15
Afterword to the Second German Edition (1873)
form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It
must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical
shell.
In its
mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure
and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to
bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and
affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the
negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically
developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature
not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence
critical and revolutionary.
The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the
practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern
industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again
approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and
the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of
the new, holy Prusso-German empire.
Karl Marx
London
January 24, 1873
1
Geschichtliche Darstellung des Handels, der Gewerbe und des Ackerbaus, &c.. von Gustav von
Gülich. 5 vols., Jena. 1830-45.
2
See my work “Zur Kritik, &c.,” p. 39.
3
The mealy-mouthed babblers of German vulgar economy fell foul of the style of my book. No one
can feel the literary shortcomings in “Das Kapital” more strongly than I myself. Yet I will for the
benefit and the enjoyment of these gentlemen and their public quote in this connexion one English and
one Russian notice. The Saturday Review, always hostile to my views, said in its notice of the first
edition: “The presentation of the subject invests the driest economic questions with a certain peculiar
charm.” The “St. Petersburg Journal” (Sankt-Peterburgskie Viedomosti), in its issue of April 8 (20),
1872, says: “The presentation of the subject, with the exception of one or two exceptionally special
parts, is distinguished by its comprehensibility by the general reader, its clearness, and, in spite of the
scientific intricacy of the subject, by an unusual liveliness. In this respect the author in no way
resembles ... the majority of German scholars who ... write their books in a language so dry and
obscure that the heads of ordinary mortals are cracked by it.”
4
Rezepte – translated as “Receipt,” which in the 19th Century, meant “recipe” and Ben Fowkes, for
example translates this as “recipe.” [MIA footnote].
Afterword to the French Edition (1875)
Mr. J. Roy set himself the task of producing a version that would be as exact and even literal as
possible, and has scrupulously fulfilled it. But his very scrupulosity has compelled me to modify
his text, with a view to rendering it more intelligible to the reader. These alterations, introduced
from day to day, as the book was published in parts, were not made with equal care and were
bound to result in a lack of harmony in style.
Having once undertaken this work of revision, I was led to apply it also to the basic original text
(the second German edition), to simplify some arguments, to complete others, to give additional
historical or statistical material, to add critical suggestions, etc. Hence, whatever the literary
defects of this French edition may be, it possesses a scientific value independent of the original
and should be consulted even by readers familiar with German.
Below I give the passages in the Afterword to the second German edition which treat of the
development of Political Economy in Germany and the method employed in the present work.
Karl Marx
London
April 28, 1875
Preface to the Third German Edition (1883)
Marx was not destined to get this, the third, edition ready for press himself. The powerful thinker,
to whose greatness even his opponents now make obeisance, died on March 14, 1883.
Upon me who in Marx lost the best, the truest friend I had – and had for forty years – the friend to
whom I am more indebted than can be expressed in words – upon me now devolved the duty of
attending to the publication of this third edition, as well as of the second volume, which Marx had
left behind in manuscript. I must now account here to the reader for the way in which I
discharged the first part of my duty.
It was Marx's original intention to re-write a great part of the text of Volume I, to formulate many
theoretical points more exactly, insert new ones and bring historical and statistical materials up to
date. But his ailing condition and the urgent need to do the final editing of Volume II induced him
to give up this scheme. Only the most necessary alterations were to be made, only the insertions
which the French edition (“Le Capital.” Par Karl Marx. Paris, Lachâtre 1873) already contained,
were to be put in.
Among the books left by Marx there was a German copy which he himself had corrected here and
there and provided with references to the French edition; also a French copy in which he had
indicated the exact passages to be used. These alterations and additions are confined, with few
exceptions, to the last [Engl. ed.: second last] part of the book: “The Accumulation of Capital.”
Here the previous text followed the original draft more closely than elsewhere, while the
preceding sections had been gone over more thoroughly. The style was therefore more vivacious,
more of a single cast, but also more careless, studded with Anglicisms and in parts unclear; there
were gaps here and there in the presentation of arguments, some important particulars being
merely alluded to.
With regard to the style, Marx had himself thoroughly revised several sub-sections and thereby
had indicated to me here, as well as in numerous oral suggestions, the length to which I could go
in eliminating English technical terms and other Anglicisms. Marx would in any event have gone
over the additions and supplemental texts and have replaced the smooth French with his own
terse German; I had to be satisfied, when transferring them, with bringing them into maximum
harmony with the original text.
Thus not a single word was changed in this third edition without my firm conviction that the
author would have altered it himself. It would never occur to me to introduce into “Das Kapital”
the current jargon in which German economists are wont to express themselves – that gibberish in
which, for instance, one who for cash has others give him their labour is called a labour-giver
(Arbeitgeber) and one whose labour is taken away from him for wages is called a labour-taker
(Arbeitnehmer). In French, too, the word “travail” is used in every-day life in the sense of
“occupation.” But the French would rightly consider any economist crazy should he call the
capitalist a donneur de travail (a labour-giver) or the worker a receveur de travail (a labour-taker).
Nor have I taken the liberty to convert the English coins and moneys, measures and weights used
throughout the text to their new-German equivalents. When the first edition appeared there were
as many kinds of measures and weights in Germany as there are days in the year. Besides there
were two kinds of marks (the Reichsmark existed at the time only in the imagination of Soetbeer,
who had invented it in the late thirties), two kinds of gulden and at least three kinds of taler,
including one called neues Zweidrittel. In the natural sciences the metric system prevailed, in the
world market – English measures and weights. Under such circumstances English units of