Das Kapital and preparatory work (especially regarding the theory of surplus value), the first volume appeared in 1867 as "The Production Process of Capital". After Marx's death in 1883, from manuscripts and the first volume Engels introduced Volume II: "The Circulation Process of Capital" in 1885; and Volume III: "The Overall Process of Capitalist Production" in 1894. These three volumes are collectively known as "Das Kapital". "Capital, Volume I" (1867) is a critical analysis of political economy, meant to reveal the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production and of the
Value product only to the net output of "capitalist" production, not to the valuation of "all" production in a society, part of which may of course not be commercial production at all. The concept is formulated more precisely when Marx considers the reproduction and distribution of the national income (see e.g. his manuscript called "Results of the Immediate [or Direct] Process of Production", available in English in the Pelican edition of "Das Kapital"), and also online; and the last chapters of "Das Kapital" Volume 3). Marx wrote this in 1864, i.e. about 70 years or so before the first comprehensive Gross National