Das Kapital: Critique of Political Economy (Part II)

Published posthumously in 1885 by Friedrich Engels from Marx’s incomplete drafts, Das Kapital: Critique of Political Economy, Part II (Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Buch II), subtitled The Circulation of Capital, shifts the focus from the immediate process of production to the movement of capital through its various metamorphoses—money capital, productive capital, and commodity capital. While less polemical and more schematic than the first volume, the second volume retains the philosophical structure shaped by Marx’s dialectical inheritance, presenting capital not merely as a sequence of transactions but as a living, self-reproducing totality. The movement of capital, which appears autonomous and self-generating, is laid out in circuits that echo Hegel’s logic of mediation and return—each phase of circulation negating and preserving the previous, forming an internally coherent yet opaque system.

Though filled with detailed analysis of turnover time, fixed capital, and the reproduction of the social aggregate, the metaphysical undertones remain pronounced, especially in the treatment of capital as an abstract subject that posits and re-posites itself through the labor and consumption of others. The system described seems to move independently of the individuals within it, drawing them into its rhythmic cycles like a quasi-natural law, yet one that is historically contingent and ideologically mystified. Here, labor continues to function as the hidden core of value, but the veil grows thicker—capital now appears as a total social process, reified and autonomous, but driven by contradictions immanent to its very form. The metaphysics of capital, which began as a riddle in the commodity, now expands into a self-regulating organism whose dark intelligibility recalls the speculative structure of Hegel’s Logic, but with the ghost of Geist replaced by the cold necessity of value in motion.

This modern Critical Reader’s Edition includes an illuminating afterword tracing Marx’s intellectual relationships with revolutionary thinkers and philosophers (including Hegel, Feuerbach, Engels, and Ricardo), containing unique research into his ideological development and economic-metaphysical theories, a comprehensive timeline of his life and works, a glossary of Marxist terminology, and a detailed index of all of Marx’s writings. This professional translation renders Marx’s dense, dialectical prose into modern language to preserve the original force and precision of the text. Combined with the scholarly amplifying material, this edition is an indispensable exploration of Marx’s classic works and his enduring Hegelian-Protestant influence in the political, religious, economic, and philosophical spheres.