Revenues and
their Sources
Capital Volume 3, Part 7, Revenues and their Sources
The last part of the last book of Capital begins as Volume 1
ended, with a reminder that capital is not a thing, but a relationship. In Part
1 of our chosen text, Chapter 48,
The Trinity Formula (download linked below) Marx says:
“Capital, land, labour! However, capital
is not a thing, but rather a definite social production relation, belonging to
a definite historical formation of society, which is manifested in a thing and
lends this thing a specific social character. Capital is not the sum of the
material and produced means of production. Capital is rather the means of
production transformed into capital, which in themselves are no more capital
than gold or silver in itself is money. It is the means of production
monopolised by a certain section of society, confronting living labour-power as
products and working conditions rendered independent of this very labour-power,
which are personified through this antithesis in capital…”
Shortly afterwards, Marx turns to a summary of the illusory and
impossible conception of the same relationship as seen by self-serving “vulgar”
bourgeois economists, starting like this:
“Vulgar economy actually does
no more than interpret, systematise and defend in doctrinaire fashion the
conceptions of the agents of bourgeois production who are entrapped in
bourgeois production relations. It should not astonish us, then, that vulgar
economy feels particularly at home in the estranged outward appearances of
economic relations in which these prima facie absurd and perfect contradictions
appear and that these relations seem the more self-evident the more their
internal relationships are concealed from it, although they are understandable
to the popular mind. But all science would be superfluous if the outward
appearance and the essence of things directly coincided. Thus, vulgar economy
has not the slightest suspicion that the trinity
which it takes as its point of departure, namely, land — rent, capital — interest,
labour — wages or the price of
labour, are prima facie three impossible combinations.”
Later in this paragraph
(section III of the chapter), Marx refers to Volume 1 (“Book 1”) and contrasts
the irrational bourgeois concept of value with the true understanding of
surplus value.
To finish by returning to
Engels’ introductory remarks: Yes, Capital Volume 3 is important. It is not
superfluous. Volume 3 is directly helpful in the current circumstances of
“Global Economic Meltdown” and “Debt Crisis”. But Volume 3 does not render
Volume 1 redundant. On the contrary, Volume 3 relies upon and leans upon Volume
1 and constantly confirms Volume 1, throughout.
The last Chapter of
Capital Volume 3 is Chapter 52, “Classes”,
and it ends: “[Here the manuscript
breaks off.]”
Engels provided a supplement to Volume 3 which can be found on
MIA, here.
Picture: A representation of the “Holy
Trinity”.
Please download and read this text:
Capital
Volume 3, Chapter 48, The Trinity Formula (7327 words)
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