Class, Capital and Crisis

Dahrendorf states a common view when he writes, ‘Marx postponed the systematic presentation of his theory of class until death took the pen from his hand. The irony has often been noted that the last (52nd) chapter of the last (third) volume of Capital, which bears the title “The Classes”, has remained unfinished. After a little more than one page the text ends with the lapidary remark of its editor, Engels: “Here the manuscript breaks off.”’2 Unfortunately, the colourful picture this suggests, of the pen dropping from the hand of the dying Marx just as he was on the point of completing his masterwork, isn’t ours to keep: the draft containing this chapter was completed in 1867, before Marx turned to the preparation of Volume I for publication. Nevertheless, some have taken Marx’s delay in returning to the chapter — until it was too late — as an admission in actu of failure, attesting to a basic flaw in his theory. Engels’s explanation is less dramatic: Marx liked to leave conclusions ‘for the final editing, shortly before printing, when the latest historical events would supply him, with unfailing regularity, with illustrations of his theoretical arguments, as topical as anyone could desire’.3 Reopening the question of the relation of Marx’s final page and a half to the rest of Capital, I wish to explore what Marx’s willingness to leave the matter in so sketchy a state might indicate about the nature, or even the existence, of a Marxian theory of class.