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A CONTRIBUTION TO
THE CRITIQUE OF
POLITICAL ECONOMY
BYKARL 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 secondedition of the “Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie,”published by Karl Kautsky in 1897 with slightchanges from the original edition of 1859; changes thathad been indicated by Marx on the margins of his owncopy of the book.
As will be seen from the author’s preface, the workwas originally issued as the first instalment of a completetreatise of political economy. As he went onwith his work, however, Marx modified his plans andeight years after the appearance of the “Zur Kritik”he published the first volume of his Capital, whose scopewas intended to cover the entire field of politicaleconomy.
The plan to which Marx alludes in the preface tothe present work was thus abandoned in its formal aspects,but not in substance. The subject matter treatedhere was reproduced or rather “summarized,” as Marxhimself puts it, in Capital. But that was done in sofar as was necessary to secure continuity of treatment.On the other hand, many important matters are treatedhere more thoroughly than in Capital, especially the partdevoted to the discussion of money. This, as well asthe chapters on the history of the theories of value andPg 4of money, which do not appear in Capital, make “ZurKritik” a work practically complete in itself.
The recent silver agitation in this country shows howtimely and useful this work still is, though written nearlyhalf a century ago. That a great part of the working-menemployed in the cities were not carried away bythe Democratic-Populist agitation in 1896 and 1900 isprobably due in a greater measure than is commonlyrealized to the direct and indirect influence of Marx,whose economic teachings guided the socialists in theircounter agitation. And since the conditions which oncegave rise to a demand for an inflated currency have byno means disappeared beyond a possibility of return,this book has a wide field before it, outside of the libraryof the college and of the student of economics, whichthe author’s name and prestige with the working classinsures for it.
There is another reason, if any need be given whythis book should have been translated into English.Marx’s preface to the present work contains the classicformulation of his historico-philosophic theory known asthe Materialistic Interpretation of History. This theory,which until recently was entertained almost exclusivelyby socialist writers and was hardly heard of outsideof socialist circles in English speaking countries,is at last receiving not only due recognition but sympatheticappreciation at the hands of men of science.1It is rather a significant coincidence that the workPg 5which for the first time clearly formulated the law gov