The Change in the Original Plan for Marx’s Capital and Its Causes

Abstract

As remarkable as it may seem, the set of problems concerning the structure of Marx’s chief work, as well as its relation to Theories of Surplus Value, on the one hand, and to the earlier publication A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, on the other, has never been the subject of an investigation. One can scarcely find another book that has shaped a whole century to the same extent, theoretically and practically, and which, despite its enormous importance, has been treated with a greater indifference with regard to its form, the history of its genesis and the logic of its structure! It would be superfluous to speculate here about the reasons for the unsatisfactory state of research on Marx. Suffice it to say that – despite all the discussions about Marx that we have gone through over the past three decades, in the advanced capitalist countries of Europe – we still find ourselves only at the start of scientific research on Marx. Only the publication of Marx’s works announced by the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow will decisively change this situation. Regardless, it would be an inexcusable relapse into the mistakes of historicism to remain theoretically inactive until such a time. On the contrary, the following investigation attempts to critically evaluate the problem encompassed in the title on the basis of already-known source materials and to demonstrate that important insights can be gleaned from them. The problem that arises here is twofold. The first concerns the preliminary question whose answer must precede any scientific analysis of Marx’s thought, the question of the completeness of the materials that have come down to us. That is, whether Capital, as it exists now – including Theories of Surplus