Capital in General and Marx’s Capital

When Marx published the first substantial result of his studies in 1859 the title was Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy; Book One1 was ‘On Capital’, of which ‘Section One’ was ‘Capital in General’.2 However, when the first volume of Marx’s masterpiece appeared in 1867 the overall title was Capital; ‘Critique of Political Economy’ was reduced to a sub-title; and the term ‘capital in general’ had vanished. Nonetheless, it is argued below that some such concept was implicit in Marx’s research programme. It was Roman Rosdolsky, in his path-breaking study of Marx’s Grundrisse, the first ‘rough draft’ of Capital written in 1857–58, who discovered there the methodological importance of the idea of ‘capital in general’.3 He argued also that it retains its importance in any attempt to judge what is going on in the three volumes of Capital given to us. These volumes comprise what was originally intended to be covered by the topic of capital in general, and this was to be followed by studies of competition and other things, as the following plan sent to Engels in 1858 shows: ‘Capital falls into 4 sections. a) Capital en géneral. (This is the substance of the first instalment.)4 b) Competition, or the interaction of many capitals. c) Credit, where capital, as against individual capitals, is shown to be a universal element. d) Share capital as the most perfected form (turning into communism) together with all its contradictions.’5