Quiz: Capital, Volume III

All 50 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. What does Marx call the historical mission of capital?

   The spread of political democracy and civil liberty to every corner of the globe The ruthless development, in geometrical progression, of the productivity of human labour The unification of the world’s nations into a single peaceful community of free commerce and trade The abolition of poverty and want through the free and equal exchange of commodities among nations
2. 2. Where, according to Marx, is the innermost secret and hidden foundation of the whole social structure to be found?

   In the political constitution of the state and the laws governing property, marriage and inheritance In the national character of the people, formed by their climate, soil and history In the religious beliefs and moral customs handed down by the church from one generation to the next In the direct relation of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers
3. 3. What does Marx call the formula Capital—Profit, Land—Ground-Rent, Labour—Wages?

   The trinitarian formula The iron law The holy family of economics The natural law
4. 4. Which recent scandal does Engels add to chapter XXVII as an example of stock-exchange swindling?

   The Panama swindle The South Sea Bubble The collapse of Overend Gurney The Mississippi Company
5. 5. What do the co-operative factories prove, according to chapter XXIII?

   That profits are impossible unless a capitalist owner advances the capital and bears the risks That workers cannot manage production without capitalists to supervise and direct all their labour That the capitalist has become as superfluous as a functionary in production as the big landlord That the state must take over industry, since private and co-operative management both fail
6. 6. What does Marx say about the sum of all prices of production in society?

   It equals the sum of all values It has no relation to values It equals total wages It is always greater than the sum of values
7. 7. With what is capitalist production “utterly prodigal”, however economical in other respects?

   Fuel Money Human life Machinery
8. 8. To what does Marx compare the different capitalists, so far as profits are concerned?

   Gamblers at a table, winning profit in proportion to their luck, skill and daring Soldiers in rival armies, each seizing as much of the plunder as he can Stockholders in a company, sharing profit by their shares Members of a guild, sharing profit equally regardless of their capital
9. 9. Which novelist does Marx praise as “generally remarkable for his profound grasp of actual conditions”?

   Sand Hugo Zola Balzac
10. 10. What did Adam Smith call what Marx calls the price of production?

    Necessary price Real price Natural price Market price
11. 11. What did Engels hope to publish next as the fourth volume?

    The history of theories of surplus-value A volume on the state Marx’s letters A volume on world trade and the world market
12. 12. Who, according to Engels, was “the first one who really attempted” to solve the problem of the average rate of profit before Volume III appeared?

    Professor Achille Loria Conrad Schmidt Eugen Böhm-Bawerk Professor Julius Wolf
13. 13. To what does Marx compare the relation between capital, land and labour as alleged sources of revenue?

    Father, son and holy ghost Lawyer’s fees, carrots, and music Earth, air and water of the old philosophers Body, soul and spirit of production
14. 14. What happens just after Marx asks “What constitutes a class?”

    He gives a full definition Engels completes the chapter He refers to Volume I The manuscript ends
15. 15. What does Marx say profit is, as it presents itself to the capitalist?

    Something entirely different from surplus-value The same as surplus-value, only in a mystified form A gift of nature The wages of the capitalist for his labour of superintendence
16. 16. On what is landed property conditioned, according to Marx?

    The natural fertility of the soil, which yields a surplus above the labour expended The labour of the landlord in clearing, draining and improving the land in the past The laws of nature, which fix a limited quantity of land for a growing population The monopolisation of certain portions of the globe by private persons
17. 17. How does the law of value enforce itself under capitalist production?

    Not at all, since prices of production abolish value as a regulator Exactly in each individual transaction, as an equality of price and value Only through state regulation of prices, as a rule imposed from outside Merely as a prevailing tendency, as an average of perpetual fluctuations
18. 18. Whose fancies about compound interest does Marx say “far outdo the fantasies of the alchemists”?

    Dr. Price’s Lord Overstone’s Adam Smith’s John Law’s
19. 19. How does the cost of a commodity to the capitalist differ from its actual cost, according to chapter I?

    The two are identical, since both count only the constant and variable capital consumed The capitalist’s cost-price includes his profit, so it is greater than the actual cost The capitalist’s cost-price omits the unpaid surplus labour, so it is less than the actual cost The actual cost omits the wear and tear of machinery, so it is less than the capitalist’s
20. 20. What is the forming of fictitious capital called?

    Coining Hoarding Discounting Capitalising
21. 21. What does Marx say about the claim that too much is produced?

    He says the trouble is too much money, not too many goods, in circulation at the time He says the workers consume too much, leaving too little for the accumulation of capital Not enough is produced to satisfy the wants of the great mass decently and humanely He agrees that too much is produced, more than the population could ever consume
22. 22. What does Marx say about value and the process of circulation?

    No value, and therefore no surplus-value, is produced in circulation Circulation doubles value Merchants create new surplus-value by buying cheap and selling dear Most value is produced in circulation
23. 23. What does interest-bearing capital present, according to chapter XXIV?

    C—M—C, the simple circulation of commodities by which producers buy and sell A pure loss to the lender, who receives back only the sum he lent M—C—M′, the ordinary circuit of industrial capital through production M—M′, money creating more money without any intermediate process of production
24. 24. What does Marx say is a more lucrative source for house rent than the mines of Potosí ever were for Spain?

    Agriculture Luxury Industry Poverty
25. 25. What does Marx call “the real barrier of capitalist production”?

    The working class Nature Capital itself The state
26. 26. How does the law of the falling rate of profit show itself, because of the counteracting causes?

    Not at all in practice, since the counteracting causes always fully cancel the falling tendency As an iron law, the rate falling steadily and visibly in every single year without exception Only in agriculture, where the declining fertility of land drives the rate down over long periods Only as a tendency, whose effects become clear under certain circumstances and over long periods
27. 27. What does Marx call “the last cause of all real crises”?

    The poverty and restricted consumption of the masses A shortage of gold in the Bank’s reserves Government interference Bad harvests
28. 28. How does usurer’s capital relate to the existing mode of production in pre-capitalist conditions?

    It has no effect on it at all, since it lends only to the idle nobility for consumption It does not alter it but attaches itself to it as a parasite and makes it wretched It revolutionises it from within, transforming handicraft directly into modern industry It creates the capitalist mode of production directly, by financing the first factories
29. 29. To which figure does Marx compare the labour of supervision needed in all combined production?

    The director of an orchestra A general A priest The captain of a ship
30. 30. Which of these is not one of the counteracting causes Marx lists against the falling rate of profit?

    Foreign trade Rising wages Cheapening of the elements of constant capital Depression of wages below the value of labour-power
31. 31. What do the co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent, according to Marx?

    A step backwards towards the small handicraft of the guilds Within the old form, the first beginnings of the new Capitalism unchanged, with the workers merely as hired hands A form of charity
32. 32. What does Marx call the fundamental premise of the true realm of freedom?

    The shortening of the working day Universal suffrage The abolition of private property in land The end of all labour
33. 33. How did Engels mark his own additions to the text?

    In brackets, initialled In footnotes at the end of each chapter In italics, with a note in the preface He did not mark them at all
34. 34. What contradiction does chapter VIII set up?

    The price of commodities seems irreconcilable with the quantity of money in circulation The theory of value seems irreconcilable with equal profit rates in industries of different composition Rising wages seem irreconcilable with a constant rate of profit in industries of equal composition The rate of interest seems irreconcilable with the rate of profit in industries of similar turnover
35. 35. How does Marx describe the world presented by the trinitarian formula?

    An enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, where Mister Capital and Mistress Land carry on their goblin tricks A world of free and equal competition, in which capital, land and labour meet as equal partners A just and rational world, in which each factor of production receives exactly what it contributes to the product A world of perfect natural harmony, in which the interests of all classes coincide in the long run
36. 36. What did Engels have to work from in preparing Volume III, according to his preface?

    A finished manuscript ready for print Marx’s lecture notes Only a first draft, very incomplete A French translation
37. 37. Which part of the manuscript presented Engels with the main difficulty?

    Part I, on cost-price Part III, on falling profit Part VI, on rent Part V, on interest and credit
38. 38. What does Marx say the progressive tendency of the general rate of profit to fall expresses?

    The progressive decline in the productivity of labour, as capitalism slowly exhausts the soil and the mines The steady rise of real wages, as workers win a growing share of the product they create The progressive development of the social productivity of labour, peculiar to capitalist production The growing waste of capital through mismanagement and speculation on the stock exchange
39. 39. What does Marx say about a “natural rate of interest”?

    There is no such thing; the rate depends on supply and demand of money-capital It is set by nature, according to the productivity of the soil and the abstinence of lenders It is always five per cent, the customary rate established in England by law and usage It is fixed by the average rate of profit, at a constant proportion of about one half
40. 40. What are crises, according to chapter XV?

    The final collapse of capitalism, proof that it can never again restore equilibrium Momentary, forcible solutions of existing contradictions, violent eruptions restoring disturbed equilibrium Results of mistaken monetary policy, which the banks could prevent by regulating the note issue Accidental disturbances from outside the system, such as bad harvests, wars and errors of policy
41. 41. What does Marx call the prices formed by adding the average rate of profit to the cost-price?

    Natural prices Prices of production Monopoly prices Market values
42. 42. What does Marx say the formation of stock companies represents?

    The triumph of private enterprise, with capital held ever more firmly as individual property by its owners A purely legal change of form, leaving the character of capital and production untouched A return to small property, as the shares are dispersed among countless small savers The abolition of capital as private property within the boundaries of capitalist production itself
43. 43. What does Marx say the capitalists form against the working class, despite competing among themselves?

    A church A veritable freemason society A standing army under one command A guild
44. 44. What are the “two roads” of the transition from feudal to capitalist production?

    Reform from above by the absolute monarchy, or revolution from below by the burghers Foreign trade enriches the merchants, or colonial war enriches the state and nobility The town conquers the countryside, or the landlords turn themselves into farmers The producer becomes merchant and capitalist, or the merchant takes over production
45. 45. What does Marx call the value-composition of capital insofar as it reflects its technical composition?

    The rate of turnover of the total capital Fixed capital The organic composition of capital The rate of profit on the total capital
46. 46. Which example does Marx use to show the general character of differential rent?

    A building lot in a growing city, whose rent rises with the spread of population Factories driven by natural waterfalls competing with those driven by steam engines Two vineyards of different quality, one yielding a rare wine at a monopoly price A gold mine of unusual richness, worked beside poorer mines in the same mountain district
47. 47. What raised the price of cotton to an unprecedented height, according to chapter VI?

    The Crimean War An Indian famine The American Civil War Tariffs
48. 48. How does Marx contrast the monetary system and the credit system?

    The monetary system is essentially Protestant, the credit system essentially Catholic The monetary system is essentially Catholic, the credit system essentially Protestant The monetary system is essentially ancient, the credit system essentially modern and English The monetary system is essentially just, the credit system essentially fraudulent
49. 49. What are the three great classes of modern society, according to the unfinished chapter LII?

    Industrial workers, managers and shareholders Rich, middle and poor The nobility, the bourgeoisie and the peasantry Wage labourers, capitalists and landlords
50. 50. What does Marx say about the falling rate of profit in relation to earlier political economy?

    It is a mere statistical illusion invented by the critics of classical political economy It is a fact Ricardo had already fully explained by the declining fertility of soil It is the mystery whose solution has been the goal of all political economy since Adam Smith It is a phenomenon that no economist since Adam Smith had ever observed or remarked upon