Capital A Critique of Political Economy: abridged version by Otto Ruehle

This book compactly sets forth the fundamentals of Marx’s economic teaching in Marx’s own words. After all, no one has yet been able to expound the theory of labour value better than Marx himself. The abridgment of the first volume of Capital – the foundation of Marx’s entire system of economics – was made by Mr. Otto Rühle with great care and with profound understanding of his task. First to be eliminated were obsolete examples and illustrations, then quotations from writings which today are only of historic interest, polemics with writers now forgotten, and finally numerous documents – Acts of Parliament, reports of factory inspectors, and the like – which, whatever their importance for understanding a given epoch, have no place in a concise exposition that pursues theoretical rather than historical objectives. At the same time, Mr. Rühle did everything to preserve continuity in the development of the scientific analysis as well as unity of exposition. Logical deductions and dialectic transitions of thought have not, we trust, been infringed at any point. It stands to reason that this extract calls for attentive and thoughtful perusal. To aid the reader, Mr. Otto Rühle has supplied the text with succinct marginal titles." Leon Trotzky, 1939This Editon comes with an introduction by Leon Trotzky, better known as "Marxism in Our Time".