Notes on a crisis : the Exzerpthefte and Marx’s method of research and composition.

Abstract

This paper presents Notebook B113, one of Marx’s unpublished manuscripts, and suggests its importance for highlighting the monetary and financial issues which Marx was investigating after 1867. The contents of this notebook reveal a systematic effort to investigate new features of financial markets and institutions which were spreading throughout Europe during the 1860’s, and which were put in sharp evidence by the events that surrounded the Overend, Gurney crisis in England, in 1866. Besides offering valuable clues with respect to Marx’s method of investigation and composition, the relevance of the themes comprised in the notebook for the analysis developed in part five of Capital’s volume III suggests that these manuscript excerpts and notes were part of the preparatory material for a future revision of that book, which Marx was never able to carry through.