Abstract

We are now observing a most notable anniversary: a century and a half since the birth of Karl Marx, the great founder of Marxist theory and the ideologist of the proletariat. Our present meeting virtually coincides with another date of great significance. The first thousand copies of Marx's immortal Capital appeared in Hamburg a hundred years ago, in September 1867. No other book has exercised as deep-going and ever-widening an influence on various aspects of the mental and practical activity of men as this great work of theory. The influence of Capital on methodological thought, too, has been exceptionally great. It is precisely through the prism of the ideas of this classical piece of writing that the methodological and logical notions contained in the prior and subsequent writings of Marx and Engels can be understood most completely and employed to build a theory of knowledge. Capital is of immense significance to the further development of dialectical logic in our own day and for working out cardinal problems of epistemology. Emphasizing the exceptional significance to philosophy and logic of Marx's principal scientific work, Lenin wrote: "If Marx did not leave us a Logic, he did leave us the logic of Capital, something that should be utilized to the full in the matter at hand."