Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Volume II)

Karl Marx’s second volume in his monumental criticism of capitalism was prepared by Friedrich Engels from notes left for him and published in 1885 two years after Marx’s death. The work is organized into the following three sections: 1. The Metamorphoses of Capital and Their Circuits, 2. The Turnover of Capital, and 3. The Reproduction and Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital. Where the first volume of Capital focuses mainly on the worker and the industrialist, volume two turns its attention more to the owners of capital, merchants, traders, and entrepreneurs. While this work has been largely overshadowed by its predecessor as well as many of Marx’s other works, its contributions to the economic analysis of commodities are undoubtedly worthy additions to the corpus of political economic theory. Though history will most likely continue to charge that Marx’s recommendations for solving the inadequacies of the capitalistic system as a failure, his analysis regarding those inadequacies will most assuredly continue be considered as a highly thoughtful analysis of the impact of capitalism upon society and may yet one day help to reform the persistent injustices that seem to be inherent within such a system.