Socialism: Utopian and Scientific of thousands of copies. Throughout the decade of the 1860s, Karl Marx, close personal friend and political associate of Friedrich Engels, dedicated himself to the study of economics, culminating in the publication of the first volume of "Das Kapital" in 1867. Marx's lengthy and ponderous volume was extremely difficult for the average to penetrate, however, leading Engels to suggest to Marx in a letter of September 16, 1868 that a short popularized version of "Das Kapital" for a working class audience was urgently needed. "If it is not written, some Moses or other will come along and do it and
Theories of Surplus Value 1472) running to some 200 printed sheets in length: it is the first systematically worked out draft – though still only rough and incomplete – of all four volumes of "Capital". "Theories of Surplus Value" forms the longest (about 110 printed sheets) and most fully elaborated part of this huge manuscript, and it is the first and only draft of the fourth, concluding volume of "Capital". Marx called this volume, as distinguished from the three theoretical volumes of "Das Kapital", the historical, historico-critical, or historico-literary part of his work. Marx began to write "Theories of Surplus Value" within the framework