Marx's general rate of profit transformation: methodological and theoretical obstacles: an appraisal based on the 1864-65 manuscript of Das Kapital III

The third volume of Marx’s Capital was posthumously published in 1894 as edited by Friedrich Engels. Part Two of Capital III sets out the transformation of the rate of surplus value into the general rate of profit. This paper discusses this text in confrontation with Marx’s manuscripts of 1864–65, from which Engels edited Capital III, as well as with some of the manuscripts of the 1870s, first published in 2003. A first finding, not related directly to the manuscripts, is that confusion among different levels of abstraction is the methodological obstacle for this transformation. Second, a theoretical obstacle is Marx’s assumption of equalized rates of surplus‐value maintained throughout most of Part Two of the 1864–65 manuscript. Third, the 1864–65 manuscript is a research manuscript far removed from resolutions fit for a final presentation. A fourth finding is that Marx himself was disappointed with what he had reached (in the 1864–65 manuscript) – so much so that it is unlikely that he intended to maintain the 1864–65 transformation procedure when he wrote, in 1866–67, the final version for the first edition of Capital I. It is therefore misleading to interpret the Capital I text in the ‘light’ of Engels’ edited Capital III text – at least as far as Marx is concerned.