Karl Marx

Capital Volume One

1886

PREFACE TO THE

ENGLISH EDITION

The publication of an English version of “Das Kapital”
needs no apology. On the contrary, an explanation might be expected why
this English version has been delayed until now, seeing that for some years
past the theories advocated in this book have been constantly referred
to, attacked and defended, interpreted and misinterpreted, in the periodical
press and the current literature of both England and America.

When, soon after the author's death in 1883, it became evident
that an English edition of the work was really required, Mr. Samuel Moore,
for many years a friend of Marx and of the present writer, and than whom,
perhaps, no one is more conversant with the book itself, consented to undertake
the translation which the literary executors of Marx were anxious to lay
before the public. It was understood that I should compare the MS. with
the original work, and suggest such alterations as I might deem advisable.
When, by and by, it was found that Mr. Moore's professional occupations
prevented him from finishing the translation as quickly as we all desired,
we gladly accepted Dr. Aveling's offer to undertake a portion of the work;
at the same time Mrs. Aveling, Marx's youngest daughter, offered to check
the quotations and to restore the original text of the numerous passages
taken from English authors and Blue books and translated by Marx into German.
This has been done throughout, with but a few unavoidable exceptions.

The following portions of the book have been translated by Dr.
Aveling: (I) Chapters X. (The Working-Day), and XI. (Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value);
(2) Part VI. (Wages, comprising Chapters XIX. to XXII.); (3) from Chapter
XXIV., Section 4 (Circumstances that &c.) to the end of the book, comprising
the latter part of Chapter XXIV.,. Chapter XXV., and the whole of Part
VIII. (Chapters XXVI. to XXXIII); (4) the two Author's prefaces. All the
rest of the book has been done by Mr. Moore. While, thus, each of the translators
is responsible for his share of the work only, I bear a joint responsibility
for the whole.

The third German edition, which has been made the basis of our
work throughout, was prepared by me, in 1883, with the assistance of notes
left by the author, indicating the passages of the second edition to be
replaced by designated passages, from the French text published in 1873.
[1] The alterations thus effected in the text of the
second edition generally coincided with changes prescribed by Marx in a
set of MS. instructions for an English translation that was planned, about
ten years ago, in America, but abandoned chiefly for want of a fit and
proper translator. This MS. was placed at our disposal by our old friend
Mr. F. A. Sorge of Hoboken N. J. It designates some further interpolations
from the French edition; but, being so many years older than the final
instructions for the third edition, I did not consider myself at liberty
to make use of it otherwise than sparingly, and chiefly in cases where
it helped us over difficulties. In the same way, the French text has been
referred to in most of the difficult passages, as an indicator of what
the author himself was prepared to sacrifice wherever something of the
full import of the original had to be sacrificed in the rendering.

There is, however, one difficulty we could not spare the reader:
the use of certain terms in a sense different from what they have, not
only in common life, but in ordinary Political Economy. But this was unavoidable.
Every new aspect of a science involves a revolution in the technical terms
of that science. This is best shown by chemistry, where the whole of the
terminology is radically changed about once in twenty years, and where
you will hardly find a single organic compound that has not gone through
a whole series of different names. Political Economy has generally been
content to take, just as they were, the terms of commercial and industrial
life, and to operate with them, entirely failing to see that by so doing,
it confined itself within the narrow circle of ideas expressed by those
terms. Thus, though perfectly aware that both profits and rent are but
sub-divisions, fragments of that unpaid part of the product which the labourer
has to supply to his employer (its first appropriator, though not its ultimate
exclusive owner), yet even classical Political Economy never went beyond
the received notions of profits and rents, never examined this unpaid part
of the product (called by Marx surplus-product) in its integrity as a whole,
and therefore never arrived at a clear comprehension, either of its origin
and nature, or of the laws that regulate the subsequent distribution of
its value. Similarly all industry, not agricultural or handicraft, is indiscriminately
comprised in the term of manufacture, and thereby the distinction is obliterated
between two great and essentially different periods of economic history:
the period of manufacture proper, based on the division of manual labour,
and the period of modern industry based on machinery. It is, however, self-
evident that a theory which views modern capitalist production as a mere
passing stage in the economic history of mankind, must make use of terms
different from those habitual to writers who look upon that form of production
as imperishable and final.

A word respecting the author's method of quoting may not be out
of place. In the majority of cases, the quotations serve, in the usual
way, as documentary evidence in support of assertions made in the text.
But in many instances, passages from economic writers are quoted in order
to indicate when, where, and by whom a certain proposition was for the
first time clearly enunciated. This is done in cases where the proposition
quoted is of importance as being a more or less adequate expression of
the conditions of social production and exchange prevalent at the time,
and quite irrespective of Marx's recognition, or otherwise, of its general
validity. These quotations, therefore, supplement the text by a running
commentary taken from the history of the science.

Our translation comprises the first book of the work only. But
this first book is in a great measure a whole in itself, and has for twenty
years ranked as an independent work. The second book, edited in German
by me, in 1885, is decidedly incomplete without the third, which cannot
be published before the end of 1887. When Book III. has been brought out
in the original German, it will then be soon enough to think about preparing
an English edition of both.

“Das Kapital” is often called, on the Continent, “the Bible of
the working class.” That the conclusions arrived at in this work are daily
more and more becoming the fundamental principles of the great working-
class movement, not only in Germany and Switzerland, but in France, in
Holland and Belgium, in America, and even in Italy and Spain, that everywhere
the working class more and more recognises, in these conclusions, the most
adequate expression of its condition and of its aspirations, nobody acquainted
with that movement will deny. And in England, too, the theories of Marx,
even at this moment, exercise a powerful influence upon the socialist movement
which is spreading in the ranks of “cultured” people no less than in those
of the working class. But that is not all. The time is rapidly approaching
when a thorough examination of England's economic position will impose
itself as an irresistible national necessity. The working of the industrial
system of this country, impossible without a constant and rapid extension
of production, and therefore of markets, is coming to a dead stop.

Free Trade has exhausted its resources; even Manchester doubts
this its quondam economic gospel. [2] Foreign industry,
rapidly developing, stares English production in the face everywhere, not
only in protected, but also in neutral markets, and even on this side of
the Channel. While the productive power increases in a geometric, the extension
of markets proceeds at best in an arithmetic ratio. The decennial cycle
of stagnation, prosperity, over-production and crisis, ever recurrent from
1825 to 1867, seems indeed to have run its course; but only to land us
in the slough of despond of a permanent and chronic depression. The sighed
for period of prosperity will not come; as often as we seem to perceive
its heralding symptoms, so often do they again vanish into air. Meanwhile,
each succeeding winter brings up afresh the great question, “what to do
with the unemployed"; but while the number of the unemployed keeps swelling
from year to year, there is nobody to answer that question; and we can
almost calculate the moment when the unemployed losing patience will take
their own fate into their own hands. Surely, at such a moment, the voice
ought to be heard of a man whose whole theory is the result of a lifelong
study of the economic history and condition of England, and whom that study
led to the conclusion that, at least in Europe, England is the only country
where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful
and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected
the English ruling classes to submit, without a “pro-slavery rebellion,”
to this peaceful and legal revolution.

Frederick Engels

November 5, 1886

Footnotes

[1] “Le Capital,” par Karl Marx. Traduction
de M.J. Roy, entierement revisée par l'auteur. Paris. Lachâtre. This translation,
especially in the latter part of the book, contains considerable alterations
in and additions to the text of the second German edition.

[2] At the quarterly meeting of the Manchester
Chamber of Commerce, held this afternoon, a warm discussion took place on
the subject of Free Trade. A resolution was moved to the effect that “having
waited in vain 40 years for other nations to follow the Free Trade example
of England, this Chamber thinks the time has now arrived to reconsider
that position. The resolution was rejected by a majority of one only, the
figures being 21 for, and 22 against.” — Evening Standard, Nov.
1, 1886.