Karl Marx's 'Capital' a guide to volumes I-III

211 Pages·2021·2.006 MB·English

by  Kenneth Ronald Smith

Karl Marx’s Capital
A Guide to Volumes I–III

Karl Marx’s Capital
A Guide to Volumes I–III
Second Edition
Kenneth Smith
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition fi rst published in UK and USA 2021
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
First published in the UK and USA by Anthem Press in 2012
Copyright © Kenneth Smith 2021
The author asserts the moral right to be identifi ed as the author of this work.
Cover design by Omid Asghari
Cover image © 2012 City of London, London Metropolitan Archives
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933347
ISBN-13: 978-1-83998-000-8 (Pbk)
ISBN-10: 1-83998-000-1 (Pbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
In a few days I shall be 50. As that Prussian lieutenant said to you:
‘20 years of service and still lieutenant’, I can say: half a century
on my shoulders, and still a pauper. How right my mother was: ‘If
only Karell had made capital instead of etc.’
(Marx to Engels, 30 April 1868; emphasis added)
This book is dedicated to my mother,
Mrs Alice Smith (née Flynn) 1926–2013
CONTENTS
Preface to the Second Edition ix
Introduction 1
Reading Capital 1
A Note on Marx’s Method 8
A Note on Social Class 12
A Note on the English Translations of Capital 12
Part I: The Development of the Capitalist Mode
of Production 15
1. Absolute and Relative Surplus Value in Capital,
Vol. I, Ch. 10 and 12 18
2. Cooperation and the Division of Labour in Capital,
Vol. I, Ch. 13–14 23
3. Machinery and Modern Industry in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 15 27
4. Primitive Accumulation in Capital, Vol. I, Part VIII,
Ch. 26–33 31
Part II: The Capitalist Mode of Production 37
5. Simple Reproduction in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 7, 11 and 23 43
6. Extended Reproduction in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 24 50
7. Simple Reproduction in Capital, Vol. II, Sections 1–8 55
8. Extended Reproduction in Capital, Vol. II,
Ch. 21, Section 3 60
9. The Precipitation of Fixed Capital in Capital, Vol. II,
Ch. 21, Sections 1–2; Ch. 20, Section 11 69
viii A GUIDE TO MARX’S CAPITAL
Part III: The Underdevelopment of the Capitalist
Mode of Production 81
10. Mercantilism and the Circuit of Industrial Capital in
Capital, Vol. II, Part I, Ch. 1–4 86
11. Credit and the Dissolution of the CMP in Capital,
Vol. III, Ch. 27 91
12. Rudolf Hilferding and ‘Finance Capital’: Capital,
Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 2 97
13. Marx on Development and Underdevelopment in
Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 5 104
14. The Tendency of the Rate of Profi t to Fall in Capital,
Vol. III, Parts I–III, Ch. 1–15, but especially Ch. 14–15 111
Part IV: The Value Theory of Labour 121
15. The Rate of Profi t and the Rate of Surplus Value in
Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 9, Section 3, and Vol. III, Parts I and III 125
16. The Degree of Exploitation of Labour by Capital in
Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 9, Section 1; Ch. 6–7 133
17. The Labour Theory of Value and the Value Theory
of Labour in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 1, Sections 1–3 142
18. The Reifi cation of Commodity Fetishism in Capital,
Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 4, and Vol. III, Ch. 24 156
Conclusion 171
Appendix: On Social Classes 179
Notes 192
Bibliography 196
Index 198
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The second edition of this book is substantially the same as the fi rst except
for a minor change in the title of the book (from ‘A Guide to Marx’s Capital,
Vols. I–III’ to ‘Karl Marx’s Capital: A Guide to Volumes I–III’) and for the
correction of a number of mostly minor typographical errors throughout the
book. I would like to thank Professor David Ketterrer of Liverpool University,
UK for reading the fi rst edition of this book for me and identifying these
errors and Anthem Press for bringing out this corrected second edition of
the book.
Kenneth Smith, March 2021