Das Kapital sciences published before 1950. In "Das Kapital" (1867), Marx proposes that the motivating force of capitalism is in the exploitation of labor, whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value. The owner of the means of production is able to claim the right to this surplus value because he or she is legally protected by the ruling regime through property rights and the legally established distribution of shares which are by law only to be distributed to company owners and their board members. The historical section shows how these rights were acquired in the first place chiefly through
Influences on Karl Marx animals and tools. In a book review of the first volume of "Das Kapital", Engels wrote that Marx was "simply striving to establish the same gradual process of transformation demonstrated by Darwin in natural history as a law in the social field". In this line of thought, several authors such as William F. O'Neill, have seen that "Marx describes history as a social Darwinist 'survival of the fittest' dominated by the conflict between different social classes" and moving to a future in which social conflict will ultimately disappear in a 'classless society'" while some Marxists try to dissociate Marx from