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
The Communist Manifesto in theory; Marxist works such as the "Manifesto" or "Das Kapital" were read primarily by party theoreticians. On the other hand, small, dedicated militant parties and Marxist sects in the West took pride in knowing the theory; Hobsbawm says "This was the milieu in which 'the clearness of a comrade could be gauged invariably from the number of earmarks on his Manifesto. Following the October Revolution of 1917 that swept the Vladimir Lenin-led Bolsheviks to power in Russia, the world's first socialist state was founded explicitly along Marxist lines. The Soviet Union, which Bolshevik Russia would become a part of,