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All of the issues in the first volume have their counterparts in the respective chapters of the second. The second volume, meanwhile, furnishes an in-depth, meticulous critique of Marxist theory as presented in the first volume. This was supposed to take place after the collapse of the whole system, thus bringing the emancipation of humankind. He begins with the value Marx attached to commodities, followed by the value of money, surplus value, capital reproduction and accumulation, the distribution of production between social classes, the economic crises of capitalism, and finally how Marx saw communism replacing capitalism. Rallo does not seek to distort or caricature Marx but rather simply to unpack and explain what his ideas were in an easily accessible way. It is designed to systematically and aseptically present Marxist thought, especially (but not exclusively) in its economic facet. The first volume provides a painstaking explanation of Marxism. (In fact, the expression “Classical Economists” was an invention of Marx that would later be used by John Maynard Keynes, who called it the “Classical School”, to refer more broadly to the doctrine of such authors as David Ricardo, Adam Smith, J.S Mill, Marshall, Edgeworth, and Pigou.) Likewise, Rallo sets out to describe the mistakes Marx made in his interpretation of the capitalist system. Thus, in Capital, Marx sought to expose the shortcomings of the traditional economic model of his time, when interpreting the reality of capitalism. Indeed, its subtitle Critique of Marxist Political Economy, echoes the subtitle of Marx’s key book, Capital, which is of course Critique of Political Economy.

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Rallo’s two-volume series presents a critique of Marxist doctrine and especially of its economic theory. It could be said that Rallo gives Marx and Engels a taste of their own medicine by examining and pointing out their contradictions, something they did with Dühring and capitalism in general.

The latter, in turn, had rebutted many of Marx’s ideas. As the title suggests, Engels wrote Anti-Dühring to criticize the theses of socialist philosopher Karl Eugen Dühring. It merely emulates one of the books by Friedrich Engels (Marx’s intellectual companion for 40 years) called Anti-Dühring. Anti-Marx is not a pejorative choice of title and should not be considered as a statement of Juan Ramón Rallo’s personal animosity towards Marx.