Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx on Capital.

Review in the _Elberfelder Zeitung_

_Elberfelder Zeitung._
No. 302, November 2, 1867

Karl Marx on Capital.
(Hamburg, published by Otto Meißner, Vol. I, 1867.)

Fifty sheets of scholarly treatise, to prove to us that the entire capital of our bankers, merchants, manufacturers, and great landowners is nothing more than accumulated unpaid labour of the working class! We recall that in 1848 the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_, on behalf of the Silesian peasants, advanced the demand for a “Silesian billion”. A thousand million thalers, so it was asserted, was the amount that had been wrongfully taken from the Silesian peasants alone upon the abolition of serfdom and feudal services, and had flowed into the pockets of the great landowners, and this amount was claimed back. But the gentlemen of the erstwhile _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_ are like the late Sibyl with her books; the less they are offered, the more they demand. What are a thousand million thalers compared with this colossal claim for restitution that is now being made in the name of the entire working class – for that is surely how we must understand it! If all the accumulated capital of the possessing classes is nothing other than “unpaid labour”, then it seems indeed to follow directly that this labour must subsequently be paid, that is to say, that the entire capital in question will be transferred to labour. Of course, the question would then immediately arise as to who would actually be entitled to receive it. But joking apart! However radical-socialist the present book goes about its work, and however bluntly and ruthlessly it confronts people in all directions who otherwise pass for authorities, we must confess that it is an extremely scholarly work that lays claim to the strictest scientific character. The press has already often spoken of the fact that

Marx intended to summarise the results of his many years of studies in a critique of all previous political economy, and thereby to provide the socialist endeavours with the scientific foundation that neither Fourier, nor Proudhon, nor even Lassalle had been able to give them. This work has long and often been announced in the press. In 1859, a “first instalment” appeared with Duncker in Berlin, which, however, only dealt with subjects that had no immediate practical interest, and which therefore attracted little attention. The following instalments did not appear, and the new socialist science seemed unable to survive its birth pangs. How many witticisms have been made about this new revelation, which was so often announced and yet seemed never, ever to come into the world! Well, here at last is the “first volume” – fifty printer’s sheets, as we said – and no one can say of it that it does not contain enough and more than enough that is new, bold, audacious, and that the same is not presented in a thoroughly scientific form. With his unfamiliar propositions, Marx this time appeals not to the masses, but to the men of science. It is for them to defend the laws of their economic theory, which are here assailed in their very foundations, and to furnish the proof that capital is indeed accumulated labour, but not accumulated, unpaid labour. Lassalle was a practical agitator, and it may have sufficed to confront him in practical agitation, in the daily press, in meetings. Here, however, it is a question of a systematic, scientific theory, and here the daily press cannot pronounce judgement; here science alone can have the final say. It is to be hoped that men such as Roscher, Rau, Max Wirth, etc. will seize this opportunity to defend the validity of the political economy hitherto generally recognised against this new, and certainly not contemptible, attack. The social-democratic seed has sprouted in very many places among the younger generation and the working-class population – through this book it will in any case find fresh nourishment enough.