The Poverty of Philosophy by Karl Marx appeared in 1847? 
shortly after the Economic Contradictions by Proudhon,’ which bore 
the sub-title Philosophy of Poverty. What prompted us to reprint this 
book, the first edition of which is out of print, was the fact that it 
contains the seeds of the theory developed after twenty years’ 
work in Capital. Reading the Poverty of Philosophy and the Manifesto 
of the Communist Party, published by Marx and Engels in 1848, 
might thus serve as an introduction to the study of Capital and the 
works of other modern socialists who, like Lassalle, have derived 
their ideas from them. By authorising this republication in our 
journal, Marx wished to give us a token of his sympathy. 

We must say a few more words about the drastic tone of this 
polemic against Proudhon. On the one hand, Proudhon, while 
attacking the official economists such as Dunoyer, Blanqui the 
Academician and the whole clique around the Journal des 
Economistes,, knew how to appeal to their vanity at the same time 
as he heaped coarse insults on the utopian socialists and 
communists whom Marx honoured as the forebears’ of modern 
socialism. On the other hand, to prepare the way for the critical 
and materialist socialism which alone can render the real, historical 

development of social production intelligible, it was necessary to 
break abruptly with the ideological economics of which Proudhon 
was unwittingly the last incarnation. 

Besides, in an article published in the Berlin Social-Demokrat on 
the death of Proudhon, Marx did justice to this fighter’s great 
qualities, to his manly attitude after the days of June 1848,°* and 
to his talent as a political writer.