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
Economic planning are impossible organizational forms for managing a modern industrial system. Joseph Schumpeter, an economist associated with both the Austrian school and the Institutional school of economics, argued that the changing nature of economic activity (specifically the increasing bureaucratization and specialization required in production and management) was the major cause for capitalism eventually evolving into socialism. The role of the businessman was increasingly bureaucratic, and specific functions within the firm required increasingly specialized knowledge, which could be supplied as easily by state functionaries in publicly-owned enterprises. In the first volume of "Das Kapital", Karl Marx identified the process of capital accumulation