Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. II. - The Process of Circulation of Capital

Capital, Volume II, subtitled The Process of Circulation of Capital, was prepared by Friedrich Engels from notes left by Karl Marx and published in 1885. In Volume II, the main ideas behind the marketplace are to be found: how value and surplus-value are realized. Its dramatis personae are not so much the worker and the industrialist (as in Volume I), but rather the money owner (and money lender), the wholesale merchant, the trader and the entrepreneur or functioning capitalist. Moreover, workers appear in Volume II, essentially as buyers of consumer goods and therefore as sellers of the commodity labour power, rather than producers of value and surplus-value — though this latter quality, established in Volume I, remains the solid foundation on which the whole of the unfolding analysis is based. Reading Volume II is of monumental significance to understanding the theoretical construction of Marx's whole argument.