Below the number of pages of each chapter refer to those of the current book.

Part A. General outlines of, and comments on, the three volumes of Marx’s Capital

1. Karl Marx: his work and the major changes in its interpretation (2003, 22 pages). From Companion to the history of economic thought, edited by Warren Samuels, Jeff Biddle and John Davis, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 148–66.

   Abstract: Marx’s magnum opus, Capital, is an analysis of the capitalist system. The changing appreciation of this work throughout the twentieth century has been influenced by both the degree to which other works of Marx were, or could be, taken into account (§2) and, relatedly, developing methodological views; five methodological aspects are briefly reviewed – historical materialism, critique, naturalistic versus socio-historical concepts, value-form theory, systematic dialectics (§3). The article provides a synopsis of the general structure of Marx’s Capital, outlining for each volume of Capital what ‘capital’ is, how it works and its resulting process (§4).

2. Marx’s conceptualisation of value in Capital (2019, 26 pages). From The Oxford handbook of Karl Marx, edited by Matthew Vidal, Tony Smith, Tomás Rotta and Paul Prew, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 129–50.

   Abstract: This chapter reviews the three conceptual stages of the determinants of the commodities’ value in Marx’s Capital. It concludes that the dynamic second stage (designed in 1866–67) overrules the third stage – of prices of production (designed 1864–65). The first stage (Capital I, Part One) is an important though static averages account, positing that the commodities’ value is determined by average socially necessary labour-time. The second stage (Capital I, Part Four) is a dynamic account of the ‘intensity of labour’ and the mainly technology-determined ‘productive power of labour’, each one implying, first, that clock-time of labour is an insufficient measure and, second, that rates of surplus-value diverge between sectors of production. Whereas intensity-determined inter-sector rates of surplus-value might equalise due to intra-labour competition, Marx posits no mechanism for such equalisation regarding the technology-determined productive power. The third stage posits the transformation of values into prices of production (Capital III, Part Two – its text being based on a manuscript from 1864–65). The article’s main finding is that the determinant of the ‘technology-associated productive power’ was a novel result of Marx’s 1866–67 final version of Capital I (1867). It makes Marx’s earlier third stage redundant.

3. Dialectical method (1998, 6 pages). From The handbook of economic methodology, edited by John B. Davis, D. Wade Hands and Uskali Mäki, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 103–7.

   Abstract: After a brief outline of the distinction between historical dialectics and systematic-dialectics, the entry focuses on the latter. It does so by bringing out main elements of this method in so far as they relate to some of the problems that face the mainstream philosophy of economics.

4. Marx’s method (1998, 7 pages). From The handbook of economic methodology, edited by John B. Davis, D. Wade Hands and Uskali Mäki, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 283–7.

   Abstract: This article distinguishes Marx’s method for the study of sequences of social formations (or modes of production), that is, his ‘historical materialist’ method, from his method of studying the systematic interconnections of a single social formation such as the capitalist one. All commentators agree that in Capital Marx applies a particular systematic method for outlining these interconnections, by way of moving in stages from abstract to concrete categories. There is, however, disagreement on the status of each of the stages, as well as on the mode of progression from one stage to the other. Accordingly, Marx’s method in Capital is termed differently. For a long time the method has been looked upon as a logical-historical approach (an interpretation propagated by Engels), or as a method of successive approximation where one starts with simplifying assumptions that are gradually dropped (propagated by Sweezy 1942). Other interpretations have focused on the particular dialectic adopted by Marx. The second part of the article expands on the latter.

5. The interconnection of Systematic Dialectics and Historical Materialism (2000, 28 pages). From Historical Materialism, 7, pp. 137–65.

   Abstract: Within the Marxian paradigm – and far more so than in other paradigms – the work of its founder, Marx, has been a continuous inspiration for new theoretical developments. This is fine. However, in much twentieth-century Marxian theory, this has gone along with an inclination to present new theoretical developments as new interpretations of (especially) Marx’s Capital instead of as reconstructions. This article illustrates this for two main building blocks of the paradigm, namely its method and its theory of value, focusing for the former on ‘historical materialism’ and ‘systematic dialectics’ and for the latter on the concepts of ‘social form’ and ‘abstract labour’. More specifically, this illustration is articulated in an engagement with work of Patrick Murray on these issues. One main conclusion is that, as with all founders of new paradigms, Marx is bound to express his break with the old ideas to a large extent in the traditional language – in his case that of Hegel and of classical political economy – which inevitably opens up enormous problems of interpretation. Rather than focusing on (perhaps dubious) re-interpretations, clarity would be served if Marxian scholars were to present their new theoretical findings as reconstructions.

Part B. Capital I – outlines and comments

Part C. Capital II – outlines and comments

Part D. Capital III – outlines and comments