Tag Archives: Volume 1

Marx published volume 1 of Capital in German in 1867 (by the publisher Meissner of Hamburg), but this was the only volume of Capital, which was a proposed 4 volume work on economics, to be published in Marx’s lifetime. Volumes 2 and 3 were edited and published by Engels after the death of Marx. No English translation of volume 1 appeared in Marx’s lifetime either.In the summaries below, I have used these two translations of volume 1: Marx, Karl. 1906. Capital. A Critique of Political Economy...

Chapter 33 of volume 1 of Capital is called “The Modern Theory of Colonisation” and examines how capitalism is established in European colonies. This is the final chapter of volume 1 of Capital.By colonies, Marx means those countries with “virgin soils, colonised by free immigrants” (Marx 1906: 838, n. 1), such as America or Australia.Marx is concerned with the theory of Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796–1862), an Englishman who helped to colonise New Zealand, and the author of England and...

Chapter 32 of volume 1 of Capital is called the “Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation” and is essentially Marx’s conclusion to Capital, since Chapter 33 is more of an appendix and addendum to the volume (Brewer 1984: 83).Chapter 32 is therefore Marx’s summing up of his vision of the past and future of capitalism, and contains a famous – and discredited – doomsday prediction of the collapse of capitalism.The tendency of “primitive accumulation of capital” which Marx has described in...

Chapter 31 of volume 1 of Capital is called the “Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist.”This chapter contains Marx’s views on the relationship between imperialism and colonialism and early capitalist development in Europe, which some modern Marxists have used to argue that imperialist looting and theft of wealth was a necessary precondition for Western capitalism (Brewer 1984: 82; Harvey 2010: 297). And Marx indeed does seem to think that the many aspects of the imperialist exploitation of the...

Chapter 30 of volume 1 of Capital is called the “Impact of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry. Creation of the Home Market for Industrial Capital.”Independent self-producing peasants in England were gradually driven off the land and into the cities to become an urban proletariat (Marx 1990: 908): “With the setting free of a part of the agricultural population, therefore, their former means of nourishment were also set free. They were now transformed into material elements of variable...

Chapter 29 of volume 1 of Capital is called “Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer” and argues that the true capitalist class in England emerged with the tenant capitalist farmers.Marx explains the process: “ … whence came the [sc. English] capitalists originally? For the expropriation of the agricultural population creates, directly, none by great landed proprietors. As far, however, as concerns the genesis of the farmer, we can, so to say, put our hand on it, because it is a slow process...

Chapter 28 of volume 1 of Capital is called “Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated, from the End of the 15th Century. Forcing Down of Wages by Acts of Parliament.”The creation of a vast new class of property-less proletarians as described in Chapter 27 presented immediate difficulties because there was not enough wage-labour to employ so many people (Marx 1990: 898): “On the other hand, these men, suddenly dragged from their wanted mode of life, could not as suddenly adapt themselves...

Chapter 27 of volume 1 of Capital is called “The Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land” and examines the early history of the establishment of capitalism in England by the privatisation of communal property.Marx sketches the social and economic history of the later Middle Ages in England: “In England, serfdom had practically disappeared in the last part of the 14th century. The immense majority of the population consisted then, and to a still larger extent, in the 15th...

This chapter begins Part 8 of Capital called “So-Called Primitive Accumulation” (comprising Chapters 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 33).Chapter 26 of volume 1 of Capital is called “The Secret of Primitive Accumulation” and examines how capital was first accumulated before surplus value. In other words, this looks at the historical process by which feudalism was transformed into capitalism, and how peasants were stripped of any means of production and made into free wage-labourers.Money and...

Chapter 25 of volume 1 of Capital is called “The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation” and deals with the law that Marx thinks governs capitalist accumulation.Marx divides the chapter into five sections: (1) The Increased Demand for Labour-Power that accompanies Accumulation, the Composition of Capital remaining the Same.(2) Relative Diminution of the Variable Part of Capital simultaneously with the Progress of Accumulation and of the Concentration that accompanies it.(3) Progressive...