Publication of Capital: A Critique of Political Economy

Capital: A Critique of Political Economy is the major work of the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx, of which the first volume was published in Hamburg in 1867. Marx wrote it largely in London, where he spent many years doing research in the British Museum. The book analyses the capitalist system, arguing that the profit of the owner of capital comes from surplus value, the unpaid portion of the work done by wage labourers. It also discusses the commodity and the concept Marx called fetishism, and the tendency of capitalism to go through crises. Friedrich Engels edited the second and third volumes from Marx's notes, published in 1885 and 1894. The work became a foundation of socialist and communist thought and has been debated by economists ever since.

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