The Process of Capitalist Production As a Whole. Book III Capital: a Critique of Political Economy, Vol. III

Capital, Volume III, subtitled The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, was prepared by Friedrich Engels from notes left by Karl Marx and published in 1894. It is in seven parts:1.The conversion of Surplus Value into Profit and the rate of Surplus Value into the rate of Profit2.Conversion of Profit into Average Profit3.The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall4.Conversion of Commodity Capital and Money Capital into Commercial Capital and Money-Dealing Capital (Merchant's Capital)5.Division of Profit Into Interest and Profit of Enterprise, Interest Bearing Capital.6.Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground Rent.7.Revenues and Their SourcesThe work is best known today for part 3, which in summary says that as the organic fixed capital requirements of production rise as a result of advancements in production generally, the rate of profit tends to fall. This result, which orthodox Marxists believe is a principal contradictory characteristic leading to an inevitable collapse of the capitalist order, was held by Marx and Engels to, as a result of various contradictions in the capitalist mode of production, result in crises whose resolution necessitates the emergence of an entirely new mode of production as the culmination of the same historical dialectic that led to the emergence of capitalism from prior forms.