Capital: An Abridged Edition

by Karl Marx, David McLellan (Editor)

Overview

A classic of early modernism, Capital combines vivid historical detail with economic analysis to produce a bitter denunciation of mid-Victorian capitalist society. It has proved to be the most influential work in twentieth-century social science; Marx did for social science what Darwin had done for biology. This is the only abridged edition to take into account the whole of Capital. It offers virtually all of Volume 1, which Marx himself published in 1867; excerpts from a new translation of "The Result of the Immediate Process Production"; and a selection of key chapters from Volume
3, which Engels published in 1895.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199535705
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2008
Series:	Oxford World's Classics Series
Edition description:	Abridged
Pages:	544
Sales rank:	463,431
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

David McLellan is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Kent.

Table of Contents

Introduction     xiii
Note on the Text     xxviii
Select Bibliography     xxix
A Chronology of Karl Marx     xxxi
From Volume One
Preface to the First German Edition     3
Afterword to the Second German Edition     7
Commodities and Money
Commodities     13
The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use-Value and Value (the Substance of Value and the Magnitude of Value)     13
The Two-Fold Character of the Labour Embodied in Commodities     18
The Form of Value or Exchange-Value     22
The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof     42
Exchange     51
Money, or the Circulation of Commodities     58
The Measure of Values     58
The Medium of Circulation     64
Money     84
The Transformation of Money into Capital
The General Formula for Capital     93
Contradictions in the General Formula of Capital     101
The Buying and Selling of Labour-Power     108
The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value
The Labour-Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value     115
The Labour-Process or the Production of Use-Values     115
The Production of Surplus-Value     120
Constant Capitaland Variable Capital     132
The Rate of Surplus-Value     142
The Degree of Exploitation of Labour-Power     142
The Working-Day     148
The Limits of the Working-Day     148
The Greed for Surplus-Labour. Manufacturer and Boyard     151
Branches of English Industry without Legal Limits to Exploitation     154
Day and Night Work. The Relay System     159
The Struggle for a Normal Working-Day. Compulsory Laws for the Extension of the Working-Day from the Middle of the 14th to the End of the 17th Century     162
The Struggle for the Normal Working-Day. Compulsory Limitation by Law of the Working-Time. The English Factory Acts, 1833 to 1864     166
The Struggle for the Normal Working-Day. Reaction of the English Factory Acts on Other Countries     179
Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value     183
The Production of Relative Surplus-Value
The Concept of Relative Surplus-Value     189
Co-operation     197
Division of Labour and Manufacture     205
Two-Fold Origin of Manufacture     205
The Detail Labourer and his Implements     207
The Two Fundamental Forms of Manufacture: Heterogeneous Manufacture, Serial Manufacture     209
Division of Labour in Manufacture, and Division of Labour in Society      216
The Capitalistic Character of Manufacture     222
Machinery and Modern Industry     229
The Development of Machinery     229
The Value Transferred by Machinery to the Product     239
The Proximate Effects of Machinery on the Workman     244
The Factory     258
The Strife between Workman and Machine     263
The Theory of Compensation as Regards the Workpeople Displaced by Machinery     269
Repulsion and Attraction of Workpeople by the Factory System. Crises in the Cotton Trade     273
Revolution Effected in Manufacture, Handicrafts, and Domestic Industry by Modern Industry     276
The Factory Acts. Sanitary and Educational Clauses of the Same. Their General Extension in England     289
Modern Industry and Agriculture     296
The Production of Absolute and of Relative Surplus-Value
Absolute and Relative Surplus-Value     299
Changes of Magnitude in the Price of Labour-Power and in Surplus-Value     303
Length of the Working-Day and Intensity of Labour Constant. Productiveness of Labour Variable     304
Working-Day Constant. Productiveness of Labour Constant. Intensity of Labour Variable     305
Wages
The Transformation of the Value (and Respectively the Price) of Labour-Power into Wages     309
The Accumulation of Capital
Simple Reproduction     317
Conversion of Surplus-Value into Capital     324
Capitalist Production on a Progressively Increasing Scale. Transition of the Laws of Property that Characterise Production of Commodities into Laws of Capitalist Appropriation     324
Separation of Surplus-Value into Capital and Revenue. The Abstinence Theory     331
The So-Called Labour-Fund     334
The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation     337
The Increased Demand for Labour-Power that Accompanies Accumulation, the Composition of Capital Remaining the Same     337
Relative Diminution of the Variable Part of Capital Simultaneously with the Progress of Accumulation and of the Concentration that Accompanies it     343
Progressive Production of a Relative Surplus-Population or Industrial Reserve Army     350
Different Forms of the Relative Surplus-Population. The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation     358
The So-Called Primitive Accumulation
The Secret of Primitive Accumulation     363
Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land     366
Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated, from the End of the 15th Century. Forcing down of Wages by Acts of Parliament     372
Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist     375
Historical Tendency of Capitalistic Accumulation      378
From 'Results of the Immediate Process of Production'     383
From Volume Three
Formation of a General Rate of Profit (Average Rate of Profit) and Transformation of the Values of Commodities into Prices of Production     401
The Law as Such     419
Counteracting Influences     438
Increasing Intensity of Exploitation     438
Depression of Wages below the Value of Labour-Power     441
Cheapening of Elements of Constant Capital     441
Relative Over-Population     442
Foreign Trade     443
The Increase of Stock Capital     445
Exposition of the Internal Contradictions of the Law     447
General     447
Conflict between Expansion of Production and Production of Surplus-Value     452
Excess Capital and Excess Population     456
Genesis of Capitalist Ground-Rent     458
Labour Rent     458
Rent in Kind     462
The Trinity Formula     465
Marx's Selected Footnotes     483
Explanatory Notes     491
Subject Index     495
Name Index     497