Frederick Engels 

PREFACE 

At last I have the privilege of making public this third book of 
Marx’s main work, the conclusion of the theoretical part.! When I 
published the second volume, in 1885, I thought that except for a few, 
certainly very important, sections the third volume would probably 
offer only technical difficulties. This was indeed the case. But I had no 
idea at the time that these sections, the most important parts of the 
entire work, would give me as much trouble as they did, just as I did 
not anticipate the other obstacles, which were to retard completion 
of the work to such an extent. 

Next and most important of all, it was my eye weakness which for 
years restricted my writing time to a minimum, and which, even now, 
permits me to write by artificial light only in exceptional cases. Fur- 
thermore, there were other pressing labours which could not be 
turned down, such as new editions and translations of Marx’s and my 
own earlier works, hence reviews, prefaces, and supplements, often 
impossible without fresh study, etc. Above all, there was the English 
edition of the first volume of this work, for whose text I am ultimately 
responsible and which consequently consumed much of my time.? 
Whoever has in any way followed the colossal growth of international 
socialist literature during the last ten years, particularly the great 
number of translations of Marx’s and my own earlier works, will 
agree with me that I have been lucky that the number of languages in 
which I could be of help to the translators, and therefore could not re- 
fuse in all conscience to review their work, is very limited. But the 
growth of literature was merely indicative of a corresponding growth 
of the international working-class movement itself. And this imposed 

new obligations upon me. From the first days of our public activity it 
was Marx and I who shouldered the main burden of the work as go- 
betweens for the national movements of socialists and workers in the 
various countries. This work expanded in proportion to the expan- 
sion of the movement as a whole. Up to the time of his death, Marx 
had borne the brunt of the burden in this as well. But after his death 
the ever-increasing bulk of work had to be done by myself alone. Since 
then it has become the rule for the various national workers’ parties 
to establish direct contacts, and this is fortunately ever more the case. 
Yet requests for my assistance are still far more frequent than I would 
wish in view of my theoretical work. But if a man has been active in 
the movement for more than fifty years, as I have been, he regards 
the work connected with it as a bounden duty that brooks no delay. 
In our eventful time, just as in the 16th century, pure theorists on so- 
cial affairs are found only on the side of reaction and for this reason 
these gentlemen are not even theorists in the full sense of the word, 
but simply apologists of reaction. 

In view of the fact that I live in London my party contacts are 
limited to correspondence in winter, while in summer they are 
largely personal. This fact, and the necessity of following the 
movement in a steadily growing number of countries and a still 
more rapidly growing number of press organs, have compelled 
me to reserve matters which permit no interruption for completion 
during the winter months, and primarily the first three months of 
the year. When a man is past seventy his Meynert’s association 
fibres of the brain function with a certain annoying prudence. He no 
longer surmounts interruptions in difficult theoretical problems 
as easily and quickly as before. It came about therefore that the 
work of one winter, if it was not completed, had to be largely begun 
anew the following winter. This was the case with the most difficult 
fifth part. 

As the reader will observe from the following, the work of editing 
the third volume was essentially different from that of editing the sec- 
ond. In the case of the third volume there was nothing to go by out- 
side a first extremely incomplete draft. The beginnings of the various 
parts were, as a rule, pretty carefully done and even stylistically pol- 
ished. But the farther one went, the more sketchy and incomplete 
was the analysis, the more excursions it contained into arising side- 
issues whose proper place in the argument was left for later decision, 
and the longer and more complex the sentences, in which thoughts 

were recorded in statu nascendi.* In some places handwriting and pre- 
sentation betrayed all too clearly the outbreak and gradual progress 
of the attacks of ill health, caused by overwork, which at the outset ren- 
dered the author’s work increasingly difficult and finally compelled 
him periodically to stop work altogether. And no wonder. Between 
1863 and 1867, Marx not only completed the first draft of the two last 
volumes of Capital and prepared the first volume for the printer, but 
also performed the enormous work connected with the founding and 
expansion of the International Workingmen’s Association. As a re- 
sult, already in 1864 and 1865 ominous signs of ill health appeared 
which prevented Marx from personally putting the finishing touches 
to the second and third volumes. 

I began my work by dictating into readable copy the entire man- 
uscript, which was often hard to decipher even for me. This alone re- 
quired considerable time. It was only then that I could start on the 
actual editing. I limited this to the essential. I tried my best to pre- 
serve the character of the first draft wherever it was sufficiently clear. 
I did not even eliminate repetitions, wherever they, as was Marx’s 
custom, viewed the subject from another standpoint or at least ex- 
pressed the same thought in different words. Wherever my alterations 
or additions exceeded the bounds of editing, or where I had to apply 
Marx’s factual material to independent conclusions of my own, if 
even as faithful as possible to the spirit of Marx, I have enclosed the 
entire passage in brackets and affixed my initials. Some of my foot- 
notes are not enclosed in brackets; but wherever I have initialled 
them I am responsible for the entire note. 

As is only to be expected in a first draft, there are numerous allu- 
sions in the manuscript to points which were to have been expanded 
upon later, without these promises always having been kept. I have 
left them, because they reveal the author’s intentions relative to fu- 
ture elaboration. 

Now as to details. 

As regards the first part, the main manuscript was serviceable only 
with substantial limitations. The entire mathematical calculation of 
the relation between the rate of surplus value and the rate of profit 
(which makes up our Chapter IIT) is introduced in the very begin- 
ning, while the subject treated in our Chapter I is considered later 
and as the occasion arises. Two attempts at revising, each of them 

eight pages in folio, were useful here. But even these did not possess 
the desired continuity throughout. They furnished the substance for 
what is now Chapter I. Chapter II is taken from the main manu- 
script. There was a series of uncompleted mathematical calculations 
for Chapter ITI, as well as a whole, almost complete, notebook dating 
from the seventies, which presents the relation of the rate of surplus 
value to the rate of profit in the form of equations. My friend Samuel 
Moore, who has also translated the greater portion of the first volume 
into English, undertook to edit this notebook for me, a work for which 
he was far better equipped, being an old Cambridge mathematician. 
It was from his summary, with occasional use of the main manu- 
script, that I then compiled Chapter III. Nothing but the title was 
available for Chapter IV. But since its subject-matter, the influence of 
turnover on the rate of profit, is of vital importance, I have written it 
myself, for which reason the whole chapter has been placed in brack- 
ets. It developed in the course of this work that the formula for the 
rate of profit given in Chapter III required modification to be gener- 
ally valid. Beginning with Chapter V, the main manuscript is the sole 
source for the remainder of the part, although many transpositions 
and supplements were also essential. 

As for the following three parts, aside from stylistic editing I was 
able to follow the original manuscript almost throughout. A few pas- 
sages dealing mostly with the influence of turnover had to be brought 
into agreement with Chapter IV, which I had inserted, and are like- 
wise placed in brackets* and marked by my initials. 

The greatest difficulty was presented by Part V which dealt with 
the most complicated subject in the entire volume. And it was just at 
this point that Marx was overtaken by one of the above-mentioned 
serious attacks of illness. Here, then, was no finished draft, not even 
a scheme whose outlines might have been filled out, but only the be- 
ginning of an elaboration — often just a disorderly mass of notes, com- 
ments and extracts. I tried at first to complete this part, as I had done 
to a certain extent with the first one, by filling in the gaps and ex- 
panding upon passages that were only indicated, so that it would at 
least approximately contain everything the author had intended. 
{ tried this no less than three times, but failed in every attempt, and 
the time lost in this is one of the chief causes that held up this volume. 
At last I realised that I was on the wrong track. I should have had to 

go through the entire voluminous literature in this field, and would in 
the end have produced something that would nevertheless not have 
been a book by Marx. I had no other choice but to more or less cut 
the Gordian knot by confining myself to as orderly an arrangement of 
available matter as possible, and to making only the most indispens- 
able additions. And so it was that I succeeded in completing the prin- 
cipal labours for this part in the spring of 1893. 

As for the various chapters, chapters XXI to XXIV were, in the 
main, complete. Chapters XX V and XXVI required a sifting of the 
references and an interpolation of material found elsewhere. Chapters 
XXVII and X XIX could be taken almost completely from the origi- 
nal manuscript, but Chapter XXVIII had to be re-arranged in 
places. The real difficulty, however, began with Chapter XXX. From 
here on it was not only a matter of properly arranging the references, 
but of putting the train of thought into proper order, interrupted as it 
was at every point by intervening clauses and deviations, etc., and re- 
sumed elsewhere, often just casually. Thus, Chapter XXX was put 
together by means of transpositions and excisions which were utilised, 
however, in other places. Chapter XX XI, again, possessed greater 
continuity. But then follows a long section in the manuscript, entitled 
“The Confusion”, containing nothing but extracts from parliamen- 
tary reports on the crises of 1847 and 1857, in which are compiled state- 
ments of twenty-three businessmen and economists, largely on mon- 
ey and capital, gold drain, over-speculation, etc., and supplied here 
and there with short facetious comments. Practically all the then cur- 
rent views concerning the relation of money to capital are represented 
therein, either in the answers or in the questions, and it was the “con- 
fusion’ revealed in identifying money and capital in the money 
market that Marx meant to treat with criticism and sarcasm. After 
many attempts I convinced myself that this chapter could not be put 
into shape. Its material, particularly that supplied with Marx’s com- 
ments, was used wherever I found an opportune place for it. 

Next, in tolerable order, comes what I placed in Chapter XXXII. 
But this is immediately followed by a new batch of extracts from par- 
liamentary reports on every conceivable thing pertinent to this part, 
intermingled with the author’s comments. Toward the end these ex- 
tracts and comments are focussed more and more on the movement of 
monetary metals and on exchange rates, and close with all kinds of 
miscellaneous remarks. On the other hand, the “Precapitalist” 
chapter (Chap. XXXVI) was quite complete. 

Of all this material beginning with the “Confusion”, save that 
which had been previously inserted, I made up chapters XX XIII to 
XXXV. This could not, of course, be done without considerable in- 
terpolations on my part for the sake of continuity. Unless they are 
merely formal in nature, the interpolations are expressly indicated as 
belonging to me. In this way I have finally succeeded in working into 
the text ali the author’s relevant statements. Nothing has been left 
out but a small portion of the extracts, which either repeated what 
had already been said, or touched on points which the manuscript 
did not treat any further. 

The part on ground rent was much more fully treated, although by 
no means properly arranged, if only for the fact that Marx found it 
necessary to recapitulate the plan of the entire part in Chapter XLII 
(the last portion of the part on rent in the manuscript). This was 
all the more desirable, since the manuscript opens with Chapter 
XXXVII, followed by chapters XLV to XLVII, and only thereafter 
chapters XX XVIII to XLIV. The tables for the differential rent IT 
involved the greatest amount of work and so did the discovery that 
the third case of this class of rent had not at all been analysed in 
Chapter XLIII, where it belonged. 

In the seventies Marx engaged in entirely new special studies for 
this part on ground rent. For years he had studied the Russian origi- 
nals of statistical reports inevitable after the ‘‘reform” of 1861 in Rus- 
sia and other publications on landownership, had taken extracts from 
these originals, placed at his disposal in admirably complete form by 
his Russian friends, and had intended to use them for a new version of 
this part. Owing to the variety of forms both of landownership and of 
exploitation of agricultural producers in Russia, this country was to 
play the same role in the part dealing with ground rent that England 
played in Book I in connection with industrial wage labour.? He was 
unfortunately denied the opportunity of carrying out this plan. 

Lastly, the seventh part was available complete, but only as a first 
draft, whose endlessly involved periods had first to be dissected to be 
made printable. There exists only the beginning of the final chapter. 
It was to treat of the three major classes of developed capitalist socie- 
ty — the landowners, capitalists and wage labourers — corresponding 
to the three great forms of revenue, ground rent, profit and wages, 
and the class'struggle, an inevitable concomitant of their existence, as 
the actual consequence of the capitalist period. Marx used to leave 
such concluding summaries until the final editing, just before going to 

press, when the latest historical developments furnished him with un- 
failing regularity with proofs of the most laudable timeliness for his 
theoretical propositions. 

Citations and proofs illustrating his statements are, as in the second 
volume, considerably less numerous than in the first. Quotations from 
Book I refer to pages in the 2nd and 3rd editions. Wherever the man- 
uscript refers to theoretical statements of earlier economists, the name 
alone is given as a rule, and the quotations were to be added during 
the final editing. Of course, I had to leave this as it was. There are on- 
ly four parliamentary reports, but these are abundantly used. They 
are the following: 

1) Reports from Committees (of the Lower House), Volume VIII, 
Commercial Distress, Volume II, Part I, 1847-48. Minutes of Evi- 
dence.— Quoted as Commercial Distress, 1847-48. 

2) Secret Committee of the House of Lords on Commercial 
Distress 1847. Report printed in 1848. Evidence printed in 1857 
(because considered too compromising in 1848).— Quoted as