(BD. Beffer’s Berlagshandlung.) 

1859. 

PREFACE 

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were written not for publication but for self-clarification at widely 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 may, however, be 
appropriate here. 

Although jurisprudence was my special study, 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 Rhine Province 
Assembly in thefts of wood and the division of landed property; 
the official polemic started by Herr von Schaper, then Oberprasi- 
dent of the Rhine Province, against the Rheinische Zeitung about 
the condition of the Mosel 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 Jahrbiicher 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.4 The general 
conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became 
the guiding principle of my studies can be summarised as follows. 

¢ On January 11, 1845.— Ed. 

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 formation 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 relations of 
production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of 

production—antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagon- 
ism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals’ 
social conditions of existence—but the productive forces develop- 
ing 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-Franzosische Jahrbiicher), arrived by another road (compare 
his Condition of the Working-Class 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, 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 shail 
mention only the Manifesto of the Communist Party, jointly written 
by Engels and myself, and a Speech on the Question of Free Trade, 
which I myself published. The salient points of our conception 
were first outlined in an academic, although polemical, form in my 
Poverty of Philosophy..., this book which was aimed at Proudhon 
appeared in 1847. The publication of an essay on Wage-Labour 
written in German in which I combined the lectures I had held on 
this subject at the German Workers’ Society 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 subsequent events cut short my economic studies, which I 
could only resume in London in 1850. The enormous amount of 
material relating to the history of political economy assembled in 
the British Museum, the fact that London is a convenient vantage 
point for the observation of bourgeois society, and finally the new 
stage of development which this society seemed to have entered 

with the discovery of gold in California and Australia,* induced 
me to start again from the very beginning and to work carefully 
through the new material. These studies led partly of their own 
accord to apparently quite remote subjects on which I had to 
spend a certain amount of time. But it was in particular the 
imperative necessity of earning my living which reduced the time 
at my disposal. My collaboration, continued now for eight years, 
with the New York Tribune the leading Anglo-American news- 
paper, necessitated an excessive fragmentation of my studies, for I 
wrote only exceptionally newspaper correspondence in the strict 
sense. Since a considerable part of my contributions consisted of 
articles dealing with important economic events in Britain and on 
the Continent, I was compelled to become conversant with 
practical details which, strictly speaking, lie outside the sphere of 
political economy. 

This sketch of the course of my studies in the domain of 
political economy is intended merely to show that my views—no 
matter how they may be judged and how little they conform to the 
interested prejudices of the ruling classes—are the outcome of 
conscientious research carried on over many years. At the 
entrance to science, as at the entrance to hell, the demand must be 
made: 

Qui si convien lasciare ogni sospetto 
Ogni vilta convien che qui sia morta? 
Karl Marx 
London, January 1859 

BOOK ONE 

ON CAPITAL 

Section One