KARL MARX

THE 'ECONOMICS' 3'174
of what exists - with the exception perhaps of the relationship of different
forms of the state to the different economic structures of society.' 160 But
illness prevented any creative work for three months during the spring
of 1863 and Marx concentrated on trying to give the historical part its
final shape. He was, however, still confident that he could 'copy out' the
remainder very quickly. 161 The possibility of competition from Lassalle
spurred him on and by the summer he was regularly working ten hours
a day and doing differential calculus in his spare time. In mid-August he
reported to Engels that he was working on the manuscript for the printers
which would be '100% easier to understand' than the Critique of Political
Economy. He added that the ease with which Lassalle produced his works
on economics made him laugh 'when I look at my colossal work and see
how I have had to shift everything round and even construct the historical
part from material that was in part totally unknown'. 162
A certain number of the manuscripts from this period have either been
lost or are inaccessible, so it is not possible to determine exactly how far
Marx had got with with his '2nd part'. The main manuscript to have
survived - from what Marx in 1837-58 conceived of as simply a third
chapter - would amount to about 3000 printed pages and comprises the
'historical stuff that Marx in the summer of 1863 seems to have decided
to incorporate into volume one as 'the Germans only have faith in fat
books'. 165 Some of this contained material later incorporated into the
three volumes of Capital, but the major part was the historical section
later published by Kautsky as the fourth volume of Capital under the title
Theories of Surplus Value.
The Theories of Surplus Value comprises three large printed volumes of
which a large part is simply extracts from previous theorists. 164 Marx
began with Stewart and the economists of the mercantile system who
tried to explain the origin of surplus-value simply from circulation. He
then went on to the physiocrats who concentrated - rightly in Marx's
view - on the sphere of production, albeit mainly agricultural production.
Most of the first volume was taken up with extracts from Adam Smith
and an attempt to separate scientific from ideological elements in his
theories, particularly focusing on his distinction between productive and
unproductive labour. The second volume dealt mainly with Ricardo, who
was blamed for reliance on certain faulty premisses taken over from Adam
Smith. The discussion centred mainly round Ricardo's theories of profit
and rent and particularly his confusion of surplus-value with profit. The
third volume dealt with the Ricardian School and particularly the English
socialists whom Marx called 'the proletarian opposition based on
Ricardo'. 165 He also attacked Malthus as 'a shameless sycophant of the
ruling classes' 166 for advocating extravagant expenditure by them as a