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A CONTRIBUTION TO
THE CRITIQUE OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY
BY
KARL MARX
Translated from the Second German Edition by N. I. Stone
With an Appendix Containing Marx’s Introduction to the Critique
Recently Published among His Posthumous Papers
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
Copyright, 1904
By the International Library Publishing Co.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
The present translation has been made from the second edition of the
“Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie,” published by Karl Kautsky in
1897 with slight changes from the original edition of 1859; changes
that had been indicated by Marx on the margins of his own copy of the
book.
As will be seen from the author’s preface, the work was originally
issued as the first instalment of a complete treatise of political
economy. As he went on with his work, however, Marx modified his plans
and eight years after the appearance of the “Zur Kritik” he published
the first volume of his Capital, whose scope was intended to cover the
entire field of political economy.
The plan to which Marx alludes in the preface to the present work
was thus abandoned in its formal aspects, but not in substance. The
subject matter treated here was reproduced or rather “summarized,” as
Marx himself puts it, in Capital. But that was done in so far as was
necessary to secure continuity of treatment. On the other hand, many
important matters are treated here more thoroughly than in Capital,
especially the part devoted to the discussion of money. This, as well
as the chapters on the history of the theories of value and of money,
which do not appear in Capital, make “Zur Kritik” a work practically
complete in itself.
The recent silver agitation in this country shows how timely and useful
this work still is, though written nearly half a century ago. That a
great part of the working-men employed in the cities were not carried
away by the Democratic-Populist agitation in 1896 and 1900 is probably
due in a greater measure than is commonly realized to the direct
and indirect influence of Marx, whose economic teachings guided the
socialists in their counter agitation. And since the conditions which
once gave rise to a demand for an inflated currency have by no means
disappeared beyond a possibility of return, this book has a wide field
before it, outside of the library of the college and of the student of
economics, which the author’s name and prestige with the working class
insures for it.
There is another reason, if any need be given why this book should
have been translated into English. Marx’s preface to the present work
contains the classic formulation of his historico-philosophic theory
known as the Materialistic Interpretation of History. This theory,
which until recently was entertained almost exclusively by socialist
writers and was hardly heard of outside of socialist circles in English
speaking countries, is at last receiving not only due recognition but
sympathetic appreciation at the hands of men of science.[1] It is
rather a significant coincidence that the work which for the first
time clearly formulated the law governing social evolution should have
seen the light of day in the same year in which Darwin gave to the
world his theory of organic evolution. And as the latter had to fight
its way to recognition in the teeth of religious prejudices, so has the
recognition of the former been retarded by even more powerful social
and political prejudices.
The Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy which is added
as a supplement to this book is for the first time published in book
form in any language. It was written by Marx in 1857, but for reasons
explained by him in the preface was not published and in fact was never
finished by him, since according to his changed plans it would have
fitted more into the last volume of Capital which was to contain a
history of political economy. The introduction has been published but
lately in the form of a magazine article by Karl Kautsky, editor of the
Neue Zeit and literary executor of Karl Marx.
A few explanations are here in order with reference to the work of
translation. No one is more keenly alive to the shortcomings of the
English rendering of the original than the translator himself. While
fully conscious that the translation might be greatly improved, he
has at times deliberately sacrificed literary finish to closeness to
the original. It will be found that many passages have been rendered
more clear and concise in Capital in which, according to Marx’s own
statement in the preface to that work, they were much simplified and
popularized. The Hegelian phraseology is more in evidence in the
present work rendering translation a more difficult task. Yet for
that very reason it seemed particularly desirable to give to English
speaking readers as close a version of the original as was possible. In
the few cases where certain passages from this work were reproduced by
Marx in Capital, the translation of the latter by Moore and Aveling was
freely drawn upon with slight modifications here and there.
About the only liberty taken with Marx’s terminology has been in
the case of the word “bürgerlich.” Marx speaks here of “bürgerliche
Produktion” and “bürgerlicher Reichthum” and “bürgerliche Arbeit” where
eight years later he used in corresponding passages in Capital the word
“kapitalistische.” As the English speaking reader is more accustomed to
hear of the “capitalist” system of production than of the “bourgeois”
system of production, etc., the translator considered Marx’s own change
of this term within a few years from the publication of “Zur Kritik”
a sufficient justification for rendering the word “bürgerlich” into
“capitalistic” wherever it seemed more likely to carry the meaning home
to the reader.
In view of the fact that the work is likely to be read in wide circles
it was thought desirable to translate the numerous quotations from
Italian, Greek, Latin and French writers, the translation being given
side by side with the original quotation. All English citations given
by Marx in German have been restored from the original sources, which
necessitated the use of four libraries, the Astor and the Columbia
University libraries in New York, the Congressional Library in
Washington, and the private library of Professor Seligman to whose
kindness the translator is indebted for the permission to use rare
works of the seventeenth century quoted by Marx. Several of Marx’s
references to the pages of the books quoted by him have been found to
be wrong and therefore differ here from those given in the original.
In two or three cases where the original English citations could not
be found they were retranslated from German with the quotation marks
omitted.
This statement would be incomplete if the translator failed to mention
the helpful participation in this work by his wife whose share in the
translation is equal to his own.
New York, October, 1903.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE.
I consider the system of bourgeois economy in the following order:
_Capital_, _landed property_, _wage labor_; _state_, _foreign trade_,
_world market_. Under the first three heads I examine the conditions
of the economic existence of the three great classes, which make up
modern bourgeois society; the connection of the three remaining heads
is self evident. The first part of the first book, treating of capital,
consists of the following chapters: 1. Commodity; 2. Money, or simple
circulation; 3. Capital in general. The first two chapters form the
contents of the present work. The entire material lies before me in the
form of monographs, written at long intervals not for publication, but
for the purpose of clearing up those questions to myself, and their
systematic elaboration on the plan outlined above will depend upon
circumstances.
I omit a general introduction which I had prepared, as on second
thought any anticipation of results that are still to be proven, seemed
to me objectionable, and the reader who wishes to follow me at all,
must make up his mind to pass from the special to the general. On the
other hand, some remarks as to the course of my own politico-economic
studies may be in place here.
The subject of my professional studies was jurisprudence, which I
pursued, however, in connection with and as secondary to the studies
of philosophy and history. In 1842-43, as editor of the “Rheinische
Zeitung,” I found myself embarrassed at first when I had to take part
in discussions concerning so-called material interests. The proceedings
of the Rhine Diet in connection with forest thefts and the extreme
subdivision of landed property; the official controversy about the
condition of the Mosel peasants into which Herr von Schaper, at that
time president of the Rhine Province, entered with the “Rheinische
Zeitung;” finally, the debates on free trade and protection, gave
me the first impulse to take up the study of economic questions. At
the same time a weak, quasi-philosophic echo of French socialism and
communism made itself heard in the “Rheinische Zeitung” in those days
when the good intentions “to go ahead” greatly outweighed knowledge of
facts. I declared myself against such botching, but had to admit at
once in a controversy with the “Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung” that my
previous studies did not allow me to hazard an independent judgment as
to the merits of the French schools. When, therefore, the publishers
of the “Rheinische Zeitung” conceived the illusion that by a less
aggressive policy the paper could be saved from the death sentence
pronounced upon it, I was glad to grasp that opportunity to retire to
my study room from public life.
The first work undertaken for the solution of the question that
troubled me, was a critical revision of Hegel’s “Philosophy of Law”;
the introduction to that work appeared in the “Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher,” published in Paris in 1844. I was led by my studies to
the conclusion that legal relations as well as forms of state could
neither be understood by themselves, nor explained by the so-called
general progress of the human mind, but that they are rooted in the
material conditions of life, which are summed up by Hegel after the
fashion of the English and French of the eighteenth century under
the name “civic society;” the anatomy of that civic society is to
be sought in political economy. The study of the latter which I had
taken up in Paris, I continued at Brussels whither I emigrated on
account of an order of expulsion issued by Mr. Guizot. The general
conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, continued to
serve as the leading thread in my studies, may be briefly summed up as
follows: In the social production which men carry on they enter into
definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their
will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage
of development of their material powers of production. The sum total
of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure
of society―the real foundation, on which rise legal and political
superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social
consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the
general character of the social, political and spiritual processes
of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines
their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the
material forces of production in society come in conflict with the
existing relations of production, or―what is but a legal expression
for the same thing―with the property relations within which they
had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces
of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes
the period of social revolution. With the change of the economic
foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly
transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should
always be made between the material transformation of the economic
conditions of production which can be determined with the precision
of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or
philosophic―in short ideological forms in which men become conscious of
this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual
is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such
a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary,
this consciousness must rather be explained from the contradictions of
material life, from the existing conflict between the social forces
of production and the relations of production. No social order ever
disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room
in it, have been developed; and new higher relations of production
never appear before the material conditions of their existence have
matured in the womb of the old society. Therefore, mankind always
takes up only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the
matter more closely, we will always find that the problem itself
arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution
already exist or are at least in the process of formation. In broad
outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and
the modern bourgeois methods of production as so many epochs in the
progress of the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations
of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of
production―antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but
of one arising from conditions surrounding the life of individuals in
society; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb
of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution
of that antagonism. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the
closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.
Frederick Engels, with whom I was continually corresponding and
exchanging ideas since the appearance of his ingenious critical essay
on economic categories (in the “Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher”),
came by a different road to the same conclusions as myself (see his
“Condition of the Working Classes in England”). When he, too, settled
in Brussels in the spring of 1845, we decided to work out together the
contrast between our view and the idealism of the German philosophy, in
fact to settle our accounts with our former philosophic conscience. The
plan was carried out in the form of a criticism of the post-Hegelian
philosophy. The manuscript in two solid octavo volumes had long
reached the publisher in Westphalia, when we received information
that conditions had so changed as not to allow of its publication. We
abandoned the manuscript to the stinging criticism of the mice the
more readily since we had accomplished our main purpose―the clearing
up of the question to ourselves. Of the scattered writings on various
subjects in which we presented our views to the public at that time, I
recall only the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” written by Engels
and myself, and the “Discourse on Free Trade” written by myself. The
leading points of our theory were first presented scientifically,
though in a polemic form, in my “Misère de la Philosophie, etc.”
directed against Proudhon and published in 1847. An essay on “Wage
Labor,” written by me in German, and in which I put together my
lectures on the subject delivered before the German Workmen’s Club at
Brussels, was prevented from leaving the hands of the printer by the
February revolution and my expulsion from Belgium which followed it as
a consequence.
The publication of the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” in 1848 and 1849, and
the events which took place later on, interrupted my economic studies
which I could not resume before 1850 in London. The enormous material
on the history of political economy which is accumulated in the British
Museum; the favorable view which London offers for the observation of
bourgeois society; finally, the new stage of development upon which the
latter seemed to have entered with the discovery of gold in California
and Australia, led me to the decision to resume my studies from the
very beginning and work up critically the new material. These studies
partly led to what might seem side questions, over which I nevertheless
had to stop for longer or shorter periods of time. Especially was the
time at my disposal cut down by the imperative necessity of working
for a living. My work as contributor on the leading Anglo-American
newspaper, the “New York Tribune,” at which I have now been engaged for
eight years, has caused very great interruption in my studies, since
I engage in newspaper work proper only occasionally. Yet articles on
important economic events in England and on the continent have formed
so large a part of my contributions that I have been obliged to make
myself familiar with practical details which lie outside the proper
sphere of political economy.
This account of the course of my studies in political economy is simply
to prove that my views, whatever one may think of them, and no matter
how little they agree with the interested prejudices of the ruling
classes, are the result of many years of conscientious research. At the
entrance to science, however, the same requirement must be put as at
the entrance to hell:
Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto
Ogni viltà convien che qui sia morta.
Karl Marx.
London, January, 1859.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
Translator’s Preface 3
Author’s Preface 9
BOOK I. CAPITAL IN GENERAL.