18
Preface to the Third German Edition (1883)
measure were quite natural for a book which had to take its factual proofs almost exclusively
from British industrial relations. The last-named reason is decisive even to-day, especially
because the corresponding relations in the world market have hardly changed and English
weights and measures almost completely control precisely the key industries, iron and cotton.
In conclusion a few words on Marx's art of quotation, which is so little understood. When they
are pure statements of fact or descriptions, the quotations, from the English Blue books, for
example, serve of course as simple documentary proof. But this is not so when the theoretical
views of other economists are cited. Here the quotation is intended merely to state where, when
and by whom an economic idea conceived in the course of development was first clearly
enunciated. Here the only consideration is that the economic conception in question must be of
some significance to the history of science, that it is the more or less adequate theoretical
expression of the economic situation of its time. But whether this conception still possesses any
absolute or relative validity from the standpoint of the author or whether it already has become
wholly past history is quite immaterial. Hence these quotations are only a running commentary to
the text, a commentary borrowed from the history of economic science, and establish the dates
and originators of certain of the more important advances in economic theory. And that was a
very necessary thing in a science whose historians have so far distinguished themselves only by
tendentious ignorance characteristic of careerists. It will now be understandable why Marx, in
consonance with the Afterword to the second edition, only in very exceptional cases had occasion
to quote German economists.
There is hope that the second volume will appear in the course of 1884.
Frederick Engels
London
November 7, 1883
Preface to the English Edition (Engels, 1886)
The publication of an English version of “Das Kapital” needs no apology. On the contrary, an
explanation might be expected why this English version has been delayed until now, seeing that
for some years past the theories advocated in this book have been constantly referred to, attacked
and defended, interpreted and misinterpreted, in the periodical press and the current literature of
both England and America.
When, soon after the author's death in 1883, it became evident that an English edition of the work
was really required, Mr. Samuel Moore, for many years a friend of Marx and of the present
writer, and than whom, perhaps, no one is more conversant with the book itself, consented to
undertake the translation which the literary executors of Marx were anxious to lay before the
public. It was understood that I should compare the MS. with the original work, and suggest such
alterations as I might deem advisable. When, by and by, it was found that Mr. Moore's
professional occupations prevented him from finishing the translation as quickly as we all
desired, we gladly accepted Dr. Aveling's offer to undertake a portion of the work; at the same
time Mrs. Aveling, Marx's youngest daughter, offered to check the quotations and to restore the
original text of the numerous passages taken from English authors and Blue books and translated
by Marx into German. This has been done throughout, with but a few unavoidable exceptions.
The following portions of the book have been translated by Dr. Aveling: (I) Chapters X. (The
Working day), and XI. (Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value); (2) Part VI. (Wages, comprising
Chapters XIX. to XXII.); (3) from Chapter XXIV., Section 4 (Circumstances that &c.) to the end
of the book, comprising the latter part of Chapter XXIV.,. Chapter XXV., and the whole of Part
VIII. (Chapters XXVI. to XXXIII); (4) the two Author's prefaces. All the rest of the book has
been done by Mr. Moore. While, thus, each of the translators is responsible for his share of the
work only, I bear a joint responsibility for the whole.
The third German edition, which has been made the basis of our work throughout, was prepared
by me, in 1883, with the assistance of notes left by the author, indicating the passages of the
second edition to be replaced by designated passages, from the French text published in 1873.
1
The alterations thus effected in the text of the second edition generally coincided with changes
prescribed by Marx in a set of MS. instructions for an English translation that was planned, about
ten years ago, in America, but abandoned chiefly for want of a fit and proper translator. This MS.
was placed at our disposal by our old friend Mr. F. A. Sorge of Hoboken N. J. It designates some
further interpolations from the French edition; but, being so many years older than the final
instructions for the third edition, I did not consider myself at liberty to make use of it otherwise
than sparingly, and chiefly in cases where it helped us over difficulties. In the same way, the
French text has been referred to in most of the difficult passages, as an indicator of what the
author himself was prepared to sacrifice wherever something of the full import of the original had
to be sacrificed in the rendering.
There is, however, one difficulty we could not spare the reader: the use of certain terms in a sense
different from what they have, not only in common life, but in ordinary Political Economy. But
this was unavoidable. Every new aspect of a science involves a revolution in the technical terms
of that science. This is best shown by chemistry, where the whole of the terminology is radically
changed about once in twenty years, and where you will hardly find a single organic compound
that has not gone through a whole series of different names. Political Economy has generally been
content to take, just as they were, the terms of commercial and industrial life, and to operate with