History of economic thought died, Engels completed the second volume of "Das Kapital" from his notes. Marx wrote his magnum opus "Das Kapital" (1867) at the British Museum's library in London. Karl Marx begins with the concept of commodities. Before capitalism, says Marx, production was based on slavery – in ancient Rome for example – then serfdom in the feudal societies of medieval Europe. The current mode of labor exchange has produced an erratic and unstable situation allowing the conditions for revolution. People buy and sell their labor as people buy and sell goods and services. People themselves have become disposable commodities. As Marx
Influences on Karl Marx was "much more important and copious than Darwin". Although there is no mention of Darwin in "The Communist Manifesto" (published eleven years prior to "The Origin of Species"), Marx includes two explicit references to Darwin and evolution in the second edition of "Das Kapital", in two footnotes where he relates Darwin's theory to his opinion about production and technology development. In the Volume I, Chapter 14: "The Detail Labourer and his implements", Section 2, Marx referred to Darwin's "Origin of Species" as an "epoch-making work" while in Chapter 15, Section I took on the comparison of organs of plants to