Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Editor's introduction
- Chronology of Marx's Life and Career, 1848–1883
- Bibliography
- Editor's note on texts and translations
- Glossary of major historical figures
- Manifesto of the Communist Party (with Friedrich Engels)
- The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
- ‘Introduction’ to the Grundrisse
- ‘Preface’ to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
- The Civil War in France
- Critique of the Gotha Programme
- ‘Notes’ on Adolph Wagner
- Index
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
‘Preface’ to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Editor's introduction
- Chronology of Marx's Life and Career, 1848–1883
- Bibliography
- Editor's note on texts and translations
- Glossary of major historical figures
- Manifesto of the Communist Party (with Friedrich Engels)
- The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
- ‘Introduction’ to the Grundrisse
- ‘Preface’ to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
- The Civil War in France
- Critique of the Gotha Programme
- ‘Notes’ on Adolph Wagner
- Index
- Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought
Summary
Preface
I am surveying the bourgeois economic system in this sequence: capital, landed property, wage-labour; the state, foreign trade, world market. Under the first three headings I investigate the economic circumstances of the three great classes into which modern bourgeois society is divided; the relevance of the other three headings is obvious at a glance. The first instalment of the first book, which deals with capital, consists of the following chapters: (1) The Commodity; (2) Money or Simple Circulation; (3) Capital in General. The first two chapters form the content of the present volume. All the material lies before me in the form of monographs written at widely different times for my own self-clarification, not for publication, and their coherent exposition according to the plan above depends on the vagaries of circumstance.
I am omitting a general introduction [of 1857 to the Grundrisse] which I had dashed off, because on further reflection any anticipation of results yet to be proved seems disruptive, and the reader who wants to follow me at all must resolve to progress from the individual instance to the general case. At this point, however, a few remarks concerning the course of my own politico-economic studies would appear to be in order.
At university my major subject was jurisprudence, which I pursued as a subordinate course alongside philosophy and history.
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- Marx: Later Political Writings , pp. 158 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996
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