Capital, Vol. III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Some scanning errors (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand) · 3 illegible passages, excluded from answers
- Extent:
- ~490,000 words · 2,342 passages
Cite this work
- APAKarl Marx. (n.d.). Capital, Vol. III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/karl-marx/capital-vol-iii-the-process-of-capitalist-production-as-a-whole
- MLAKarl Marx. Capital, Vol. III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/karl-marx/capital-vol-iii-the-process-of-capitalist-production-as-a-whole.
- ChicagoKarl Marx. Capital, Vol. III: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/karl-marx/capital-vol-iii-the-process-of-capitalist-production-as-a-whole.
Reference to the reproduced edition. SigPhi is the digital reproduction, not the publisher. Year, publisher and translator are included when recorded; “n.d.” means the year is unknown. Responsibility for an introduction or note depends on the passage cited.
What it is about
The third volume of Capital: how surplus value is distributed among capitalists, and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.
Context and history
Marx never published it: he left it in manuscripts that Engels edited and brought out in 1894, eleven years after his death, and how much of it is Engels's own hand is argued over to this day. This is the volume where Marx moves back from values to prices and accounts for commercial profit, interest and ground rent; it also holds the famous chapter on the falling rate of profit and the counteracting causes.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
The first one who really attempted to answ^er this question was Dr. Konrad Schmidt in his pamphlet entitled. The Average Rate of Profit, Based on Marx's Theory of Value, Stuttgart, Dietz, 1889. Schmidt seeks to reconcile the details of the formation of commodity prices with the theory of value and with an average rate of profit. The industrial capitalist receives in his product, first, an equivalent for the capital advanced by him, and second, a surplus-product for which he has not paid anything. But in order to earn his surplus-product, he must advance capital for its production. He must employ a certain quantity of materialized labor for the purpose of appropriating this surplusproduct. For the capitalist, the capital advanced by him represents the quantity of materialized labor which is socially necessary for the production of his surplus-product. This applies to every industrial capitalist. Now, since commodities, according to the theory of value, are exchanged for one another in proportion to the social labor required for their production, and since the labor necessary for the manufacture 22 Preface. 22 Preface. of the capitalist's surplus-product is accumulated in the capital of the capitalist, it follows that surplus-products are exchanged in proportion to the capitals required for their production, and not in proportion to the labor actually incorporated in them. Hence the share of each unit of capital is equal to the sum of all produced surplus-values divided by the sum of the capitals employed in production. Accordingly, equal capitals yield equal profits in equal times, and this is accomplished by adding the cost price of the surplus-product figured on the basis of the average profit to the cost price of the paid product and selling both the paid and unpaid product at this increased price. Thus the average rate of profit arises in spite of the fact that, according to Schmidt, the average prices of commodities are determined by the law of value.