The history of Karl Marx's great work Capital was for Engels a living reality that was being created before his very eyes. But Engels was by no means an outside observer of it, but took a very direct and active part in it, fully created it together with Marx, and as a result made an independent contribution to the development of Marxist theory and the method of economic research, and hence to the history of Capital. At the same time, Engels became the founder of the scientific study of Marx's economic legacy (its content and history of its creation), and also developed the basic principles of its scientific publication and creative application to the analysis of modern processes. It is these questions related to the history of "Capital" that are addressed in this article.

The topic "Engels and Capital" has been extensively studied in our literature .1 Nevertheless, Engels ' development of the history of the creation of "Capital" and the course and methodology of Marx's work need further study. "The full coverage of Engels' role as a historian is also important and relevant because this role is still either hushed up or extremely belittled by representatives of bourgeois as well as reformist historiography."2 An important task of Marxist social science remains to elucidate Engels ' fundamental contribution to the history of Marxism, including the history of Marx's economic teaching. This is also due to the fact that Engels ' views on the history of Capital are an adequate reflection of this history itself.

According to Engels, Marx's systematic study of political economy began in 1843.3 .

A year earlier, Marx had set himself the task of"theoretically substantiating communist ideas," 4 in other words, creating a theory of scientific communism. The first step in the solution of this grandiose task, which required Marx to complete his entire life, was the study of-

1 Kazmina I. G. Engels ' work on preparing for the publication of the third volume of Marx's Das Kapital. In: Iz istorii marxizma [From the History of Marxism], Moscow, 1961; Malysh A. I. Engels and Proletarian Political Economy, Moscow, 1970. Engels and some questions of Political Economy. In: Engels-teoretik, Moscow, 1970; Leontiev L. A. Rol ' F. Engels in the formation and development of Marxist Political Economy, Moscow, 1972; Vygodsky V. S. "Anti-Düring" in the economic legacy of Marxism. - Voprosy ekonomiki, 1978, N 7; his. Economic problems in the "Anti-Duhring". In: Theory of Marxism and the Working-class Movement in the 19th century. Materials and reports from the works of K. Marx and F. Schulz. Engels IML under the Central Committee of the CPSU. M. 1978; his. Engels on Marx's work on Capital. In: From the History of Marxism-Leninism and the International Labor Movement, Moscow, 1982.

2 Golman L. I. Engels-istorik, Moscow, 1984, p. 6.

3 "Marx began his economic studies in Paris in 1843 by studying the great Englishmen and Frenchmen" (K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 24, p. 11).

4 Ibid., vol. I, p. 118.

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The study of the internal structure of human society, which began in 1843 and made it possible at the same time to establish that - contrary to Hegel - the totality of material life relations is the decisive factor that determines the class character of the state, and that the basis of these relations should be sought with the help of political economy. The publication in the Complete Works of Marx and Engels in the original languages (MAGA) of Marx's notebooks with extracts from this period allows us to conclude that the discovery of the primacy of social production in the development of society was carried out by Marx as a result of intensive philosophical, historical and economic research. 5 The subsequent analysis of social production itself already presupposed, first of all, political and economic research, which soon became Marx's predominant theoretical occupation.

Thus, Marxist political economy emerged and developed precisely as "socialist economy" 6, which saw its main goal in developing the theoretical foundations of scientific communism. How much expectation there was in this respect in connection with political and economic research can be clearly seen from the statements of the young Engels: "With the same confidence," says one of his "Elberfeld speeches" of 1845 , " with which we can deduce a new proposition from the well-known mathematical axioms, with the same confidence we can deduce a new proposition from the well-known mathematical axioms. from the existing economic relations and from the principles of political economy, we can draw a conclusion about the coming social revolution. " 7 In this connection, it is worth emphasizing that Marx's early economic research, which led him in 1844 to create the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts , a work that was the germ of the future Capital and the first attempt at a scientific analysis of capitalist exploitation, was a direct continuation of Engels ' research in Sketches for a Critique of Political Economy."(written at the end of 1843, published in 1844), his consideration of capitalist competition as a regulator of social production8 .

Engels was also directly involved in bringing Marxist political economy to its methodological base - the dialectical-materialist understanding of history, which was at the same time the philosophical foundation of the theory of scientific communism. In 1845-1846, in their joint work "German Ideology", Marx and Engels continued their research on the social structure, focusing on the structure of material production. The result of this research was the first of two great discoveries (the discovery of a materialist understanding of history), as a result of which, according to Engels ' later description, "socialism became a science."9 Social production was represented as a dialectical, i.e. contradictory, unity of the material content-the productive forces and the social form - the relations of production.

6 Among the notebooks with Marx's extracts from the first half of the 1940s are the "Kreutznach Notebooks", which contain historical, political and philosophical extracts, as well as notebooks with historical and economic extracts completed by Marx in Paris, Brussels and Manchester, all of which are published in volumes 2 to 5 IV Department of the MEG (published vol. 2).

6 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 17, p. 21.

7 Marx K., and Engels F. Soch. Vol. 2, p. 552.

8 A short synopsis of Engels ' Sketches, compiled by Marx, has been preserved. In the preface to the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx referred to this work of Engels as one of the sources of his research (ibid., vol.42, pp. 3-4, 44).

9 Ibid., vol. 20, p. 27.

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The principle of dialectical interaction between productive forces and relations of production was consistently applied by Marx and Engels in the same work to contemporary bourgeois society, which allowed them to determine the starting points of the theory of scientific communism. The essence of these propositions, Lenin noted, is "the clarification of the world - historical role of the proletariat as the creator of socialist society"; Lenin considered this clarification to be "the main thing in Marx's teaching".10 Indeed, since Marx first came to the conclusion at the end of 1843 and the beginning of 1844 that the proletariat, if it wants to free itself from the oppression to which it is subjected in bourgeois society, must destroy this society based on private property and build a society without classes, a communist society - from that time on, In the words of Engels ,the" theoretical expression of the position of the proletariat "in the class struggle against the bourgeoisie, the"theoretical generalization of the conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat" 11 becomes the central task of Marxist teaching. Marxist political economy solved this problem through the economic justification of the theory of scientific communism.

The discovery of the primacy of material production and the need for a detailed analysis of the structure of the latter posed to Marx as a cardinal problem a concrete study of the process of capitalist production, the process of wage labor. In his "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts" he revealed the natural character of capitalist exploitation, characterized it as a process of alienated labor, resulting in the alienation of the product of labor from its creator-the worker. Now it was necessary to reveal the essence of capitalist exploitation, to explain the capitalist's gratuitous appropriation of the surplus product created by the worker, but carried out, however, within the framework of the law of value, the law of exchange of equivalents. In solving this problem, Marx entered into a polemic primarily with Proudhon, who believed that the forced establishment of an equivalent exchange could already eliminate capitalist exploitation in bourgeois society .12
Already in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx came to the conclusion, based on the primacy of material production, that the essence of capitalist exploitation must be sought in the process of production itself. This conclusion has now taken on a more concrete shape: this essence must be revealed within the framework of an equivalent exchange between the worker and the capitalist. Concretization of this conclusion became possible as a result of a significant change in the views of the classics of bourgeois political economy on the labor theory of value. "Ricardo's theory of value, "Marx notes in The Poverty of Philosophy," is a scientific interpretation of modern economic life. " 13 The inevitable deviation of prices from values, which, according to Marx and Engels, formerly testified against the rule of the law of value in bourgeois society, is now understood by them as a necessary form of its manifestation.

But Marx did not confine himself to the mere formulation of the question. In The Poverty of Philosophy, and especially in Wage Labor and Capital (1847), he took the first important steps towards solving this problem. 14 Marx has already made a distinction between labor as a process in which value is created and the ability of the worker to do so

10 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 23, p. 1.

11 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 4, p. 282.

12 Ibid., p. 88.

13 Ibid., p. 86.

14 Ibid., vol. 6, pp. 443-444.

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his only asset, which he sells to the capitalist. In the process of labor, the worker not only replaces what he consumes and what the capitalist paid for by purchasing his ability to work, but also creates a surplus over this consumption. In these works, Marx essentially gave the first outline of a future theory of surplus value.

Later in his polemics with the German economist and ideologist of the Prussian Junkers, I. K. Rodbertus, who claimed that he had already discovered in 1851 the source "from which the surplus value of the capitalist comes", Engels noted that the above-mentioned works of Marx in the second half of the 1940s show that "Marx even without the help of Even then Rodbertus knew very well not only where the capitalist's surplus value came from, but also how .15 Engels points out here at the same time that the decisive moment in the creation of the theory of surplus value for Marx was not the discovery of its source ("whence"), but this source, the worker's surplus labor, was discovered by the classics of bourgeois political economy; the decisive moment consisted in the analysis of the very mechanism of capitalist exploitation ("how"), i.e., in It shows that the appropriation of surplus value not only does not contradict the value foundations of the bourgeois economy, but is a natural product of them.

In the 1950s, Marx re-undertook a systematic study of bourgeois political economy - the works of W. Petty, A. Smith, T. Tuck, D. Ricardo, and many others .16 The decisive stage in the development of Marxist political economy came in 1857. An unfinished sketch of the vulgar economists F. Bastiat and G.-C. Carey dates back to July of that year, in which Marx for the first time strictly outlines the chronological framework of classical bourgeois political economy: it began in the late seventeenth century with the works of W. Petty and P. Boisgilbert, and ended in the first third of the nineteenth century with the works of D. Ricardo and J. S. Sismondi. This sketch forms a sort of historical and critical introduction to the future of Capital. At the end of August, Marx writes a methodological "Introduction" to it, where he sets out in detail his ideas on the subject and method of political economy. Between October 1857 and May 1858, the Critique of Political Economy, an initial version of Capital, was published. The richness of the contents of this manuscript is enormous. It first examines the commodity as the" economic cell " of capitalism, generated by the dual nature of labor in bourgeois society, and on this basis develops the Marxist theory of value and money; the theory of value is applied to capitalist relations proper and on this basis17 the theory of surplus value is developed, which reveals the mechanism of capitalist exploitation and allows showing the main trends in the development of bourgeois society, the economic law of its movement; the material prerequisites of communist society and the nature of labor under communism are specifically considered; the law of time saving is formulated as the" first economic law " of the communist mode of production, which requires an optimal ratio between the costs of social labor and its results.

Based on the manuscript of 1857-1858, Marx published in June 1859.-

15 Ibid., vol. 24, p. 11.

16 The London notebooks with extracts on political economy from 1851 to 1853 (vols. 7-11 of the fourth Department of the Moscow State University, vol. 7 has now been published) give an idea of the enormous amount of research work done by Marx at that time.

17 In full accordance with Engels ' characterization:" In order to know what surplus value is, " Marx "had to know what value is. First of all, it was necessary to criticize Ricardo's theory of value itself" (K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 24, p. 20).

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This is the first issue of the work "Towards a Critique of Political Economy", which contains an exposition of the theory of value and money and a famous preface with a description of the materialist understanding of history and the author's" notes " on the course of his political and economic studies. The book was published in June, and in August 1859, two issues of the weekly Das Volk, published in London by the German Workers ' Educational Society, published a detailed review of Engels (which was left unfinished, possibly due to the newspaper's discontinuation). It was written at the request of Marx, who believed that it should say "briefly about the method and about the new content" 18 . Engels 'intention to consider" the economic content... the book " 19 was not implemented, but the content of the review suggests its important place in the study of "Capital".

In this review, Engels for the first time gave a detailed description of Marx's economic theory, pointing out its close relationship with the other two components of Marxism, which always existed at all stages of the development of Marxist theory. Engels linked the very emergence of Marxist economic theory with the emergence of the "German Proletarian party", noting that "the entire content of its theory arose on the basis of the study of political economy." Engels also pointed out the opposite connection: Marxist political economy is "essentially based on a materialist understanding of history", which is the "theoretical basis" and "scientific worldview" of the proletarian party. 20 Subsequently, in the reviews of T. In the first edition of Capital, written in 1867-1868, Engels tirelessly emphasized the socialist orientation of Marx's economic research, the fact that Capital provides an economic justification for the theory of scientific communism. Engels speaks of " Capital "as "the political economy of the working class in its scientific expression"; he calls Marx's economic research "the new socialist science", which sets itself the task of "putting under the socialist aspirations" of the proletariat a "scientific basis" 21.

Thus, the first generalizing principle, which reveals the basic laws of the development of Marxist economic theory, was, as Engels showed, that the long-term history of "Capital" must necessarily be considered in the general context of the development of Marxism, in the interrelation of its three components.

The second principle is related to the methodology of economic research. In the review of 1859 Engels gave important assessments of Marx's creative laboratory, the method of his economic research, which was a concretization of the dialectical-materialist method, i.e., the logic of "Capital" that Lenin wrote about .22 These Engels ' estimates are all the more important because Marx invariably sought to hide the methodological "scaffolding" by which the edifice of "Capital"was erected. "The elaboration of the method," wrote Engels, "which underlies Marx's critique of political economy, we consider to be a result that is hardly inferior in significance to the basic materialist view." 23 At the same time, Engels pointed to Hegelian dialectics as the source of dialectical-materialistic thinking.

18 Ibid., vol. 29, p. 373. Marx reviewed and perhaps corrected the review (ibid., p. 380).

19 Ibid., vol. 13, p. 499.

20 Ibid., pp. 490-491, 493.

21 Ibid., vol. 16, pp. 381, 220.

22 See Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 29, p. 301. Engels noted that in Kapital the dialectical-materialist method is applied "to the facts of a certain empirical science, political economy" (K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 20, p. 371).

23 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 13, p. 497.

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worldviews in general. "Marx and I,"he later wrote," were almost the only people who rescued conscious dialectics from German idealistic philosophy and translated it into a materialist understanding of nature and history. " 24
Hegel's idealistic dialectic was able to play this role, as Engels showed, primarily because of its historical basis, because of Hegel's "great historical sense", as a result of which "the development of his thoughts always went parallel to the development of world history"25 . For the first time in the history of science, Hegel set himself the task of " showing the development, the inner connection of history." The result was a "magnificent understanding of history" - because it was dialectical, although the connection of the material with history was perverted, because it was still an idealistic understanding of history. But it was precisely this, according to Engels, that "served as a direct theoretical premise for the new materialist view, and it was only because of this, "Engels added," that the logical method was also given a starting point."26 . "Having restored" the core of Hegel's dialectical method, freeing it from its 'idealistic shells', " Marx laid it at the foundation of the dialectical-materialist understanding of history, and ultimately of his own method of economic research.

These are the roots of historicism that permeates Marx's economic teaching. This is important to emphasize, since one of the most essential aspects of Marx's method of political economy is the unity of the logical and historical aspects in the development of economic theory-a unity in which, however, the historical aspect plays a decisive role. "Since in history," writes Engels, " as in its literary reflection, the general development also proceeds from the simplest relations to more complex ones, the historical development of political and economic literature provided a natural guiding thread that criticism could adhere to; economic categories, in general, would appear in the context of the development of political and economic literature. the same sequence as in logical development... there is a real development here. " 28 This unity of logical and historical aspects is reflected in the structure of Capital, where historical and critical sections are invariably present at all stages of theory development.

Marx formulated the first fundamental statement describing the structure of the future "Capital" on August 1, 1846, in a letter to the book publisher K.-V. Leska, dividing his economic work into two parts: a) theoretical; b) having a "predominantly historical character"29 , this fundamental division then passed through the entire history of "Capital". And when, at the very beginning of the 1950s, another publisher suggested that Marx first publish the history of political economy and only then its positive part-the theoretical development of the subject, Marx sharply opposed this. "That would upset my whole plan," he wrote to Engels on November 24, 1851. And although Marx began his study of bourgeois economics with a historical and critical analysis of bourgeois political economy, nevertheless, in the logical presentation of the subject, historical analysis came out as the conclusion, as the historical justification of the theory. "In action-

24 Ibid., vol. 20, p. 10.

25 Ibid., vol. 13, p. 496.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid., p. 497.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., vol. 27, pp. 398, 400.

30 Ibid., p. 332.

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As a result, for myself, " Marx wrote to Schott in 1877, "I began Das Kapital in exactly the reverse order as compared with the way it will appear to the public (starting with the third, historical part), only with the caveat that the first volume I started with in the first part of the book was published in the first part of the book. Last of all, it was immediately prepared for publication, while both other volumes remained in the raw form characteristic of each study in its original form."31
In the process of research, according to Marx 32, a triune problem is solved: a) mastering the material, b) analyzing various forms of its development, c) tracing their internal connection. Engels, in his review of 1859, showed that the solution of this problem is fundamentally possible through a historical and critical analysis of bourgeois political economy. Just as the dialectical-materialist understanding of history was the result of a constructive critique of Hegel's idealistic understanding of history, so Marx's method of economic research presupposes, as Engels found out, the unity of a positive exposition of the laws of bourgeois economics and a critique of the views of bourgeois economists - the "interpreters and apologists" of these laws .33 This Engels characterization directly echoes the position of Marx expressed in the letter of F. R. Tolkien. Lassalle, February 22, 1858: "The work in question is primarily a critique of economic categories, or, if you prefer, a system of bourgeois economics critically presented. It is both an exposition of the system and a critique of it in the process of presentation. " 34 The title of the original version of Capital, A Critique of Political Economy, was introduced by Marx at the end of February 1858, and on January 14 of the same year, Marx informed Engels of the revolution he had made in political economy: "I have achieved good results. For example, I have overturned the entire doctrine of profit in its former form. " 35
Engels showed that in contrast to Hegel's method, for which the development of world history was supposed to serve only as a confirmation of the development of thoughts, i.e., as already noted, "the true relation was turned upside down", for Marx the logical method "is essentially nothing but the same historical method, only freed from the historical form and from interfering accidents. Where history begins, the train of thought must begin, and its further development will be nothing more than a reflection of the historical process in an abstract and theoretically consistent form; a reflection corrected, but corrected according to the laws that the actual historical process itself gives. " 36 In a letter to Marx on April 9, 1858. In the same connection, Engels spoke of the" historical background " of economic theory .37 In his review of Capital, he emphasized that this work provides" a complete analysis of the main features of the new history of industry. " 38 In the same connection, Lenin, in his Philosophical Notebooks, drew attention to the fact that Capital contains" a history of capitalism and an analysis of the concepts that summarize it. "39
Thus, it is the development of the real historical process that determines the choice of the starting point in the construction of the theory: "Where a story begins, so must a train of thought begin." en-

31 Ibid., vol. 34, p. 238.

32 See ibid., vol. 23, p. 21.

33 Ibid., vol. 13, p. 494.

34 Ibid., vol. 29, p. 449.

35 Ibid., p. 212.

36 Ibid., vol. 13, pp. 496, 497.

37 Ibid., vol. 29, p. 261.

38 Ibid., vol. 16, p. 234.

39 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 29, p. 301.

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Gels explained this thesis by choosing the commodity as the starting point of the presentation in Capital. Marx was able to make this choice after he proved that it is the commodity that acts as an elementary form of social wealth under the conditions of the capitalist mode of production. As Engels goes on to show, the historical process acts as a kind of" tracking system " that controls the logical development of a theory at all stages of its creation. Theory, Engels emphasizes, "needs historical illustrations, constant contact with reality." 40 Such illustrations serve Marx as a necessary justification for the theory, a criterion for its correspondence to reality.

In Marx's work, historical justification is carried out, as Engels showed, in the following way: first, "in the form of indications of the actual historical course of things at different stages of social development"; secondly, "in the form of references to the economic literature aimed at tracing from the very beginning the process of developing clear definitions of economic relations".41 (both of these points are reflected in the formation of the content and structure of economic theory. The first of them was most clearly reflected in the process of developing political economy in a broad sense, covering the economy of all social formations; the second was more clearly manifested in the historical part of Capital - his book 4). Third, in the reviews of Kapital (these reviews essentially supplement the review of the work On the Critique of Political Economy and are, as it were, its natural continuation). Engels emphasized the factual basis of Marx's work. Its author "nowhere adapts facts to his theory, but, on the contrary, seeks to present his theory as a result of facts." 42 Engels specifically drew attention to the fact that these facts were taken by Marx "from the best sources... from authentic sources"; he spoke of the mass of "the most valuable historical and statistical material"43 used in Capital.

The establishment of the facts underlying the theoretical constructions in Capital was considered by Engels to be the most important moment in clarifying the provisions of economic theory. Looking through the proofreading of T. Engels wrote in a letter to Marx on August 23, 1867: "In this exposition (namely, in the sections on co-operation and manufacture), some points are still not entirely clear to me, and in these points I cannot establish what facts are the basis of what you have developed only in general terms"44 .

Engels pointed out two historical facts that served as the starting point for theoretical constructions in Capital: the fact established by the English economist T. Tooke "that money, when it functions as capital, flows back to its starting point, whereas this is not the case with money, which functions only as a means of circulation."45 This fact was recorded by Marx in 1851, but it was only in the manuscript of 1861-1863, the second draft of Capital, that the form M-C - M first appears as "the most general form of capital" 46, which served as the starting point for the analysis of the transformation of money into capital. Another fact is the appearance of a free wage worker on the labor market. "The question is, why is this free worker-

40 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 13, p. 499.

41 Ibid., p. 499; vol. 23, p. 29.

42 Ibid., vol. 16, p. 234.

43 Ibid., pp. 234, 237.

44 Ibid., vol. 31, p. 276.

45 Ibid., vol. 16, p. 299.

46 Ibid., vol. 47, p. 3.

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chiy is opposed in the sphere of circulation to the owner of money... us... still interested... few. We theoretically proceed from the actual state of affairs"47 . This circumstance was the starting point for the study of the process of buying and selling labor power, and in general, the relations between labor and capital.

Summarizing these propositions, Engels described Capital as "the first work in which the actual relations existing between capital and labor in the classical form that they acquired in England are fully and clearly described."48 Marx's special merit, according to Engels, is that he "brought the concept of capital into harmony with the historical facts from which it was ultimately abstracted and to which it owes its existence."49 Engels again refers to the general law that "in any scientific field, both in the field of nature and in the field of history, we must proceed from the facts given to us." 50 Engels ' analysis of Marx's method of economic research, carried out in his reviews (later this analysis was continued in Anti-Duhring and in correspondence), showed that the history of the method is an organically necessary component of the entire history of Capital.

This second principle, which characterizes the basic laws of the history of "Capital" established by Engels, is an important concretization of the first principle. Indeed, just as the economic justification of the theory of scientific communism in Capital forms the link between Marx's economic teaching and scientific communism, so Marx's method of economic research is the link between the philosophical and economic parts of Marxism.

In the summer of 1861, Marx began preparing the second issue of his work, and from August 1861 to July 1863, he wrote an extensive manuscript, "Towards a Critique of Political Economy" - the second draft of Capital. It was during this period that Marx, comparing the text he was creating with the first issue, noted (in a letter to Engels on December 9, 1861): "The thing is becoming much more popular, and the method is not as noticeable as in the first part"51 . When reproached for the unpopular nature of the presentation of the material (this was the first issue of K Kritike Politicheskoi Ekonomiki), he stressed that "scientific attempts to revolutionize science can never be truly accessible to the public." 52 This position was strongly supported by Engels. The scrupulous analysis of the "economic cell" of bourgeois society was considered by many to be "minutiae" 53 , but for the theory of surplus value, these "minutiae" were of fundamental importance. At the same time, Marx hoped that the second issue would be more understandable, since it deals with more specific relationships.

In connection with the preparation of the second issue of K Kritike Politicheskoi Ekonomiki, Engels wrote to a friend on January 31, 1860: "Now I consider this the most important thing... Finally, take your own work a little less conscientiously for once... The main reason for the delay is always your own scrupulousness. " 54 Motive

47 Ibid., vol. 16, p. 307.

48 Ibid., p. 381.

49 Ibid., vol. 20, pp. 215-216.

50 Ibid., p. 370.

51 Ibid., vol. 30, p. 168.

52 Ibid., p. 528.

53 Ibid., vol. 23, p. 6.

54 Ibid., vol. 30, p. 11.

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Engels '"hastening" of Marx runs through the entire history of the creation of Capital and makes it possible to visualize its real course more clearly. "Try to finish your book on political economy as soon as possible "(Engels ' letter to Marx, January 20, 1845) 55 . We are talking here about a book that Marx was supposed to write on the basis of "Economic and Philosophical manuscripts". Engels hurries Marx "with the completion and publication of a work on political economy" (January 29, 1851). " What is the situation with the publisher for the two 60-page volumes that you are going to print? "(April 3, 1851). "The most important thing is that you can make your public debut again by publishing a tolstoy the book " (November 27, 1851) 56 . The original version of Capital was still a full six years away, but Engels only shares Marx's illusions here. "I have already advanced so far," Marx wrote to Engels on April 2, 1851," that in five weeks I will have done with all the economic rubbish " (I am talking about studying political and economic literature). "Having done this,"he continues," I will be developing political economy at home. " 57
Of great methodological importance was the discussion between Marx and Engels, which took place in July 1865, on the question of "whether to copy a part of the manuscript cleanly and send it to the publisher, or first finish the whole work?"58 . And although Marx was finally forced to listen to Engels and send only vol. This contradicted his idea of his work as an "artistic whole", a"dialectically dissected whole" 59 . Only all four volumes of Das Kapital give an adequate idea of the content and structure of this great work. Only the entire economic legacy of Marx - Capital, together with its draft versions - can give a complete picture of the content of his economic teaching and his method of economic research. The fundamental unity of views on the problems of creating "Capital" has always existed between Marx and Engels. This" haste "was due to Engels' deep understanding of the great importance of Marx's work for the theory and practice of scientific socialism.

On August 7, 1865, Engels wrote to Marx: "I am very glad that the book is making rapid progress, for certain expressions in your last letter really aroused my suspicion that you might suddenly find yourself again facing some turning point that might drag everything out indefinitely." 60 For the history of Capital, it is important to find out what kind of" turning point " we are talking about. No doubt about March 1862, when Marx interrupted work on the second issue of "Towards a Critique of Political Economy" and (in accordance with the method of his research, which required the theoretical development of the problem to be carried out through a critical analysis of previous concepts) moved on to create a historical and critical section of the manuscript of 1861-1863, entitled " Theories of Surplus value". Instead of the second issue in 1867, vol. I "Capital".

The work on " Theories of Surplus Value "in terms of presenting the subject was actually already the creation of the historical part of Capital, its fourth book. In terms of research, it was a further development of the theory of surplus value, with the creation of

55 Ibid., vol. 27, p. 17.

56 Ibid., pp. 159, 212, 335.

57 Ibid., p. 207.

58 Ibid., vol. 31, p. 113.

59 Ibid., p. 112.

60 Ibid., p. 117.

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which Engels attributes to Marx's revolutionary revolution in political economy. In Anti-Duhring (1876-1878), he was the first to point out the development of this theory, the "revelation of the secret of capitalist production through surplus value", as Marx's second great discovery after the materialist understanding of history .61 According to Engels, the solution of the question of the creation of surplus value within the framework of the law of value, within the framework of the exchange of equivalents, "is the greatest historical achievement of Marx's work... Scientific socialism originates from the solution of this question, and this solution is the central point of scientific socialism. " 62
Engels called Marx's creation of the theory of surplus value a "complete and complete revolution" 63 in political economy. Therefore, the third generalizing principle that summarizes the history of "Capital" is that the analysis of this history should be based, as Engels showed, on the level of development of the theory of surplus value. This level serves as a criterion for the maturity of the economic doctrine of Marxism at each stage of its development.

Engels, as already noted, first of all singled out the 1940s, pointing out that by the winter of 1846/47 "Marx had finally grasped the main features of his new historical and economic views."64 At the same time, Engels stated that "in the forties, Marx had not yet completed his critique of political economy. This was done only by the end of the fifties. Therefore, his works, which appeared before the first issue of K Kritike Politicheskoi Ekonomiki (1859), deviate in some points from the works written after 1859, and contain expressions and whole phrases that, from the point of view of later works, are unfortunate and even incorrect."65 Engels here had in mind, first, the fact that in the 1940s Marx (along with his development of a materialist understanding of history) was already clear about the general value basis of the mechanism of capitalist exploitation, and he came close, even in terms of terminology, to solving the main problem of the theory of surplus value - the explanation of capitalist exploitation within the law of value. Secondly, when Engels spoke of certain imperfect propositions in Marx's works of the 1940s, he had in mind mainly the thesis of selling the workers their own labor. Applying this term to bourgeois political economy, Marx, however, even then, in essence, considered the labor process as the use value of the commodity that the worker sells to the capitalist, and this commodity itself was characterized as the ability to work.

Marx carried out a comprehensive development of the theory of surplus value in 1857-1858, but nevertheless postponed the publication of the section on capital in the second issue of "Towards a Critique of Political Economy". Explaining the reasons for this, Engels wrote: "The sequel was long in coming, because in the meantime the author had discovered so much new material that he found it necessary to study it further." 66 What "new materials" were discussed? Engels later explained this as follows: "As soon as this first issue was published, Marx discovered that he had not yet fully elucidated all the details of the development of the main ideas of the following issues... Then it immediately started working all over again, and thus, instead of continuing only in

61 See ibid., vol. 20, pp. 26-27.

62 Ibid., p. 210.

63 Ibid., vol. 36, p. 246.

64 Ibid., vol. 21, p. 180.

65 Ibid., vol. 22, pp. 204-205.

66 Ibid., vol. 16, p. 381.

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1867-Capital. Book I: The Process of Capital Production", Hamburg, 1867 " 67 .

Finally, Engels ' letter to V. Ya. Shmuylov on February 7, 1893 says:: "Marx developed the theory of surplus value in the 1950s in private and stubbornly refused to publish anything about it until he had fully understood all its conclusions. That is why the second and subsequent issues of K Kritike Politicheskoi Ekonomiki were not published .68 Engels is extremely modest when he writes here "alone with himself": Marx invariably shared with a friend every thought he had when creating an economic theory.

By" deductions " from the theory of surplus-value, Engels meant first of all the explanation of the transformed forms of value and surplus-value by means of this theory, i.e., the creation of theories of profit, average profit and the price of production, commercial profit, interest and land rent. These theories, as well as the adjacent theories of reproduction and crises, and productive labor, were created by Marx in the course of a historical and critical analysis of bourgeois political economy in the manuscript of 1861-1863. The result of the research was also an understanding of the final structure of "Capital": its theoretical (first three books) and historical parts (fourth book). Marx first announced his intention to publish his work entitled Das Kapital, with the subtitle "Towards a Critique of Political Economy", on December 28, 1862, in a letter to L. Kugelman .69
This whole complex meant that Marx developed the theory of surplus value in a broad sense, which marked the end of the scientific revolution in political economy. Based on this work, in 1863-1865 Marx wrote the third draft version of his work (the first three books), and in September 1867 published the first book, which compiled vol. I "Capital". "I am indebted to you for making this possible!" 70 Marx wrote to Engels at 2 a.m. on August 16, 1867, after finishing his proofreading. This, of course, is not just about the material assistance that Marx received from Engels throughout his work on Capital. Marx had in mind first of all Engels ' constant participation in this work - in the creation of the economic theory, method and structure of "Capital", which made him in fact a co-author of this great work.

Coming out in the light of T. The first "Capital" was an important milestone in the history of Marx's economic teaching. Its main stages, as we have seen, were established by Engels as follows: the 1940s. - awareness of the main problems of the theory of surplus value, its value basis; creation of the first elements of this theory; 50s-development of the theory of value and surplus value; 60s-development of the theory of surplus value in a broad sense, completion of the critique of political economy. Studies on the history of Marxism have confirmed this periodization.

Marx's work in the field of economic theory after the publication of vol. Capital's activities were carried out in three main directions. First, further work on vol. I, which was marked by the publication in 1872-1873 of the second German and in 1872-1875 of the French editions of this work (both editions were published in separate issues). Engels took an active part in the propaganda of vol. I, devoting an entire section of "Anti - Duhring" to its content and methodology, and writing a series of articles on the subject.

67 Ibid., vol. 22, p. 354.

68 Ibid., vol. 39, p. 22.

69 See ibid., vol. 30, p. 527.

70 Ibid., vol. 31, p. 275.

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reviews, most of which were published in 1867-1868 in the German workers ' and bourgeois press. Under the unmistakable influence of Engels, Marx significantly changed the structure of vol. I, increasing the number of chapters from 6 to 25. Further evolution of the structure can be seen in the French and English editions, which were published under Engels ' leadership in 1887. In addition, Engels published the 3rd and 4th German editions of vol. I (1883, 1890). Secondly, Marx worked intensively on the second and third books of Das Kapital. It also fell to Engels to complete it. "These two volumes of Capital are the work of two men: Marx and Engels," wrote Lenin.
In connection with the preparation of these volumes for publication (after Marx's death), Engels gave a detailed overview of Marx's economic handwritten legacy relating to the various stages of the creation of Capital. First of all, he analyzed the content and structure of the economic manuscript of 1861-1863. In Engels ' eyes, this particular manuscript was the first of the draft manuscripts related to Capital, because it was in the course of working on it that Marx came to realize the final structure of the future of Capital. Engels pointed out the great importance of the central section of this manuscript, Theories of Surplus Value, and repeatedly pointed out the need for its publication as volume IV of Capital. When Engels published volume II in 1885 and volume III of Das Kapital in 1894, he intended to start preparing Volume IV immediately, but did not have time to do so. The Theories of Surplus Value, as a separate manuscript "parallel" to Capital, were published by K. Kautsky in 1905-1910, and it was only in 1955-1961 that their first scientific publication was carried out in the USSR as vol.IV of Capital, i.e. Engels ' scientific testament was fulfilled.

Engels followed in detail the history of Marx's work on the theoretical part of Capital - his first three books in 1863-1867, before the publication of vol. I "Capital". "Between 1863 and 1867," he wrote, " Marx... I made the last two books of Capital in rough draft, and the first book in ready-to-print form " 72 . To understand the complexities of the process of creating Capital, it is very important to date the manuscripts of Marx, who did not date them himself. Engels dated the first version of Book II, created in this period, "1865 or 1867", and the manuscript of Book III in its main part 1864-1865 years 73 . The study carried out confirmed the correctness of this dating only with one exception: in 1867, Marx worked on one of the subsequent versions of Book II.

Finally, Engels gave a detailed description of the manuscripts of Book II of Das Kapital, which Marx had already written after the publication of Volume I (Marx worked on them until 1880). Engels did not fully understand the time frame for the creation of Book I. He only noted that the manuscript of 1861-1863 "represents the first available edition of this book"and that it was only after finishing his work on Book III that Marx began to work on Book I." 74 Now we know that Marx created the manuscript of kn. I in two stages: in 1863-1864 (only a few pages of the manuscript from this period have been preserved and the final chapter VI "Results of the direct process of production", which was not included in volume I of Capital) and in 1866 - 1867 75 .

71 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 2, p. 12.

72 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 25, part I, p. 5.

73 Ibid., vol. 24, pp. 7, 9.

74 Ibid., pp. 4, 7.

75 Engels ' instructions on the course of Marx's work on Capital are of fundamental importance for further research and for the current publication of draft economic manuscripts in the Second Department of the Moscow State Economic Academy.-

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The third direction of Marx's work after 1867 was largely in line with the development of political economy in a broad sense, as Engels writes in Anti-Duhring: "Political economy as the science of the conditions and forms under which production and exchange take place in various human societies and under which, accordingly, in each of them, production and exchange take place." in a given society, the distribution of products takes place - political economy in this broad sense has yet to be created." Engels further emphasizes the necessity of the "theoretical study of the pre-bourgeois economy" already undertaken by Marx, as well as of the forecast of the communist economy, for a comprehensive analysis of the capitalist mode of production .76 Marx's detailed studies of pre - capitalist formations or the forms of production that existed in Russia and the United States at that time, undertaken in the 70s and 80s of the XIX century, represented in this sense a step beyond the political economy of capitalism. Marx did not have time to complete these studies. But, for example, Engels 'work" The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the state", as well as a series of Lenin's works on the problem of the development of capitalism in Russia, are their direct continuation.

Engels ' conclusions about political economy in the broadest sense were also based on his study of the methodology of "Capital", primarily on its connection with the general provisions of materialist dialectics. Thus, Engels showed that the ultimate goal that Marx set for himself in Capital - "the discovery of the economic law of motion of modern society" 77-is not arbitrary. The dialectical way of thinking puts "before all sciences... the demand to discover the laws of motion of this eternal process of transformation in each individual field", " encourages science to identify... a systematic connection everywhere, both in particulars and in general. " 78 Another aspect of the connection between materialist dialectics and Marx's method of economic research is, as Engels showed ,that the economic process is necessarily interpreted as a relation, i.e., a dialectical, contradictory unity of two interacting parties. 79 This feature of the method is a concretization of the most important requirement of dialectics (Lenin defined it as "bifurcation of the one and cognition of its contradictory parts" 80). In particular, it is supposed to distinguish between the material content and the social form of economic processes and categories (for example, the use value and the value of goods).

These methodological characteristics were applied by Engels to the development of political and economic problems of commodity production. First, relying on the demand to find out the law of motion of a given economic phenomenon, he explained "why Marx, at the beginning of the first book, where he starts from simple commodity production, which is for him a historical prerequisite, in order to pass from this basis to capital in the following exposition, why he begins with a simple one not from a form that is logically and historically secondary, not from a commodity that is already capitalistically modified.-

see Marx. Published: vol. 1 (two books) - the manuscript of 1857-1858; vol. 2-the manuscripts of 1859-1861 and the work "On the critique of Political economy"; vol. 3 (six books) - the manuscript of 1861-1863, vol. 5-the first edition of vol. I "Capital".

76 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 20, pp. 153-151

77 Ibid., vol. 23, p. 10.

78 Ibid., vol. 20, pp. 23, 35-36.

79 See ibid., vol. 13, p. 498.

80 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 29, p. 316.

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certified"81 . In other words, in the first department of T. I "Capital" considers such a commodity form of the product of labor, which is common to both pre-capitalist and capitalist modes of production. To do this, Marx had to abstract from the specific features of commodity production under capitalism: labor power as a commodity, the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist, and the domination of the capitalist form of private property. This shows that the elaboration of the problems of political economy in the broadest sense, in this case of capitalism and those pre-capitalist formations where commodity production exists, is organically interwoven into the fabric of Marx's economic theory, into the fabric of "Capital".

Secondly, Engels showed that "the weighting of utility and labor costs in deciding the question of production is all that remains in communist society of such a concept of political economy as value." 82 It is important to note that Engels pointed out that this statement, which is an element of scientific forecasting of the communist economy, was expressed by him as early as 1844 in his "Sketches for a Critique of Political Economy" in the form of a hypothesis and that "the scientific substantiation of this statement became possible only thanks to Marx's 'Capital'. "83
Indeed, Kapital has developed and applied a method for studying the general laws of any socio-economic formation, in particular, the method of scientific forecasting of the communist economy. "If wages," wrote Marx, "are stripped of their specific capitalist character, as well as of surplus value, of necessary labor, as well as of surplus labor, then these forms will no longer remain, but only their foundations, which are common to all social modes of production." 84 These foundations are reduced to the material content of the categories named by Marx, which is ultimately determined by the development of the productive forces. To the extent that the latter does not change during the transition from one social formation to another, general laws can be formulated that are precisely studied by political economy in a broad sense.

Engels drew particular attention to the fact that these laws, "the few absolutely general laws applicable to production and exchange in general,"85 can be discovered only after studying the specific laws of each social form of production separately, and above all of the most developed of them. Among the exploitative forms of production, this is capitalism, because its study allows us to draw certain conclusions about the previous forms of production. It is in this sense that Marx wrote that "human anatomy is the key to ape anatomy." 86 Thus, the fourth generalizing principle of studying the history of "Capital" established by Engels consists in recognizing the laws of political economy in a broad sense as an organically integral part of the content of this work, due to the Marxian method of economic research. Therefore, the subject of consideration in "Capital" is also the laws of pre-capitalist formations and scientific forecasting of the communist economy.

Even in the original version of Capital, Marx examined in detail "The Forms that precede capitalist Production."

81 K. Marx and F. Engels Soch. Vol. 25, part I, pp. 16, 19.

82 Ibid., vol. 20, p. 321.

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid., vol. 25, part II, p. 448.

85 Ibid., vol. 20, p. 151.

86 Ibid., vol. 46, part I, p. 42.

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At the same time, he gave here the most important characteristics of the communist organization of labor, formulated the law of saving time, which acts as a regulator of communist production. In subsequent economic manuscripts, aspects related to political economy in a broad sense were developed by Marx in parallel with the development of the political economy of capitalism. "Just as the system of bourgeois economics unfolds before us only step by step," Marx wrote, " so it is with its self-negation, which is its ultimate result."87 . As Marx developed and deepened his economic teaching, the main points of scientific forecasting of the communist economy, based on the discovery within the capitalist system of elements of a "future, new organization of production and exchange"88 , also received their further development and justification.

The same was true of the theory of pre-capitalist formations. A definite result of its development was summed up by Marx in 1881, in the outline of a response to a letter from V. I. Zasulich. Marx's concept of "secondary formation" includes "a number of societies based on slavery and serfdom." 89 This conclusion was based on a long-term study of pre-capitalist social relations, conditioned by Marx's methodology. "Our method," Marx noted, "shows those points where a historical consideration of the subject must be included, i.e., those points where the bourgeois economy, which is only a historical form of the production process, contains references to earlier historical modes of production that go beyond it." 90 Here are some of these instructions recorded by Marx in Kapital and its draft versions::

a) Marx considered the economic development of the Eastern countries at the pre-capitalist stage of production as an organic component of the world-historical process. He noted that in comparison with capitalism, " the natural laws of Asian, or ancient, or feudal modes of production were significantly different. On the other hand, there is no doubt that human production in all its forms has certain unchangeable laws or relations." 91
Marx found confirmation of this thesis in medieval Japan, which "with its purely feudal organization of land ownership and its widely developed small-peasant economy gives a much truer picture of the European Middle Ages than all our historical books, which are mostly imbued with bourgeois prejudices."92 As early as 1858, Marx was clear about the universal character of the "economic community" as the starting point for "all cultured peoples."93
b) Marx formulated a general statement describing the class specifics of pre-capitalist exploitative societies: "In all social systems, the ruling class (or classes) is always the class that owns the objective conditions of labor, the bearers of which, even when they work, work, therefore, not as workers, but as owners, while the subordinate class is always the class that, as labor power, is itself in possession of the material conditions of labor. or one that disposes only of its own labor force (even if this happens).,

87 Ibid., part II, p. 222.

88 Ibid., vol. 20, p. 153.

89 Ibid., vol. 19, p. 419.

90 Ibid., vol. 46, part I, p. 449.

91 Ibid., vol. 48, p. 157.

92 Ibid., vol. 23, p. 729.

93 Ibid., vol. 46, part II, p. 394.

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as, for example, in India, Egypt, etc., so that they [the workers] own land, but the owner of which, however, is the king or some caste, etc.) " 94.

c) In the course of a detailed analysis of capitalist relations, Marx made a systematic distinction between the material content and the social form of economic categories, drawing important conclusions in relation to the theory of pre-capitalist formations. For example, he characterized the material content of commodity circulation and commodity production in the following way: "Whether goods are the product of production based on slavery, or the product of production by peasants (Chinese, Indian Rayats), or communal production (Dutch East Indies), or state production (such as serfdom-based production, in the past epochs of Russian history), or the production of semi-savage hunting peoples, etc. - it is all the same: money or goods, in the form of which industrial capital appears, they are opposed as goods and money " 95. Marx shows that the material content of the category of social division of labor is characteristic of the most diverse social formations, 96 and this unity is reflected in various economic concepts. This applies to a simple labor cooperative 97, as well as to the category of "working stock"98 . Marx emphasizes the universal role of natural factors in the production process99, the general nature of extended reproduction 100, public accounting 101, stock formation 102, reproduction of working capital 103, saving of fixed capital 104, interruptions in the production process 105 .

d) Marx developed the doctrine of the forms of transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist relations and the subordination of less developed countries to capitalist relations. "The very circumstances that create the basic condition of capitalist production - the existence of a class of wage - workers-contribute to the transition of all commodity production to capitalist commodity production. To the extent that the latter develops, it acts in a destructive and disintegrating way on every older form of production, which, being mainly directed to the satisfaction of its own immediate needs, transforms only the surplus of the product into a commodity. It makes the sale of the product its main interest, and at first it does not seem to affect the mode of production itself - such, for example, was the first effect of capitalist world trade on such peoples as the Chinese, Indian, Arab, etc. But where capitalist commodity production has taken root, it destroys all forms of commodity production based either on the producer's own labor or simply on the sale of only the surplus product as a commodity. First, it makes commodity production a universal form of production, and then

94 Ibid., vol. 47, p. 144.

95 Ibid., vol. 24, p. 126.

96 See ibid., vol. 23, pp. 50-51; vol. 47, pp. 303-1304.

97 See ibid., vol. 23, p. 345; vol. 47, p. 287, vol. 48, p. 19.

98 Ibid., vol. 48, pp. 131-133.

99 See ibid., vol. 47, pp. 281-282.

100 See ibid., vol. 23, pp. 611-612.

101 See ibid., vol. 24, pp. 151-154.

102 See ibid., pp. 158-161.

103 See ibid., p. 267.

104 See ibid., vol. 25, part I, p. 113

105 See ibid., vol. 24, pp. 117, 271-272; vol. 25, part I, p. 81.

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it gradually transforms all commodity production into capitalist production. " 106
This shows that the rich material on pre-capitalist economics contained in Marx's writings does not serve as illustrative material at all, but is, in full accordance with Engels ' statements, an organically integral part of political economy in the broad sense, the development of which Marx and Engels considered an important aspect of the creation of "Capital".

Finally, the fifth principle that characterizes Engels ' approach to the history of "Capital" is the strictly defined character of the propositions of Marx's economic theory, their conditionality by concrete historical conditions, and in this sense their relative character .107 In the same connection, Engels noted that "in general, one would have to look for ready-made and once and for all suitable definitions from Marx." 108 This is one aspect of this principle. Another aspect of it is Engels ' conclusion about the fundamentally unclosed nature of Marx's economic theory, its aspiration to the future. In volume III of Das Kapital, Engels wrote to K. Schmidt, "You will find much that is new and still more unresolved" on the question of credit and the money market, and "consequently, along with new solutions, there are new problems." 109 Engels ' general remark about the anti-dogmatic, anti-doctrinaire character of Marxism is connected with this characteristic: "Marx's entire worldview [Auffassungsweise] is not a doctrine, but a method. It provides not ready-made dogmas, but starting points for further research and a method for this research. " 110
Concluding his encyclopedic essay on Marx and Marxism, Lenin wrote: "One cannot understand Marxism and one cannot present it in its entirety without taking into account all the writings of Engels." 111 Engels ' works are an integral part of the Marxist economic legacy. He wrote the first Marxist work on political economy, which served as an important impetus for Marx's own research. He greatly assisted Marx in developing the theory and method of "Capital" and its structure, and was in every sense a co-author of this work. Having developed the fundamental principles of scientific publication of Marx's works and research of his work, including the history of "Capital", Engels was the founder of scientific Marx studies.

The principles formulated in this article do not exhaust Engels ' approach to the history of Capital. In this sense, Engels ' legacy is much richer. It seems indisputable that this approach also aims to further study the problems of the history and theory of Marxism. The actual task is, in particular, to show how Lenin worked out the problems of the history of "Capital".

106 Ibid., vol. 24, p. 43.

107 See ibid., vol. 39, pp. 69-70.

108 Ibid., vol. 25, part I, p. 16.

109 Ibid., vol. 38, p. 108

110 Ibid., vol. 39, p. 352.

111 Lenin V. I. PSS. Vol. 26, p. 93.

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