THE “GREAT SERVICE” OF HEGEL’S LOGIC TO MARX’S THEORY OF SURPLUS-VALUE

While Marx was working on the Grundrisse, in January 1858, he wrote a letter to Engels in which he stated that a recent fortuitous review of Hegel’s Logic had been “of great service” in the development of his own theory, especially with respect to the method employed in his theory of profit. This is especially important because Marx’s theory of profit or surplus-value is the most important part of his theory. Marx commented in this letter that he had “overthrown” all previous theories of profit in Capital. A key excerpt from this letter is the following: By the way, I