Introduction

When Marx took up his critique of political economy project again around August 1861, ¹ his immediate concern was to complete the long-promised ‘third chapter’ on ‘Capital’ that was supposed to have been published with A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (CCPE) in 1859. ² The general objective of the Contribution was to publish in the form of presentation the investigations that had been undertaken in the Grundrisse manuscripts (G and G(EV)). ³ However, Marx had evidently had great difficulty with organising and reworking the material that he had accumulated. As a consequence, the Contribution as published comprised only two chapters: one dealt with the commodity and its Value ⁴ and the other with the process of ‘simple circulation’ which embraced the role of money in circulating capital in its commodity form (see CCPE).