Economic Works of Karl Marx 1861-1864
65 This is the beginning of Notebook XXI, on the cover of which Marx wrote: “May 1863”. In working on the manuscript of Chapter Six, “Results of the Direct Production Process”, Marx drew extensively on his Manuscript of 1861-63, in particular Notebook XXI. He cut out several pages of this notebook and pasted them onto pages of the manuscript of Chapter Six. Thus, he attached p. XXI-1303 to p. 475, p. XXI-1305 and the top part of p. XXI-1306 to p. 477 (this volume, pp. 100-03 and 436-38), and p. XXI-1318 to p. 490. Here these pages are given in the text of both Notebook XXI and Chapter Six.
The text of some other pages of Notebook XXI was fully or partly incorporated by Marx into the following sections of Chapter Six: “Supplementary Remarks on the Formal Subsumption of Labour under Capital”, “The Real Subsumption of Labour under Capital”, “Gross and Net Product”, and “Mystification of Capital”.
69 These words are rather indistinct in the manuscript and can also be read as “the process of labour” (“Prozess der Arbeit”).
70 Marx means the system aimed at precluding competition among guild members. It involved discussion of production matters, equal conditions for all members of the guild, and joint decisions on prices, raw materials, and quality.
73 The yeomen were a stratum of English freeholders which disappeared approximately by the mid-18th century, superseded by small tenant farmers. This was the result of the process of the primitive accumulation of capital, in particular, of what was known as the enclosure of common lands and their usurpation by landlords. Skilful archers, the yeomen formed the core of the English army before firearms came into wide use; they were known for their staunchness and bravery in battle. Marx wrote that during the English revolution of the 17th century the yeomen were the main fighting force of Oliver Cromwell, the leader of the bourgeoisie and the burgeoisified nobility. English novelists and historians paid tribute to the yeomen’s courage and military skill, and their role as defenders of the independence of the English nation.
The expression “proud yeomanry of England” is probably a paraphrase of Shakespeare’s expressions “good yeomen”, “fight gentlemen of England”, and “fight boldly yeomen”. See Henry V, etc., Act III, Scene 1, and Richard III, Act V, Scene III.
85 The words “capital employs labour” are a paraphrase of Ricardo’s “capital, or ... the means of employing labour”. In another passage Ricardo speaks of capital as “funds” which “would be paid to the labouring class”, as “funds” which “employed this class” (D. Ricardo, On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation. Third edition, London, 1821, pp. 92, 511-12). Marx analysed these propositions of Ricardo in his manuscript.
90 Marx means Wage Labour, a work he intended to write in accordance with his “plan of six books”.
93 The quoted passage is not from Malthus, but from William Pickering, editor of the second (posthumous) edition of Malthus’ book.
104 Marx discussed this in Book Two of Capital, the first manuscript of which he wrote in 1865.
204 A reference to A. Goudar, Les intirêts de la France mal entendus, dons les branches de 1'agriculture, du commerce, de la population, des finances, de la marine, et de l'industrie: Par un citoyen. Vol. 1, Amsterdam, 1757. This work is mentioned in Ch. Smith’s book Three Tracts on the Corn-Trade and Corn-Laws, Second edition, London, 1766, of which Marx made a synopsis in Supplementary Notebook B.
205 The price of one yard fell by 1/4 because the aggregate value of the product had trebled (from £120 to £360), while the quantity of the product had increased fourfold (from 1,200 to 4,800 yards).
206 The figure £120 is incorrect, since originally the calculation was 96c + 20v + 28s, which, if calculated per 100 units of advanced capital, gives 83c + 17v + 24s = £124.
207 This refers to the missing part of the Manuscript of 1863-64 and to sections that Marx planned to write for this chapter.
208 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part III, Chapter IX).
209 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part IV, Chapter XII).
210 In the preface to the first edition of his book Die erundlagen der Nationalökonomie, Wilhelm Roscher described himself as the Thucydides of political economy.
211 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. 1, Part If, Chapter V).
212 Marx reproduced the last three sentences in the first edition of Vol. 1 of Capital as a transition to the questions he deals with in Vol. If (see K. Marx, Das Kapital, Erster Band, Hamburg, 1867), but did not include them in any of the subsequent editions.
213 Fluxion and fluens are concepts of the calculus of fluxions, the earliest form of differential and integral calculus, developed by Newton. He used the term fluens to denote the values of a system which change simultaneously and constantly, depending on time, and the term fluxion to denote the velocity with which the fluens changes. Thus, fluxions are time derivatives of fluenses.
214 Marx apparently means that A (c+v) = Dc + Dv and, since the increment of c is constant, the difference is equal to Dv.
215 The manuscript does not contain Note 1). It was probably to refer the reader to Marx’s determination of use value given in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Part One.
216 Ik reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. also Capital, Vol. I, Part VI, Chapter XIX).
217 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. present edition, Vol. 30, pp. 40-41, and Capital, Vol. 1, Part Ill, Chapter XI).
218 Note 2) is missing from the text of the manuscript. Marx apparently left its number by mistake when he decided to transfer the note to another place.
219 The manuscript does not contain the text of Note 2).
220 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. present edition, Vol. 28, p. 188; Vol. 32, pp. 35-37, 408-09; Vol. 33, pp. 256-57, 285-86 and Capital, Vol. I, Part II).
221 Page 262 has not reached us. For pp. 263-64 see this volume, pp. 348-50.
222 The text that follows, originally belonging to the missing part of the manuscript, was later incorporated by Marx into Chapter Six, which affected the pagination, pp. 96-107 becoming 469a-469m.
A comparison of the text of this section (pp. 469a-469m) with the third chapter of the Manuscript of 1861-63 shows that Marx used the latter as a basis for the text given here.
223 “Semper aliquid haeret”, part of the saying “Audacter calumniare, semper aliquid haeret” (“If you slander somebody long enough, some of it is bound to stick”).
224 Marx apparently means the Society for Promoting the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, founded by Henry Broom in Britain in 1827. It sought to achieve its aim by publishing popular and inexpensive books.
225 This work is also mentioned by Thomas Hodgskin himself in his pamphlet The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted.... London, 1832, pp. 165-66. Marx noted this in his synopsis of Hodgskin’s pamphlet (see Supplementary Notebook A, p. 12).
226 This refers to the missing part of the 1863-64 Manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part II).
227 This refers to the missing part of the 1863-64 Manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part III, Chapter VII).
228 The Civil War in the United States between the economically and socially progressive states of the North and the states of the South, dominated by slave-owners, which lasted from April 1861 to April 1865.
The effect the US Civil War had on the economic situation in Britain was analysed in a number of reports issued by the British chambers of commerce and in articles published in The Economist, such as “The Board of Trade Return. The Trade with the United States”, No. 922, May 4, 1861, pp. 480-81, and, “The Difficult Position of English Commerce with Reference to the American Civil War”, No. 925, May 18, 1861, pp. 534-35. The Morning Post of May 16, 1864, suggested that the American Civil War had helped Britain to avoid a crisis. Marx examined the problem in the articles “The Crisis in England”, written on about November 1, 1861, (Die Presse, No. 305, November 6, 1861), and “British Commerce”, written on November 2, 1861 and published in The New-York Daily Tribune, No. 6440, November 23, 1861.
229 Marx criticises Proudhon’s “axiom” in The Poverty of Philosophy, in the Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58, and in Capital, Vol. I, Part V, Chapter XVI.
230 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part V, Chapter XVI).
231 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. present edition, Vol. 30, pp 54-60; Capital, Vol. 1, Part II).
232 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part IV, Chapter XIII).
233 The quotation that follows was written by Marx on an unnumbered separate sheet.
234 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part VI, Chapter XXI).
235 A reference to the missing, part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part IV, Chapter XV).
236 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part VII, Chapter XXIV).
237 Marx dealt with the subject at greater length in the Economic Manuscript of 1861-63, first in Theories of Surplus Value as part of his analysis of bourgeois political economy and then in the part of the manuscript devoted to relative surplus value. The conclusions formulated here are largely based on those studies.
238 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part V, Chapter XVIII).
239 Marx probably means Part III “The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of profit to Fall”, of Vol. III of Capital.
240 This is, in all probability, Marx’s first mention of the fourth book of Capital, “On the History of the Theory”, which he planned to write. He also refers to Book IV in his letter to Ludwig Kugelmann of October 13, 1866. The fifth section of the Manuscript of 1861-63 — Theories of Surplus Value — was the first rough draft of the fourth book of Capital. On the views of the Physiocrats see present edition, Vol. 30, pp. 352-76.
241 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part III).
242 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part VII, Chapter XXV).
243 A reference to the missing part of the manuscript (cf. Capital, Vol. 1, Part If, Chapter IV).
244 There is no such note in the manuscript. Marx probably has in mind the American economist Carey, who examined the relationship between the growth of population and the growth of capital in his work Principles of Political Economy, Philadelphia, 1837.
245 The following is another draft of the beginning of Chapter Six.
246 Here the manuscript of the third and last section of the chapter breaks off.
247 Marx means the mass Irish emigration to the USA after 1848 (cf. Capital, Vol. I, Part VII, Chapter XXV).
248 Marx means the pandemic of plague that swept Europe in 1347-50. According to some estimates, it took a toll of about 25 million, approximately a quarter of the entire population of Europe at that time (see also Capital, Vol. I, Part VII, Chapter XXV).