‘Whatever the state of current politics, Karl Marx remains one of the great thinkers of the modern world. Chris Arthur has solved the problem of slimming down Capital, without tearing the fabric of Marx’s argument or losing the flavour of his style, with exceptional success. All students will have reason to thank him.’
E.J. Hobsbawm
This new printing of C. J. Arthur’s student edition of Marx’s most famous text is re-issued for Marx’s 200th birthday.
Marx’s Capital: A Student Edition makes one of the most influential texts of the modern era open and accessible to readers.
Karl Marx’s Capital was first published in 1867, since when it has become the classic text of Marxism for professional economists, social scientists, philosophers, students, and political activists alike. But the sheer extent of Marx’s great work of political economy has often daunted readers, and hampered their understanding of his ideas. Harold Wilson once jokingly claimed he gave up when he came across a two-page footnote on the first page.
C.J. Arthur, whose student edition of The German Ideology by Marx and Engels has long proved popular, has substantially edited and abridged Marx’s monumental work. His efforts make this book, one of the most influential texts of the modern era, open and accessible to readers as never before.
Editor’s Introduction
Preface to the First German Edition
Afterword to the Second German Edition
PART I – COMMODITIES AND MONEY
Chapter 1 – Commodities
Section 1. The Two Factors of a Commodity: Use-value and Value Section 2. The Two-fold Character of the Labour Embodied in Commodities Section 3. The Form of Value or Exchange-value A. Elementary or Accidental Form of Value B. Total or Expanded Form of Value C. The General Form of Value D. The Money-form Section 4. The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof
Chapter 2 – Exchange
Chapter 3 – Money, or the Circulation of Commodities Section 1. The Measure of Values Section 2. The Medium of Circulation Section 3. Money
PART II – THE TRANSFORMATION OF MONEY INTO CAPITAL
Chapter 4 – The General Formula for Capital
Chapter 5 – Contradictions in the General Formula of Capital
Chapter 6 – The Buying and Selling of Labour-power
PART III – THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE SURPLUS–VALUE
Chapter 7 – The Labour-process and the Process of Producing Surplus-value Section 1. The Labour-process or the Producdon of Use-values Section 2. The Production of Surplus-value Chapter 8 – Constant Capital and Variable Capital
Chapter 9 – The Rate of Surplus-value
Chapter 10 – The Working Day Section 1. The Limits of the Working Day Section 2. The Greed for Surplus-labour Section 3. Branches of English Industry without Legal Limits to Exploitation Section 4. Day and Night Work. The Relay System Section 5. The Struggle for a Normal Working Day Section 6. The English Factory Acts, 1833 to 1864 Section 7. Reaction of the English Factory Acts on Other Countries
Chapter 11 – Rate and Mass of Surplus-value
PART IV – PRODUCTION OF RELATIVE SURPLUS–VALUE
Chapter 12 – The Concept of Relative Surplus-value Chapter 13 – Cooperation Chapter 14 – Division of Labour and Manufacture Section 1. Two-fold Origin of Manufacture Section 2. The Detail Labourer and his Implements Section 3. The Two Fundamental Forms of Manufacture: Heterogeneous Manufacture, Serial Manufacture Section 4. Division of Labour in Manufacture, and Division of Labour in Society Section 5. The Capitalistic Character of Manufacture Chapter 15 – Machinery and Modern Industry Section 1. The Development of Machinery Section 2. The Value Transferred by Machinery to the Product Section 3. The Proximate Effects of Machinery on the Workman Section 4. The Factory Section 5. The Strife between Workman and Machine Section 6. The Theory of Compensation as regards the Workpeople Displaced by Machinery Section 7. Repulsion and Attraction of Workpeople by the Factory System. Crises in the Cotton Trade Section 8. Revolution Effected in Manufacture, Handicrafts, and Domestic Industry by Modern Industry Section 9. The Factory Acts. Educational Clauses of the Same. Their General Extension in England Section 10. Modern Industry and Agriculture
PART V – THE PRODUCTION OF ABSOLUTE AND OF RELATIVE SURPLUS–VALUE
Chapter 16 – Absolute and Relative Surplus-value
Chapter 17 – Changes of Magnitude in the Price of Labour-power and in Surplus-value
PART VI – WAGES
Chapter 19 – The Transformation of the Value (and Respectively the Price) of Labour-power into Wages
Chapter 22 – National Differences in Wages
PART VII – THE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL
Chapter 23 – Simple Reproduction
Chapter 24 – Conversion of Surplus-value into Capital Section 1. Capitalist Production on a Progressively Increasing Scale. Transition of the Laws of Property that Characterise Production of Commodities into Laws of Capitalist Appropriation Section 3. Separation of Surplus-value into Capital and Revenue
Chapter 25 – The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation Section 1. The Increased Demand for Labour-power that Accompanies Accumulation, the Composition of Capital Remaining the Same Section 2. Relative Diminution of the Variable Part of Capital Simultaneously with the Progress of Accumulation and of the Concentration that Accompanies it Section 3. Progressive Production of a Relative Surplus population or Industrial Reserve Army Section 4. Different Forms of the Relative Surpluspopulation. The General Law of Capitalistic Accumulation
PART VIII – THE SO–CALLED PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION
Chapter 26 – The Secret of Primitive Accumulation
Chapter 27 – Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land
Chapter 28 – Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated from the End of the Fifteenth Century
Chapter 32 – Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation Index
‘Whatever the state of current politics, Karl Marx remains one of the great thinkers of the modern world. Chris Arthur has solved the problem of slimming down Capital, without tearing the fabric of Marx’s argument or losing the flavour of his style, with exceptional success. All students will have reason to thank him.’ E.J. Hobsbawm
‘A skilful abridgement. Approachable and readable’
– Sean Sayers, Political Studies
