ABSTRACT
When, in October 1894, Engels wrote the preface for the edition he had been preparing from Marx’s manuscripts of the third volume of Capital, he used the opportunity to present some criticisms of the views put forward on Marx by Achille Loria. These had been published during the decade following Marx’s death in 1883, beginning with Loria’s biographical piece on Marx published during that year. A good half year after completing the preface, that is, in May 1895, in two supplementary notes written about the third volume for the Neue Zeit, Engels commented further on Loria’s criticism of Marx, as well as on Loria’s claims made on behalf of himself about the discovery of historical materialism. Letters to Plekhanov and Schmidt in February and March 1895 indicate how essential Engels saw his task of replying to Loria,2 particularly with respect to the so-called contradiction between volumes I and III of Capital on the law of value and the theory of prices of production.
