ABSTRACT
Karl Marx’s dialogue – and struggle – with bourgeois economists operated on completely different, historical-materialist foundations, devoid of abstract ideals of justice or nostalgia for the past. His idea of how to overcome the capitalist mode of production involved a critique from within of capitalism and the economic theory corresponding to it. Many documents show that Marx was fully aware of the difficulties in the early chapters of Capital, and so concerned about it that he rewrote some passages several times. Marx’s great historical and theoretical canvas also shows the decisive role that the state has played in support of newly emergent capital, through state and private violence against direct producers, black slaves and colonized peoples, and exposes for what it is any mythical-idyllic representation of the birth of capitalism. In addition to the books on capital, the complete and definitive schema outlined by Marx in 1859 foresaw three other books, on the state, foreign trade, and the world market.
