Capital, Volume I

Capital, Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital (German: Das Kapital, Buch I: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals) is an 1867 economics book by German philosopher Karl Marx. In this, the only installment of Marx's multi-volume Capital: Critique of Political Economy to be published during his lifetime, Marx critiques capitalism chiefly from the standpoint of its production processes. After Marx's death, Friedrich Engels compiled and expanded his friend's notes into volumes II (1885) and III (1894).

In the years since its publication Capital, Volume I has come to be considered as a major work of modern economic thought, alongside the likes of Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776) and Keynes's General Theory (1936). It is the central text of the field of Marxian economics.

Chapters 1, 2, and 3 are a theoretical discussion of the commodity, value, exchange, and the genesis of money. As Marx writes, "Beginnings are always difficult in all sciences ... the section that contains the analysis of commodities, will therefore present the greatest difficulty." The modern reader is often perplexed about Marx going on about "one coat is equal to twenty yards of linen". Professor John Kenneth Galbraith reminds us that "the purchase of a coat by an average citizen was an action comparable in modern times to the purchase of an automobile or even a house."

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