On 14 September 1867, the first volume of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital was published in Hamburg, the culmination of years of research into capitalism, labour and the distribution of wealth. Initially slow to attract attention, the work would go on to become one of the most influential, controversial and fiercely debated books in modern history.
On this day in 1867, Karl Marx published the first volume of Das Kapital, or Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, a monumental attempt to explain how capitalism works, how wealth is created and accumulated, and why Marx believed conflict between workers and the owners of capital was built into the economic system itself.
The book appeared through Hamburg publisher Otto Meissner. Contemporary records show that an announcement of its publication appeared in the Börsenblatt für den Deutschen Buchhandel on 14 September, establishing the date now associated with the first volume’s release. Marx had spent years preparing it, and even as it went to press he was already dissatisfied with parts of its presentation and continued revising his arguments.
The work did not immediately become a bestseller. Its dense language, long arguments and difficult theoretical passages made it challenging even for sympathetic readers. Yet over the following decades, Capital would travel far beyond the relatively small intellectual and socialist circles in which it first appeared, becoming a foundation stone of Marxist thought and influencing political movements, revolutions, governments and generations of scholars.
From Trier to revolution
Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 in Trier, then part of Prussia. He studied first at the University of Bonn and later in Berlin, initially focusing on law before turning increasingly towards philosophy, history and the ideas of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
After completing his doctorate in philosophy in 1841, Marx turned to journalism. His increasingly radical political writing brought him into conflict with the Prussian authorities, beginning a pattern of censorship, expulsion and exile that would mark much of his adult life.
He moved to Paris in 1843, where an encounter with Friedrich Engels became one of the defining relationships of his life. Engels, the son of a wealthy German industrialist who had observed the harsh conditions endured by factory workers in Manchester, became Marx’s intellectual collaborator, political ally and, frequently, financial supporter.
Forced to leave Paris, Marx moved to Brussels in 1845. Three years later, he and Engels published the Manifesto of the Communist Party, commissioned as a political programme for the Communist League. Its argument that the history of society could be understood through struggles between social classes became one of the most recognisable elements of Marxist thought.
Following the failed European revolutions of 1848, Marx eventually settled with his family in London in 1849. He would remain there until his death.
Years of poverty and research in London
Marx’s years in Britain were intellectually productive but often personally difficult. His family experienced serious financial hardship and repeated illness, and only three of the seven children born to Marx and his wife, Jenny von Westphalen, survived into adulthood.
Much of his research was conducted at the British Museum, where he studied the works of economists including Adam Smith and David Ricardo as well as government reports, factory records, economic statistics, technological developments and the history of industrialisation. British Library archives still contain records relating to his use of the museum’s Reading Room.
Marx had begun studying political economy intensively by the 1840s. By 1857 he was drafting what would eventually become Capital. A decade of writing, rewriting and reorganising followed before the first volume finally appeared.
What did Capital argue?
Despite its later political importance, Capital was not primarily written as a revolutionary manifesto. Marx presented it as a detailed critique of political economy and an investigation into the mechanisms of the capitalist system.
The first volume begins with something apparently simple: the commodity.
From there Marx develops an elaborate analysis of value, money, wages, production and profit. Central to his argument was the concept of surplus value. Marx argued that workers create more economic value during the working day than they receive back in wages. The difference, appropriated by the owner of capital, forms the basis of profit.
For Marx, this was not simply the result of unusually greedy employers. It was a structural feature of capitalism. Employers are themselves under competitive pressure to reduce costs, improve productivity and accumulate capital.
He also examined the length of the working day, the impact of machinery, the organisation of factories, unemployment, industrial discipline and what he called the accumulation of capital.
Another enduring concept from Capital is commodity fetishism, Marx’s argument that under capitalism relationships between people can appear instead as relationships between things, prices and commodities. The social and human processes behind production become obscured once goods enter the marketplace.
A difficult beginning
The initial German edition consisted of about 1,000 copies and did not require a second edition until 1872. Abroad, however, the book began to find an unexpectedly enthusiastic readership.
Its first foreign-language edition appeared in Russian in 1872, with around 3,000 copies printed. According to research on the book’s reception, most were sold within roughly a year. Marx himself was surprised by the attention his work received in Russia.
A second German edition appeared in 1872–73, while a French edition was published in instalments between 1872 and 1875. Marx was directly involved in revising the French text and regarded some of its changes as having independent value rather than being merely a translation.
The first authorised English edition did not appear until 1887, four years after Marx’s death. By then his ideas were becoming increasingly important to socialist and labour movements across Europe.
Marx never completed Capital in the form he had originally envisaged.
He died in London on 14 March 1883, aged 64. Engels subsequently assembled Marx’s unfinished manuscripts and notes, publishing Volume II in 1885 and Volume III in 1894.
From a book to an ideology
The influence of Marx’s work soon extended far beyond economics.
Marxism, in its broadest sense, developed from Marx and Engels’ theories of history, capitalism, class relations and political change. But after Marx’s death it divided into numerous schools, movements and competing interpretations.
The Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin adapted Marxist ideas to the conditions of the Russian Empire, producing what later became known as Marxism-Leninism. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, Marx’s writings became central to the ideological foundations claimed by the Soviet Union.
Mao Zedong subsequently developed another revolutionary interpretation in China, placing greater emphasis on the revolutionary role of the peasantry. Maoism would itself influence movements across Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Other traditions moved in very different directions.
Western Marxist thinkers increasingly focused on culture, ideology, psychology and the ways social power is reproduced outside the workplace. The Frankfurt School drew on Marx while developing what became known as critical theory.
Marxist ideas also influenced anti-colonial thought, dependency theory, world-systems analysis, feminism and, more recently, forms of eco-socialism examining the relationship between capitalism and environmental degradation.
European socialist and social-democratic movements were also historically shaped by debates within Marxism, although many modern social-democratic parties ultimately rejected Marx’s expectation of revolutionary transformation in favour of parliamentary democracy, regulated markets and welfare states.
The result is that there has never been a single, universally accepted version of “Marxism”.
Nor can every government that later described itself as Marxist simply be equated with Marx’s own writings. The Soviet Union, Maoist China and other communist states developed political and economic systems under very different historical conditions and through later interpretations of his ideas.
Criticism and controversy
Marx’s economic theories have been challenged extensively.
The labour theory of value associated with his account of capitalism is not accepted by mainstream modern economics, while economists and philosophers have debated problems in his attempt to explain the relationship between labour values, prices and rates of profit.
Some of Marx’s predictions and theoretical mechanisms have also been disputed, and later economists developed very different models for understanding prices, markets and economic growth.
Yet rejecting parts of Marx’s economic theory has not made Capital disappear.
His emphasis on conflict between labour and capital, economic power, inequality, recurring crises and the tendency of capital to accumulate remains influential in several academic fields.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that even economists critical of Marx’s labour theory of value have identified lasting significance in his treatment of clashes between workers’ interests and employers’ pursuit of profit, as well as his refusal to assume that capitalist economies naturally settle into a permanent equilibrium.
Capital in the 21st century
More than a century and a half after its publication, Capital remains on university reading lists around the world, not only in economics but in sociology, history, philosophy, political science and cultural studies.
Interest in Marx frequently increases during periods of economic disruption. Debates over widening wealth gaps, precarious employment, global supply chains, automation, the power of multinational corporations, housing costs and financial crises have repeatedly sent scholars and readers back to his work.
That does not mean Marx provides universally accepted explanations for modern capitalism. Contemporary economies differ radically from the industrial world he studied, while many of his specific economic arguments remain highly contested.
But his questions have proved remarkably durable: Who produces wealth? Who owns it? Who benefits from technological progress? Why does economic power become concentrated? And how does the organisation of work shape society itself?
Recent scholarship also demonstrates that Capital is far from a historical curiosity. New editions and translations continue to appear, while scholars continue to disagree over whether it should primarily be read as economics, political theory, social theory or a critique combining all three.
When the first volume appeared on 14 September 1867, few could have imagined its eventual reach.
Its author was a stateless German exile living in London, frequently short of money and still struggling to finish the enormous project he had begun.
Yet Das Kapital would outlive Marx, inspire revolutions and political parties, divide societies and scholars, and become one of the most fiercely defended and fiercely attacked works ever written about the modern economic system.
More than 150 years later, the world Marx analysed has changed beyond recognition. The argument over the questions he raised has not.
Also read: ON THIS DAY: Karl Marx publishes Communist Manifesto (1848)
