The Third Volume of Karl Marx's Capital

Author(s) Frederick Engels
Written 9 January 1894


Written about January 9, 1894
First published in the Vorwärts, No. 9, January 12, 1894
Printed according to the newspaper
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 27
Collection(s): Vorwärts

The third volume of Capital prepared for publication by Engels appeared in the autumn of 1894. Engels signed the preface to it on October 4, 1894. Besides Vorwärts, this note was printed by the Sozialpolitisches Centralblatt, No. 16, January 14, 1894.

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.[1] 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.

  1. ↑ Engels did not carry through his intention to publish, as the fourth volume of Capital, Marx's Theories of Surplus-Value (present edition, Vols 30-32) from the Manuscript of 1861-63 (present edition, Vols 30-34). In an abridged form, the Theories of Surplus-Value were first published in English in: K. Marx, Theories of Surplus Value. A selection from the volumes published between 1905 and 1910 as Theorien über den Mehrwert, edited by Karl Kautsky, taken from Karl Marx's preliminary manuscript for the projected fourth volume of Capital. Transi, from the German by G. A. Bonner and Emile Burns. London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1951. This work was published in English in full for the first time in: K. Marx, Theories of Surplus-Value (Vol. IV of Capital). Part 1, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1963; Part 2, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1968; Part 3, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1971.