Grundrisse
Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy
Karl Marx
(Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Rohentwurf),
1857-1858)
First published in 1939
Translation Martin Nicolaus, 1973
Pelican Books 1973, reprinted 1977
INTRODUCTION
THE CHAPTER ON MONEY
THE CHAPTER ON CAPITAL
SECTION ONE: THE PRODUCTION PROCESS OF CAPITAL
Capital and modern landed property,
p. 278
This organic system itself, as a totality, has its presuppositions,
and its development to its totality consists precisely in
subordinating all elements of society to itself, or in creating out of
it the organs which it still lacks.
SECTION TWO: THE CIRCULATION PROCESS OF CAPITAL
Surplus Labour or Surplus Value Becomes Surplus Capital
Original Accumulation of Capital
p. 488
However, when the limited bourgeois form is stripped away,
what is wealth other than the universality of individual needs,
capacities, pleasures, productive forces etc.,
created through universal exchange?
The full development of human mastery over the forces of nature,
those of so-called nature as well as of humanity’s own nature?
The absolute working-out of his creative potentialities,
with no presupposition other than the previous historic development,
which makes this totality of development,
i.e. the development of all human powers as such the end in itself,
not as measured on a predetermined yardstick?
Theories of Surplus Value
Adam Smith: Work as Sacrifice, p. 611
This holds doubly: for this contradictory labour;
and, relatedly, for labour which has not yet created the subjective
and objective conditions for itself
(or also, in contrast to the pastoral etc. state, which it has lost),
in which labour becomes attractive work,
the individual’s self-realization.
Small-scale circulation. The process of exchange between capital and labour capacity generally, p. 675
Capital did not begin the world from the beginning, but rather
encountered production and products already present,
before it subjugated them beneath its process.
SECTION THREE: CAPITAL AS FRUCTIFEROUS.
TRANSFORMATION OF SURPLUS VALUE INTO PROFIT
Rate of profit. Fall of the rate of profit, p. 750
These regularly recurring catastrophes lead to their repetition
on a higher scale, and finally to its violent overthrow.
There are moments in the developed movement of capital
which delay this movement other than by crises;
such as e.g. the constant devaluation of a part
of the existing capital:
the transformation of a great part of capital
into fixed capital which does not serve as agency of direct production;
unproductive waste of a great portion of capital etc.
Relation between the objective conditions of production.
Change in the proportion of the component parts of capital, p. 776
The economic concept of value does not occur in antiquity.
Value distinguished only juridically from pretium, against fraud etc.
The concept of value is entirely peculiar to the most modern economy,
since it is the most abstract expression of capital itself and of the
production resting on it.
MISCELLANEOUS
(I) VALUE
p. 881
The first category in which bourgeois wealth presents itself
is that of the commodity.
The commodity itself appears as unity of two aspects.
It is use value, i.e. object of the satisfaction
of any system whatever of human needs.
[...]
Now how does use value become transformed into commodity?
Vehicle of exchange value.
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