Transl. from the German by Samuel Moore and Edward Areding; ed. by Frederick Engels. — Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1963. — 820 p.
[i]Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalis Production (Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie Erster Band. Buch I: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals) is a treatise of critique of political economy first published on 14 September 1867 by German philosopher and sociologist Karl Marx. The product of a decade of research and redrafting, the book applies class analysis to capitalism focusing upon production processes, making the capitalist mode of production historically specific. Particularly, the sources and forms of surplus value in the context of explaining the dynamics of capital accumulation characterizing economic development over a long period of time are key themes developed analytically throughout the work. These themes are developed on the basis of the abstract labour theory of value, which Marx presented differently across three editions in German and one in French. Among scholars, there exists controversy over whether the third German edition should be treated as the source for major English translations when the French translation was in fact Marx's last version. In all editions, Marx deploys logical, historical, literary and other illustrative strategies to facilitate delivery of the book's complex and frequently metatheoretical arguments.
The present edition of the first volume of Karl Marx's Capital reproduces the text of the English edition of 1887, edited by Frederick Engels. Also reproduced, on the title page of the present volume, is Engels’s text appearing oil the title page of the English edition of the first volume of Capital, which differs somewhat from the title page text of the German editions of that volume. Only changes made by Engels himself in the 4th (1890) German edition have been incorporated into the 1887 text. These changes are indicated wherever they occur. A few corrections necessitated by a rcchecking with the original sources have been introduced into the author’s footnotes. The book begins with Engels's Preface to the English edition; then follow all the Prefaces and Afterwords by Marx and Engels to the German and French editions. An Index of Authorities and a Name Index conclude the contents of the book.