit on capital as mere de- 
ductions from the workman’s product or the value of his product, 
which is equal to the quantity of labour added by him to the raw ma- 
terial. This deduction however, as Adam Smith has himself pre- 
viously explained, can only consist of that part of the labour which 
the workman adds to the materials over and above the quantity of la- 
bour which only pays his wages, or which only provides an equivalent 
for his wages; that is, the surplus labour, the unpaid part of his la- 
bour.”’* 

Thus even Adam Smith knew “whence the surplus value of the cap- 
italist originated”, and furthermore that of the landlord. Marx 
openly acknowledged this as early as 1861, while Rodbertus and the 
swarming mass of his admirers, who grew like mushrooms under the 
warm summer showers of state socialism, seem to have forgotten all 
about that. 

“Nevertheless,” Marx continues, “Smith does not distinguish sur- 
plus value as such as a category on its own, distinct from the specific 
forms it assumes in profit and rent. This is the source of much error 
and inadequacy in his inquiry, and of even more in the work of Ri- 
cardo.”” 

This statement fits Rodbertus to a T. His “‘rent” is simply the sum 
of ground rent and profit. He builds up an entirely erroneous theory of 
ground rent, and he accepts profit without any examination of it, just 
as he finds it among his predecessors. 

* See present edition, Vol. 30, p. 391. - > Ibid., pp. 388-89. 

Preface 15 

Marx’s surplus value, on the contrary, represents the general form 
of the sum of values appropriated without any equivalent by the own- 
ers of the means of production, and this form splits into the distinct, 
converted forms of profit and ground rent in accordance with very spe- 
cific laws, which Marx was the first to discover. These laws will be ex- 
pounded in Book III]. We shall see there that many intermediate links 
are required to arrive from an understanding of surplus value in 
genera] at an understanding of its transformation into profit and 
ground rent; in other words at an understanding of the laws of the 
distribution of surplus value within the capitalist class. 

Ricardo goes considerably further than Adam Smith. He bases his 
conception of surplus value on a new theory of value contained in em- 
bryo in Adam Smith, but generally forgotten when it comes to apply- 
ing it. This theory of value became the starting-point of all subse- 
quent economic science. From the determination of the value of com- 
modities by the quantity of labour realised in them he derives the dis- 
tribution, between the labourers and capitalists, of the quantity of 
value added by labour to the raw materials, the division of this value 
into wages and profit (i.e., here surplus value). He shows that the 
value of the commodities remains the same no matter how proportion 
of these two parts changes, a law which, in his opinion, has but few 
exceptions. He even establishes a few fundamental laws, although 
couched in too general terms, on the mutual relations of wages and 
surplus value (taken in the form of profit) (Marx, Das Kapital, Buch 
I, Kap. XV, A),* and shows that ground rent is an excess — accruing 
under certain circumstances—— over and above profit. 

In none of these points did Rodbertus go beyond Ricardo. He ei- 
ther remained wholly unaware of the internal contradictions of the 
Ricardian theory, which caused the downfall of that school, or they 
only misled him into raising utopian demands (his Zur Erkenntniss, etc., 
p. 130) instead of inducing him to look for economic solutions. 

But the Ricardian theory of value and surplus value did not have to 
wait for Rodbertus’ Zur Erkenntniss, etc. in order to be utilised for social- 
ist purposes. On page 609 of the first volume of Das Kapital (2nd 
ed.),° we find the following quotation, ‘“THe possessors OF SURPLUS PROD- 
UCE OR CAPITAL,” taken from a pamphlet entitled The Source and Remedy 
of the National Difficulties. A Letter to Lord John Russell, London, 
1821.° In this pamphlet of 40 pages, the importance of which should 

@ English edition: Vol. I, Ch. XVII, 1 (see present edition, Vol. 35).-° Ibid., 
Vol. I, Ch. XXIV, 1. 

have been noted if only on account of the one expression SURPLUS PROD.” 
UCE OR CAPITAL, and which Marx tore from oblivion, we read the fol- 
lowing statements: 

‘*_..Whatever may be due to the capitalist” //from the standpoint of the capitalist// 
“he can only receive the SURPLUS LABOUR* of the labourer; for the labourer 
must live” (p. 23). 

But how the labourer lives and hence how much the surplus labour 
appropriated by the capitalist can amount to are very relative things. 

“If capital does not decrease in value as it increases in amount, the capitalists will 
exact from the labourers the produce of every hour’s labour beyond what it is possible 
for the labourer to subsist on ... the capitalist may ... eventually say to the labourer, 
‘You shan’t eat bread [...] because it is possible to subsist on beet root and potatoes.’ 
And to this point have we come” (pp. 23-24). ‘“‘Why, if the labourer can be brought to 
feed on potatoes instead of bread, it is indisputably true that more can be exacted from 
his labour; i. e., if when he fed on bread, he was obliged éo retain for the maintenance of 
himself and family the labour of Monday and Tuesday, he will, on potatoes, require only 
the half of Monday; and the remaining half of Monday and the whole of Tuesday are 
available either for the service of the state or the capitalist? (p. 26). “IT 1s ADMITTED? 
that the interest paid to the capitalists, whether in the nature of rents, interests on 
money, or profits of trade, is paid out of the labour of others” (p. 23). 

Here we have, exactly, Rodbertus’ “rent”, except that “‘interest’’ is 
used instead of “rent’’. : 

Marx makes the following comment (manuscript A Contribution to 
the Critique..., p. 852): “This scarcely known pamphlet— which ap- 
peared at a time when the ‘incredible cobbler’ MacCulloch !° began 
to make a stir-—contains an important advance on Ricardo. It 
bluntly describes surplus value, or ‘profit’? as Ricardo calls it (often 
also surplus PRODUCE‘), OF INTEREST, as the author of the pamphlet 
terms it, as suRpLUSs LABOUR, the labour which the worker performs 
gratis, which he performs over and above the quantity of labour by 
which the value of his labour power is replaced, i. e. by which he pro- 
duces an equivalent for his wages. Important as it was to reduce 
value to labour, it was equally important to reduce surplus VALUE,° 
which manifests itself in surpius propuce,° to surpius Labour. This was in 
fact already stated by Adam Smith and constitutes one of the main elements in 

* Engels gives the English term in parentheses after the German equivalent.-° En- 
gels gives the English words in parentheses after their German equivalent. 
- © Both the German and the English terms are given in the text. 

Preface 17 

Ricardo’s argumentation. But nowhere did they clearly express it and re- 
cord it in an absolute form.’* We read further on, on page 859 of the 
manuscript: ‘‘For the rest, the author remains a captive of the econo- 
mic categories as he finds them. Just as in the case of Ricardo the con- 
fusion of surplus value with profit leads to undesirable contradictions, 
so in his case the fact that he christens surplus value the interest of capi- 
tal. To be sure, he is in advance of Ricardo in that he first of all re- 
duces all surplus value to surplus labour, and when he calls surplus 
value interest of capital, he at the same time emphasises that by xrrr- 
EST OF CAPITAL he understands the general form of surplus labour in 
contrast to its particular forms— rent, interest of money and profits 
of trade. [...] But on the other-hand, he applies the name of one of 
these particular forms — inrerrst — to the general form. And this suf- 
fices to make him relapse into economic gibberish //staxc in the man- 
uscript//.’” 

This last passage fits our Rodbertus like a glove. He, too, remains 
a Captive of the economic categories as he finds them. He, too, applies 
to surplus value the name of one of its converted sub-forms, rent, and 
makes it quite indefinite at that. The result of these two mistakes is 
that he relapses into economic gibberish, that he does follow up his 
advance over Ricardo critically, and that instead he is misled into us- 
ing his unfinished theory, even before it got rid of its egg-shell, as the 
basis for a utopia with which, as always, he comes too late. The pam- 
phlet appeared in 1821 and anticipated completely Rodbertus’ 
“rent” of 1842. 

Our pamphlet is but the farthest outpost of an entire literature 
which in the twenties turned the Ricardian theory of value and sur- 
plus value against capitalist production in the interest of the proleta- 
riat, fought the bourgeoisie with its own weapons. The entire commu- 
nism of Owen,!! so far as it engages in polemics on economic ques- 
tions, is based on Ricardo. Apart from him, there are numerous other 
writers, some of whom Marx quoted as early as 1847 against Prou- 
dhon (Misére de la Philosophie, p. 49°), such as Edmonds, Thompson, 
Hodgskin, etc., etc., “‘and four pages more of etceteras’’. I select the 
following at random from among this multitude of writings: An In- 
quiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth, Most Conductive to 
Human Happiness, sy William Thompson; a new eprriox, London, 

 See present edition, Vol. 32, p. 374.-> Cf present edition, Vol. 32, pp. 388-89. 
- © See present edition, Vol. 6, p. 138. 

1850.'? This work, written in 1822, first appeared in 1824. Here like- 
wise the wealth appropriated by the non-producing classes is de- 
scribed everywhere as a deduction from the product of the labourer 
and rather strong words are used. 

‘The constant effort of what has been called society, has been to deceive and in- 
duce, to terrify and compel, the productive labourer to work for the smallest possible 
portion of the produce of his own labour” (p. 28). ““Why not give him the whole abso- 
lute produce of his labour?” (p. 32). ‘““This amount of compensation, exacted by capita- 
lists from the productive labourers, under the name of rent or profits, is claimed for the 
use of land or other articles... Since all the physical materials on which, or by means of 
which, the propertiless productive labourer, with no other possession than his capabil- 
ity of producing, can make use of this capability, are in the hands of others with inter- 
ests opposed to his, and their consent is a necessary preliminary to any exertion on his 
part, is he not, and must he not always remain, at the mercy of these capitalists for 
whatever portion of the fruits of his own labour they may think proper to leave at his dis- 
posal in compensation for his toils?”’ (p. 125). “‘... in proportion to the amount of pro- 
ducts withheld, whether these defalcations are called profits, or taxes, or theft” (p. 126), 
etc. 

I must admit that I do not write these lines without a certain mor- 
tification. I will not make so much of the fact that the anti-capitalist 
literature of England of the twenties and thirties is so totally unknown 
in Germany, in spite of Marx’s direct references to it even in his 
Poverty of Philosophy, and his repeated quotations from it, as for instance 
the pamphlet of 1821, Ravenstone,'* Hodgskin, etc., in the first vol- 
ume of Capital. But it is proof of the grave deterioration of official 
political economy that not only the /iteratus vulgaris," who clings 
desperately to the coat-tails of Rodbertus and “really has not learned 
anything’’,” but also the officially and ceremoniously installed profes- 
sor,’ who “‘boasts of his erudition’, has forgotten his classical political 
economy to such an extent that he seriously charges Marx with hav- 
ing purloined things from Rodbertus which may be found even in 
Adam Smith and Ricardo. 

But what, then, is new in Marx’s utterances on surplus value? How is 
it that Marx’s theory of surplus value struck home like a thunderbolt 
out of a clear sky, and this in all civilised countries, while the theories 
ofall his socialist predecessors, Rodbertus included, vanished without 
having produced any effect? 

The history of chemistry offers an illustration which explains this. 
* Rudolf Meyer - > A remark Talleyrand is supposed to have made about the 

Bourbons. - “Adolph Wagner (for Marx’s critique of his book Lehrbuch der poli- 
tischen Oekonomie see present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 531-59). 

Preface 19 

We know that late in the past century the phlogistic theory still 
prevailed. According to it, combustion consisted essentially in this: 
that a certain hypothetical substance, an absolute combustible 
named phlogiston, separated from the burning body. This theory suf- 
ficed to explain most of the chemical phenomena then known, al- 
though it had to be considerably strained in some cases. But in 1774 
Priestley described a certain kind of air 

“which he found to be so pure, or so free from phlogiston, that common air seemed 
adulterated in comparison with it’. 

He called it ‘‘dephlogisticated air’. Shortly after him Scheele in 
Sweden described the same kind of air and demonstrated its existence 
in the atmosphere. He also found that this kind of air disappeared 
when some body was burned in it or in ordinary air and therefore he 
called it ‘‘fire-air’’. 

“From these facts he drew the conclusion that the combination arising from the 
union of phlogiston with one of the components of the atmosphere” //that is to say, from 
combustion// “was nothing but fire or heat which escaped through the glass.””! 

Priestley and Scheele had described oxygen without knowing what 
they had laid their hands on. They “remained captives of the” phlog- 
istic “categories as they found them’. The element which was des- 
tined to upset the whole phlogistic theory and to revolutionise chemis- 
try remained barren in their hands. But Priestley had immediately 
communicated his discovery to Lavoisier in Paris, and Lavoisier now 
analysed the entire phlogistic chemistry in the light of this new fact 
and discovered, first, that this new kind of air was a new chemical ele- 
ment, and that combustion was not a case of the mysterious phlogis- 
ton departing from the burning body, but of this new element combining 
with that body. Thus he placed all chemistry, which in its phlogistic 
form had stood on its head, squarely on its feet. And although he did 
not describe oxygen simultaneously and independently of the others, 
as he claimed later on, he nevertheless is the real discoverer of oxygen 
vis-a-vis the two, who had only described it without knowing what they 
had described. 

Marx stands in the same relation to his predecessors in the theory 
of surplus value as Lavoisier stood to Priestley and Scheele. The exist- 

21 Roscoe-Schorlemmer, Ausfiihrliches Lehrbuch der Chemie. Brunswick, 1877, I, 
pp. 13, 18.'* 

ence of that part of the value of products which we now call surplus 
value had been ascertained long before Marx. It had also been stated 
more or less clearly what it consisted of, namely of the product of the 
labour for which its appropriator had not given any equivalent. But 
they did not get any further. Some — the classical bourgeois econo- 
mists — investigated at most the proportion in which the product of 
labour was divided between the labourer and the owner of the means 
of production. Others — the socialists— found that this division was 
unjust and looked for utopian means of abolishing this injustice. They 
all remained captives of the economic categories as they had found 
them. 

Now Marx appeared on the scene. And he took a view directly op- 
posite to that of all his predecessors. Where they had seen a solution, 
he only saw a problem. He saw that this was a case neither of dephlo- 
gisticated air nor of fire-air, but of oxygen — that here it was not sim- 
ply a matter of stating an economic fact or of pointing out the conflict 
between this fact and eternal justice and true morality, but of ex- 
plaining a fact which was destined to revolutionise all political econ- 
omy, and which offered to him who knew how to use it the key to an 
understanding of all capitalist production. In the light of this fact he 
examined all the economic categories which he found in existence, 
just as Lavoisier, proceeding from oxygen, had examined the existing 
categories of phlogistic chemistry. In order to understand what sur- 
plus value was, Marx had to find out what value was. He had to criti- 
cise above all the Ricardian theory of value. Hence he analysed la- 
bour’s value-producing property and was the first to ascertain what 
kind of labour it was that created value, and. why and how it did so. 
He found that value was nothing but congealed labour of tis kind, 
and this is a point which Rodbertus never grasped to his dying day. 
Marx then investigated the relation between commodity and money 
and demonstrated how and why, owing to the property of value im- 
manent in the commodity, the commodity and commodity exchange 
must engender the opposition of commodity and money. His theory 
of money, based on this realisation, is the first exhaustive one and has 
been tacitly accepted everywhere. He analysed the transformation of 
money into capital and demonstrated that this transformation is 
based on the purchase and sale of labour power. By substituting labour 
power, the value-creating property, for labour he solved with one 
stroke one of the difficulties which brought about the downfall of the 
Ricardian school, viz., the impossibility of harmonising the mutual 

Preface 21 

exchange of capital and labour with the Ricardian law that value is 
determined by labour. By stating the division of capital into constant 
and variable he was enabled to trace the process of the formation of 
surplus value in its minutest details as it really takes place, and thus to 
explain it— something none of his predecessors had accomplished. 
Thus he stated the existence of a division within capital itself with 
which neither Rodbertus nor the bourgeois economists knew in the 
least what to do, but which furnishes the key for the solution of the 
most complicated economic problems, as is strikingly proved again 
by Book IT and will be proved still more by Book ITI. He analysed 
surplus value itself further and found its two forms, absolute and rela- 
tive surplus value. And he showed that they had played a different, 
but in either case a decisive role, in the historical development of cap- 
-italist production. On the basis of surplus value he developed the 
first rational theory of wages we have, and for the first time gave an 
outline of the history of capitalist accumulation and an exposition of 
its historical tendency. 

And Rodbertus? After he has read all this, he~—like the tenden- 
tious economist he always is — declares that this is ‘‘an assault on so- 
ciety”’,* that he himself has said much more briefly and clearly what 
surplus value evolves from, and finally that all this does indeed apply 
to “the present form of capital’, that is to say to capital as it exists his- 
torically, but not to the ‘‘concept of capital’, namely the utopian idea 
which Mr. Rodbertus has of capital. Just like old Priestley, who swore 
by phlogiston to the end of his days and refused to have anything to 
do with oxygen. The only thing is that Priestley had actually been the 
first to describe oxygen, while Rodbertus had merely rediscovered 
a commonplace in his surplus value, or rather his “rent’’, and that 
Marx, unlike Lavoisier, disdained to claim that he was the first to dis- 
cover the fact of the existence of surplus value. 

The other economic feats performed by Rodbertus are on about 
the same plane. His elaboration of surplus value into a utopia has al- 
ready been unintentionally criticised by Marx in his Poverty of Philos- 
ophy. What else may be said about it J have said in my preface to the 
German edition of that work.’ Rodbertus’ explanation of commercial 
crises as outgrowths of the underconsumption of the working class 

* [J.K.] Rodbertus, Briefe und sozialpolitésche Aufsiétze. Herausgegeben von Dr. R. 
Mever. Berlin, Bd. I, [1881,] S. 111. - > See present edition, Vol. 26, pp. 278-91. 

may already be found in Sismondi’s Nouveaux Principes de Economie 
Politique, Book IV, Ch. IV.) However, Sismondi always had the 
world market in mind, while Rodbertus’ horizon does not extend 
beyond the Prussian border. His speculations as to whether wages are 
derived from capital or income belong to the domain of scholasticism 
and are definitely settled in Part ITI of this second book of Capital. 
His theory of rent has remained his exclusive property and may rest 
in peace until the manuscript of Marx criticising it is published.’ Fi- 
nally his suggestions for the emancipation of the old Prussian landed 
property from the oppression of capital are also entirely utopian; for 
they evade the only practical question raised in this connection, viz.: 
How can the old Prussian landed junker have a yearly income of, say, 
20,000 marks and a yearly expenditure of, say, 30,000 marks, without 
running into debt? 

The Ricardian school suffered shipwreck about the year 1830 on the 
rock of surplus value. And what this school could not solve remained 
still more insoluble for its successor, vulgar economy. The two points 
which caused its failure were these: 

First. Labour is the measure of value. However, living labour in its 
exchange with capital has a lower value than the objectified labour 
for which it is exchanged. Wages, the value of a definite quantity of 
living labour, are always less than the value of the product which this 
same quantity of living labour produces or in which it is embodied. 
The question is indeed insoluble, if put in this form. It has been cor- 
rectly formulated by Marx and thereby answered. It is not labour 
which has a value. As an activity which creates values it can no more 
have any special value than gravity can have any special weight, heat 
any special temperature, electricity any special strength of current. It 
is not labour which is bought and sold as a commodity, but labour pow- 
er. Once labour power becomes a commodity, its value is determined 
by the labour embodied in it as a social product. This value is 
equal to the labour socially necessary for its production and repro- 
duction. Hence the purchase and sale of Jabour power on the basis of its 
value thus defined does not at all contradict the economic law of value. 

* “Thus the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small number of proprietors 
narrows the home market more and more, and industry is more and more compelled to 
look for foreign markets to dispose of its goods, where even greater revolutions threaten 
it” (namely, the crisis of 1817, which is described immediately afterwards). Nouveaux 
Principes, 1, ed. 1819, p. 336. 

* See ibid., Vol. 37. 

Preface 23 

Second. According to the Ricardian law of value, two capitals em- 
ploying equal quantities of equally paid living labour, all other con- 
ditions being equal, produce products of equal value, and likewise 
surplus value, or profit, of equal quantity, in equal periods of time. 
But if they employ unequal quantities of living labour, they cannot 
produce equal amounts of surplus value, or, as the Ricardians say, 
equal amounts of profit. Now in reality the opposite takes place. In 
actual fact, equal capitals, regardless of how much or how little living 
labour they employ, produce equal average profits in equal times. 
Here there is therefore a contradiction of the law of value which had 
been noticed by Ricardo himself, but which his school also was un- 
able to resolve. Rodbertus likewise could not but note. this contradic- 
tion. But instead of resolving it, he made it one of the starting-points 
of his utopia (Kur Erkenntniss, p. 131). Marx had resolved this contra- 
diction already in the manuscript of A Contribution to the Critique....* 
According to the plan of Capital, this solution will be provided in 
Book III. Months will pass before that will be published. Hence 
those economists who claim to have discovered in Rodbertus the sec- 
ret source and a superior predecessor of Marx have now an opportu- 
nity to demonstrate what Rodbertus’ political economy can accom- 
plish. If they can show how an equal average rate of profit can and 
must come about, not only without a violation of the law of value, but 
rather on the very basis of it, we are willing to discuss the matter 
further with them. In the meantime they had better make haste. The 
brilliant investigations of the present Book IT and their entirely new 
results in fields hitherto almost untrod are merely introductory to the 
contents of Book III, which develops the final conclusions of Marx’s 
analysis of the process of social reproduction on a capitalist basis. 
When this Book ITT appears, little mention will be made of the econo- 
mist called Rodbertus. 

The second and third books of Capital were to be dedicated, as 
Marx repeatedly told me, to his wife. 

Frederick Engels 
London, on Marx’s birthday, May 5, 1885 

* See present edition, vols 31-32.-° See ibid., Vol. 37 (Capital, Vol. III, parts 
I and IJ). 

24 

Frederick Engels