In 1859, Marx published A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (First Instalment), and after that, he intended to continue writing the second instalment, Capital in General, and set the Draft Plan of the Chapter on Capital, divided into four major parts: I. The Process of Production of Capital; II. Circulation Process of Capital; III. Capital and Profit; IV. Varia (miscellany). Marx included the contents of his previous manuscripts in each of these four major parts, forming a broad structural outline. The writing of the manuscripts consisted roughly of three stages: The first stage was from August 1861 to the spring of 1862, and the content written was equivalent to the first half of Capital, Vol. 1, (up to “Machinery”) and the first three parts of Capital, Vol. 3, i.e., “The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Profit and of Rate of Surplus-Value into the Rate of Profit”, “Conversion of Profit into Average Profit”, and “The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall”. The second stage was from the spring 1862 to December 1862, and the content written included “Theory of Surplus-Value” as well as the second half of Capital, Vol. 3, such as commercial capital, money-capital, ground-rent, etc., and in addition, there were some theoretical fragments of Capital, Vol. 2. At the end of December 1862, Marx came up with a new idea in his research, and prepared first to publish the part “Capital in General” as an independent work, under the title Capital and under the subtitle A Critique of Political Economy. The third stage was from January to July 1863, and the content of research involved the second half of Capital, Vol. 1 as well as the manuscripts on the question of reproduction. Thus, by July 1863, Marx has completed the writing of the manuscripts and gave the manuscripts the title “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Third Chapter (Capital in General)”…
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