A single page from one of Karl Marx’s manuscript, which is said to be a part of the first draft of his famous book DasKapital , has been sold for a whopping $5,23,000 at an auction here, according to a media report today.
The manuscript is one of the 1,250 pages of notes Marx made in London from September 1850 to August 1853, based on which he wrote the first draft of Das Kapital .
The notes are considered valuable materials to study the development of Marx’s thoughts on economics.
The page was provided for auction by Chinese entrepreneur Feng Lun.
It went under the hammer on Monday, with starting price 3,00,000 yuan, but the final bid was for about 3.34 million yuan ($5,23,000).
The page includes extracts and analyses Marx made on British banker James William Gilbart’s book Practical Treatise on Banking , which he referenced while writing his piece “Capital: Critique of Political Economy,” according to the state-run portal china.org.cn.
Engels too goes under the hammer
At the same auction, a manuscript belonging to Marx’s contemporary Friedrich Engels, who co-wrote with Marx the Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei ( Communist Manifesto), was also sold for 1.67 million yuan.
It is an article Engels wrote for the newspaper Allgemeine Militarzeitung in November 1862, the report said.
The sale comes on the 200th birth anniversary of Marx this year.
