This book is unfinished. It does not have the polished grandeur of the first volume. But despite that it holds some magnificent insight. I read the middle section in tandem with the second volume of David Harvey's Companion to Marx's Capital. The sections he covers on financial capital are excellent and genuinely speak to the modern world of speculative investor bubbles. Without Harvey for company I found the first section demonstrating the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, and the final section on ground rent less convincing. In each case I thought the case interesting but not made. The volume closes out with a superb section integrating some of this thinking into the wider structure of Marx's thinking. Chapters 48 onwards are worth reading in their own right.

This is not a coherent expansion of Marx's thought, and those who have question the influence of Engels may well have a point. But this is still very much worth the read, especially the sections on finance capital, and particularly when read with David Harvey by your side.

June 2022: second reading, this time on its own. It remains a confused, unfinished, and therefore difficult book to read. But still with insight. I made better headway with understanding the tendency for the rate of profit to decline, and similarly with key concepts like the equalisation of the rate of profit and fictitious capital. But the link between this concepts and the vision set out in volume 1 feels un-thought-through. Chapter 48 ("The Trinity Formula") is as good as it gets at bringing it all together.

Worth reading, but flawed.