Editing Karl Marx (section)

=== First International and ''Das Kapital'' ===
[[File:Karl Marx, May 1861.jpg|thumb|left|Earliest known photograph taken of Marx in London, 1861.<ref>{{Cite web |url= https://marx200.org/en/fotografien/index.html|title= All Images of Marx Are Good|website= Marx 200|access-date= 2 December 2024}}</ref>]]

Marx continued to write articles for the ''New York Daily Tribune'' as long as he was sure that the ''Tribune''{{'}}s editorial policy was still progressive. However, the departure of Charles Dana from the paper in late 1861 and the resultant change in the editorial board brought about a new editorial policy.<ref>Jonathan Sperber, ''Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life'', p. 347.</ref> No longer was the ''Tribune'' to be a strong [[abolitionist]] paper dedicated to a complete [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] victory. The new editorial board supported an immediate peace between the Union and the [[Confederate States of America|Confederacy]] in the Civil War in the United States with slavery left intact in the Confederacy. Marx strongly disagreed with this new political position and in 1863 was forced to withdraw as a writer for the ''Tribune''.{{sfn|Fedoseyev|1973|p=345}}

In 1864, Marx became involved in the [[International Workingmen's Association]] (known as the First International),{{sfn|Nicolaievsky|Maenchen-Helfen|2007|p=[https://web.archive.org/web/20130622083426/http://books.google.com/books?id=4rbH49xtcpkC&pg=PA192 192]}} to whose General Council he was elected at its inception in 1864.{{sfn|Nicolaievsky|Maenchen-Helfen|2007|p=[https://web.archive.org/web/20130616235612/http://books.google.com/books?id=4rbH49xtcpkC&pg=PA269 267]}} In that organisation, Marx was involved in the struggle against the anarchist wing centred on [[Mikhail Bakunin]].{{r|egsbio}} Although Marx won this contest, the transfer of the seat of the General Council from London to New York in 1872, which Marx supported, led to the decline of the International.<ref name="JessopWheatley1999-526"/> The most important political event during the existence of the International was the [[Paris Commune]] of 1871 when the citizens of Paris rebelled against their government and held the city for two months. In response to the bloody suppression of this rebellion, Marx wrote one of his most famous pamphlets, "[[The Civil War in France]]", a defence of the Commune.<ref name="Curtis1997"/><ref>Karl Marx, "The Civil War in France" contained in the ''Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 22'' (International Publishers: New York, 1986) pp. 307–59.</ref>

Given the repeated failures and frustrations of workers' revolutions and movements, Marx also sought to understand and provide a critique suitable for the [[Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory)|capitalist mode of production]], and hence spent a great deal of time in the reading room of the [[British Museum]] studying.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|p=20}} By 1857, Marx had accumulated over 800 pages of notes and short essays on capital, [[landed property]], wage labour, the state, and foreign trade, and the world market, though this work did not appear in print until 1939, under the title ''[[Grundrisse|Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie]]'' ({{langx|en|Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy}}).<ref name="Segrest2002"/><ref>Karl Marx, "Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858" contained in the ''Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 28'' (International Publishers: New York, 1986) pp. 5–537.</ref><ref>Karl Marx, "Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858" contained in the Preparatory Materials section of the ''Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 29'' (International Publishers: New York, 1987) pp. 421–507.</ref>

In 1859, Marx published ''[[A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy]]'',<ref>Karl Marx, "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" contained in the ''Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 29'', pp. 257–417.</ref> his first serious critique of political economy. This work was intended merely as a preview of his three-volume ''[[Das Kapital]]'' (English title: ''Capital: Critique of Political Economy''), which he intended to publish at a later date. In ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'', Marx began to critically examine axioms and categories of economic thinking.{{sfn|Postone|1993|pp=54–55, 173, 192}}<ref>{{Cite web |last=Marx |title=Economic Manuscripts: Appendix I: Production, Consumption, Distribution, Exchange |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm#205 |access-date=28 March 2022 |website=www.marxists.org |quote=[...] The solitary and isolated hunter or fisherman, who serves Adam Smith and Ricardo as a starting point, is one of the unimaginative fantasies of eighteenth-century romances a la Robinson Crusoe; and despite the assertions of social historians, these by no means signify simply a reaction against over-refinement and reversion to a misconceived natural life. [...] This is an illusion and nothing but the aesthetic illusion of the small and big Robinsonades. It is, on the contrary, the anticipation of “bourgeois society,” which began to evolve in the sixteenth century and in the eighteenth century made giant strides towards maturity. The individual in this society of free competition seems to be rid of natural ties, etc., which made him an appurtenance of a particular, limited aggregation of human beings in previous historical epochs. The prophets of the eighteenth century, on whose shoulders Adam Smith and Ricardo were still wholly standing, envisaged this 18th-century individual – a product of the dissolution of feudal society on the one hand and of the new productive forces evolved since the sixteenth century on the other – as an ideal whose existence belonged to the past. They saw this individual not as an historical result, but as the starting point of history<br />[...]<br />Labour seems to be a very simple category. The notion of labour in this universal form, as labour in general, is also extremely old. Nevertheless “labour” in this simplicity is economically considered just as modern a category as the relations which give rise to this simple abstraction. |archive-date=8 February 2002 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20020208230946/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/appx1.htm#205 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name=":0">{{harvnb|Calhoun|2012|p=138|ps=: "Marx used social criticism as his standard form of social analysis. Marx defined criticism as the "radical negation of social reality.""}}</ref> The work was enthusiastically received, and the edition sold out quickly.{{sfn|Fedoseyev|1973|p=318}}

[[File:Zentralbibliothek Zürich Das Kapital Marx 1867.jpg|thumb|upright|The first volume of ''[[Capital: Critique of Political Economy|Das Kapital]]'']]

The successful sales of ''[[A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy]]'' stimulated Marx in the early 1860s to finish work on the three large volumes that would compose his major life's work&nbsp;– {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} and the ''[[Theories of Surplus Value]]'', which discussed and critiqued the theoreticians of political economy, particularly [[Adam Smith]] and [[David Ricardo]].{{r|egsbio}} ''Theories of Surplus Value'' is often referred to as the fourth volume of {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} and constitutes one of the first comprehensive treatises on the [[history of economic thought]].<ref name="Rockmore2002"/> In 1867, the first volume of {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} was published, a work which critically analysed capital.<ref name="BrewerMarx1984-15"/><ref name=":0" /> {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} proposes an explanation of the "laws of motion" of the [[mode of production]] from its origins to its future by describing the dynamics of the accumulation of capital, with topics such as the growth of [[wage labour]], the transformation of the workplace, [[capital accumulation]], competition, the [[banking]] system, the [[tendency of the rate of profit to fall]] and land-rents, as well as how waged labour continually reproduce the rule of capital.{{sfn|Postone|2006|pp=190, 26–27. 135, 374–75}}{{sfn|Calhoun|2012}}{{sfn|Pepperell|2010|pp=104–105}} Marx proposes that the driving force of capital is in the [[Exploitation of labour|exploitation]] of [[Labour (economics)|labour]], whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of [[surplus value]].

Demand for a Russian language edition of {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} soon led to the printing of 3,000 copies of the book in the Russian language, which was published on 27 March 1872. By the autumn of 1871, the entire first edition of the German-language edition of {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} had been sold out and a second edition was published.

[[File:Karl-Marx (cropped).jpg|thumb|left|Photo of Marx, 1875]]

Volumes II and III of {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} remained mere manuscripts upon which Marx continued to work for the rest of his life. Both volumes were published by Engels after Marx's death.{{r|egsbio}} Volume II of {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} was prepared and published by Engels in July 1893 under the name ''Capital II: The Process of Circulation of Capital''.<ref>Karl Marx, "Capital II: The Process of Circulation of Capital" embodying the whole volume of the ''Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 36'' (International Publishers: New York, 1997).</ref> Volume III of {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} was published a year later in October 1894 under the name ''Capital III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole''.<ref>Karl Marx, "Capital III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole" embodying the whole volume of the ''Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 37'' (International Publishers: New York, 1998).</ref> ''Theories of Surplus Value'' derived from the sprawling ''Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863'', a second draft for {{lang|de|Das Kapital}}, the latter spanning volumes 30–34 of the ''Collected Works of Marx and Engels''. Specifically, ''Theories of Surplus Value'' runs from the latter part of the ''Collected Works'<nowiki/>'' thirtieth volume through the end of their thirty-second volume;<ref>Karl Marx, "Theories of Surplus Value" contained in the ''Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 30'' (International Publishers: New York, 1988) pp. 318–451.</ref><ref>Karl Marx, "Theories of Surplus Value" contained in the ''Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 31'' (International Publishers: New York, 1989) pp. 5–580.</ref><ref>Karl Marx, "Theories of Surplus Value" contained in the ''Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 32'' (International Publishers: New York, 1989) pp. 5–543.</ref> meanwhile, the larger ''Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863'' run from the start of the ''Collected Works''' thirtieth volume through the first half of their thirty-fourth volume. The latter half of the Collected Works' thirty-fourth volume consists of the surviving fragments of the ''Economic Manuscripts of 1863–1864'', which represented a third draft for {{lang|de|Das Kapital}}, and a large portion of which is included as an appendix to the Penguin edition of {{lang|de|Das Kapital}}, volume I.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/introduction.htm |title=Economic Works of Karl Marx 1861–1864 |website=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |access-date=14 July 2018 |archive-date=16 July 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180716154952/https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/introduction.htm |url-status=live}}</ref> A German-language abridged edition of ''Theories of Surplus Value'' was published in 1905 and in 1910. This abridged edition was translated into English and published in 1951 in London, but the complete unabridged edition of ''Theories of Surplus Value'' was published as the "fourth volume" of {{lang|de|Das Kapital}} in 1963 and 1971 in Moscow.<ref>See note 228 on p. 475 of the ''Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Volume 30''.</ref>

[[File:Marx8.jpg|thumb|upright|Marx in 1882]]

During the last decade of his life, Marx's health declined, and he became incapable of the sustained effort that had characterised his previous work.{{r|egsbio}} He did manage to comment substantially on contemporary politics, particularly in Germany and Russia. His ''[[Critique of the Gotha Programme]]'' opposed the tendency of his followers [[Wilhelm Liebknecht]] and [[August Bebel]] to compromise with the [[state socialism|state socialist]] ideas of [[Ferdinand Lassalle]] in the interests of a united socialist party.{{r|egsbio}} This work is also notable for another famous Marx quote: "[[From each according to his ability, to each according to his need]]".<ref name="CGP P1"/>

In a letter to [[Vera Zasulich]] dated 8 March 1881, Marx contemplated the possibility of Russia's bypassing the capitalist stage of development and building communism on the basis of the common ownership of land characteristic of the village ''[[mir (social)|mir]]''.{{r|egsbio}}<ref>Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ''Collected Works Volume 46'' (International Publishers: New York, 1992) p. 71.</ref> While admitting that Russia's rural "commune is the fulcrum of social regeneration in Russia", Marx also warned that in order for the mir to operate as a means for moving straight to the socialist stage without a preceding capitalist stage it "would first be necessary to eliminate the deleterious influences which are assailing it [the rural commune] from all sides".<ref name="k72"/> Given the elimination of these pernicious influences, Marx allowed that "normal conditions of spontaneous development" of the rural commune could exist.<ref name=k72/> However, in the same letter to Vera Zasulich he points out that "at the core of the capitalist system&nbsp;... lies the complete separation of the producer from the means of production".<ref name=k72/> In one of the drafts of this letter, Marx reveals his growing passion for anthropology, motivated by his belief that future communism would be a return on a higher level to the communism of our prehistoric past. He wrote: <blockquote>the historical trend of our age is the fatal crisis which capitalist production has undergone in the European and American countries where it has reached its highest peak, a crisis that will end in its destruction, in the return of modern society to a higher form of the most archaic type&nbsp;– collective production and appropriation.</blockquote> He added that "the vitality of primitive communities was incomparably greater than that of Semitic, Greek, Roman, etc. societies, and, a fortiori, that of modern capitalist societies".<ref>K. Marx, First draft of the letter to Vera Zasulich [1881]. In Marx-Engels 'Collected Works', Volume 24, p. 346.</ref> Before he died, Marx asked Engels to write up these ideas, which were published in 1884 under the title ''[[The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State]]''.