Theories of Surplus Value

Theories of Surplus Value (German: Theorien über den Mehrwert) is a draft manuscript written by Karl Marx between January 1862 and July 1863. It is mainly concerned with the West European theorizing about Mehrwert (added value or surplus-value) from about 1750, critically examining the ideas of British, French and German political economists about wealth creation. At issue are the source, forms and determinants of the magnitude of surplus-value, and Marx tries to explain how, after failing to solve basic contradictions in its labour theories of value, the classical school of political economy eventually broke up, leaving only "vulgar political economy" which no longer tried to provide a consistent, integral theory of capitalism, but instead offered only an eclectic amalgam of theories which seemed pragmatically useful or which justified the rationality of the market economy.

Theories of Surplus Value was part of the large manuscript of 1861–63, entitled by Marx A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and written as the immediate sequel to the first part of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy published in 1859. The total 1861–63 manuscript consists of 23 notebooks (the pages numbered consecutively from 1 to 1472) running to some 200 printed sheets in length: it is the first systematically worked out draft — though still only rough and incomplete — of all four volumes of Capital. Theories of Surplus Value forms the longest (about 110 printed sheets) and most fully elaborated part of this huge manuscript, and it is the first and only draft of the fourth, concluding volume of Capital. Marx called this volume, as distinguished from the three theoretical volumes of Das Kapital, the historical, historico-critical, or historico-literary part of his work.

Marx wrote this manuscript while he was also writing journalistic articles to make money, especially on the American Civil War (for the New York Daily Tribune). In April 1862, he was in dire financial straits - he owed 20 pounds for rent which he could not pay, and he had no money to redeem pawned clothing of his children and of the maid, Helene Demuth. In August 1862, he travelled to Zaltbommel in the Netherlands, to see his uncle Lion Philips for financial help. However, Philips was away on a trip himself, and Marx travelled on to Trier to see his mother, who, however, did not give him any money. In September, Marx applied for a job in an English railway office, with the help of his cousin August Philips, but failed to get it because of his illegible handwriting. In October, Marx received 20 pounds from his cousin August Philips, and in November, when Marx was unable to pay for coal and groceries, Friedrich Engels also sent him money.

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