¶I examine the system of bourgeois economy in the following order: capital, landed property, wage-labour; the State, foreign trade, world market. The economic conditions of existence of the three great classes into which modern bourgeois society is divided are analysed under the first three headings; the interconnection of the other three headings is self-evident. The first part of the first book, dealing with Capital, comprises the following chapters: 1. The commodity, 2. Money or simple circulation; 3. Capital in general. The present part consists of the first two chapters. The entire material lies before me in the form of monographs, which were written not for publication but for self-clarification at widely separated periods; their remoulding into an integrated whole according to the plan I have indicated will depend upon circumstances.
¶A general introduction, which I had drafted, is omitted, since on further consideration it seems to me confusing to anticipate results which still have to be substantiated, and the reader who really wishes to follow me will have to decide to advance from the particular to the general. A few brief remarks regarding the course of my study of political economy are appropriate here.
¶Although I studied jurisprudence, I pursued it as a subject
subordinated to philosophy and history. In the year 1842-43, as editor
of the Rheinische Zeitung, I first found myself in the
embarrassing position of having to discuss what is known as material
interests. The deliberations of the Rhenish Landtag on forest thefts and
the division of landed property; the official polemic started by Herr
von Schaper, then Oberpräsident of the Rhine Province, against the
Rheinische Zeitung about the condition of the Moselle
peasantry, and finally the debates on free trade and protective tariffs
caused me in the first instance to turn my attention to economic
questions. On the other hand, at that time when good intentions to
push forward
often took the place of factual knowledge, an echo of
French socialism and communism, slightly tinged by philosophy, was
noticeable in the Rheinische Zeitung. I objected to this
dilettantism, but at the same time frankly admitted in a controversy
with the Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung that my previous studies
did not allow me to express any opinion on the content of the French
theories. When the publishers of the Rheinische Zeitung
conceived the illusion that by a more compliant policy on the part of
the paper it might be possible to secure the abrogation of the death
sentence passed upon it, I eagerly grasped the opportunity to withdraw
from the public stage to my study.
¶The first work which I undertook to dispel the doubts assailing me
was a critical re-examination of the Hegelian philosophy of law; the
introduction to this work being published in the
Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher issued in Paris in 1844. My
inquiry led me to the conclusion that neither legal relations nor
political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or on the
basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on
the contrary they originate in the material conditions of life, the
totality of which Hegel, following the example of English and French
thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term civil
society
; that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be
sought in political economy. The study of this, which I began in Paris,
I continued in Brussels, where I moved owing to an expulsion order
issued by M. Guizot. The general conclusion at which I arrived and
which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be
summarised as follows.
¶In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
¶In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish 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, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.
¶Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation. In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals’ social conditions of existence – but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.
¶Frederick Engels, with whom I maintained a constant exchange of ideas
by correspondence since the publication of his brilliant essay on the
critique of economic categories (printed in the Deutsch-Französische
Jahrbücher, arrived by another road (see his Condition of the
Working Classes in England
) at the same result as I, and when in the
spring of 1845 he too came to live in Brussels, we decided to set forth
together our conception as opposed to the ideological one of German
philosophy, in fact to settle accounts with our former philosophical
conscience. The intention was carried out in the form of a critique of
post-Hegelian philosophy. The manuscript [The German Ideology], two
large octavo volumes, had long ago reached the publishers in Westphalia
when we were informed that owing to changed circumstances it could not
be printed. We abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the
mice all the more willingly since we had achieved our main purpose –
self-clarification. Of the scattered works in which at that time we
presented one or another aspect of our views to the public, I shall
mention only the Manifesto of the Communist Party, jointly
written by Engels and myself, and a Discours sur le
libre-échange, which I myself published. The salient points of our
conception were first outlined in an academic, although polemical, form
in my Misère de la Philosophie, etc. this book which was aimed
at Proudhon appeared in 1847. The publication of an essay on Wage-Labour
[Wage-Labor and Capital] written in German in which I combined
the lectures I had held on this subject at the German Workers’
Association in Brussels, was interrupted by the February Revolution and
my forcible removal from Belgium in 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 favourable 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.