Capital to the Third Volume

Author: Translated by the Translation Bureau of the Works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-04-11
Features: I have finally handed over the third volume of the main works of Marx, the conclusion of the theoretical part, to the readers. When the second volume was published in 1885, I had thought that the difficulties of the third volume were probably only technical, of course, with some extremely important chapters being exceptions. In fact, this was also the case; but at that time, I did not expect that these important chapters would cause me so many difficulties, nor did I expect that other obstacles would delay the publication of this book so severely. The first and foremost obstacle hindering me was the long-term decline in my eyesight, so for many years, I had to limit my writing time to a minimum, and even now, writing under the light is only an occasional thing. In addition, there were other unavoidable tasks, such as the republication and translation of various works by Marx and myself, meaning to correct, write prefaces, add supplements, etc., which often could not be carried out without new research. The first to be mentioned is the English edition, for which I took the final responsibility for the text, so it occupied me a great deal of time. Anyone who pays a little attention to the huge increase in international socialist literature in the last decade, especially the number of translations of Marx’s and our previous works, will agree with the following view: I am very fortunate to be able to help translators in a limited number of languages and therefore to be unable to evade the responsibility of proofreading in a limited number of languages. However, the increase in literature is merely a symbol of the corresponding development of the international working-class movement. And the development of the international working-class movement has given me new responsibilities. Since the days when we began our public activities, most of the work of liaison between socialists and workers in various countries and their movements within their own countries has fallen on Marx and myself; this work has increased accordingly with the growth of the entire movement. But before Marx’s death, this work was mainly undertaken by Marx; after his death, this ever-increasing work fell solely upon me. However, during this period, direct communication between workers’ parties in various countries has become the norm, and to our relief, it is becoming more and more so; Nevertheless, from the perspective of my theoretical work, people expect too much help from me. But anyone who, like me, has been involved in this movement for over fifty years, will regard the resulting tasks as an unavoidable, immediate obligation. In our turbulent age, like the sixteenth century, in the interests of the public, there are only theorists on the reactionary side; precisely because of this, these gentlemen are not real theorists at all, but only defenders of reaction. I live in London, and my party contacts are mainly made through correspondence in winter and mostly through face-to-face discussions in summer. For this reason, and because I must keep an eye on the development of the movement in an ever-increasing number of countries and the ever-faster growth of organ publications, I had to postpone all indispensable work to winter, especially the first three months of the year. When one passes seventy, the Meissner’s association fibers in the brain work so slowly as to be annoying, and it is no longer as easy or as quickly as before to overcome the effects of interruptions in difficult theoretical work. Therefore, if a winter’s work is not completed, a large part of it has to be redone the next winter. This situation is particularly true for the fifth chapter, which is particularly difficult. The reader will see from the following account that the editorial work of this volume is entirely different from that of the second volume. The third volume has only one draft and is extremely incomplete. The beginning of each chapter is usually written with considerable care, and even the wording is often polished. But the further down the text goes, the more draft-like the manuscript becomes, the less complete it is, the more it diverges from the main subject to discuss side issues that arose during the research process and whose final place is to be arranged later, and the longer and more complex the sentences become, as they are written according to the thoughts that arose at the time. In many places, the handwriting and narrative clearly show that the author’s illness, caused by overwork, had flared up and was gradually worsening; this gradually made it more difficult for him to work alone and eventually often made his work completely impossible. This is not surprising. Between 1863 and 1867, Marx had not only drafted the last two volumes of The Capital and prepared the volume for printing but had also done a great deal of work for the founding and expansion of the International Working Association. However, as a result of this, his illness showed serious symptoms in 1864 and 1865, preventing him from completing the second and third volumes personally. My first task was to dictate the entire manuscript in accordance with the original text and produce a readable transcript; even the original text of this manuscript often required considerable effort from me to decipher. This took a considerable amount of time. Only after the transcript was completed could the actual editorial work begin. I limited this editorial work to the necessary scope. Where the meaning was clear, I always tried to preserve the nature of the original draft. In places where there was repetition, I did not strike it out, because in those places, as Marx usually did, the same issue was discussed from different angles or at least explained in different ways. Where my changes or additions went beyond the scope of simple editing, or where I had to use Marx’s actual material and draw conclusions in accordance with his spirit as far as possible, I enclosed them in square brackets (this volume uses curly braces {}—editor’s note) and appended my initials. Footnotes added by me sometimes do not use brackets; However, any footnote that ends with my initials is entirely my responsibility.