The third book of Marx’s Capital is now being printed and will, 
we hope, appear not later than this September. The contents of 
this long-awaited third book will conclude the theoretical part of 
the work, leaving only the fourth and final book, which will 
contain a critical historical survey of the theories of surplus 
value.*"' The first book shows how the capitalist’s surplus value is 
wrung out of the worker, and the second how this surplus value, 
which initially is contained in product, is realised in the form of 
money. These first two books are thus concerned only with 
surplus value so long as it is still in the hands of its first 
appropriator, the industrial capitalist. But it remains only partially 
in the hands of this first appropriator; it is later distributed to 
various interested parties in the form of commercial profit, profit 
of enterprise, interest and ground rent; and it is the laws of this 
distribution that are set out in the third book. With the 
production, circulation and distribution of surplus value, however, 
its entire life-cycle is concluded and there is nothing more to say 
about it. Apart from the laws of the profit rate in general, the 
third book examines commercial capital, interest-bearing capital, 
credit and banks, ground rent and landed property, which in 
conjunction with the themes dealt with in the first two books 
complete the “Critique of Political Economy” promised in the title.