A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

Transcriber's note: Fraktur font is displayed in bold characters.
BY KARL 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.

The present translation has been made from the second edition of the “Zur Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie,” published by Karl Kautsky in 1897 with slight changes from the original edition of 1859; changes that had been indicated by Marx on the margins of his own copy of the book.
As will be seen from the author’s preface, the work was originally issued as the first instalment of a complete treatise of political economy. As he went on with his work, however, Marx modified his plans and eight years after the appearance of the “Zur Kritik” he published the first volume of his Capital, whose scope was intended to cover the entire field of political economy.
The plan to which Marx alludes in the preface to the present work was thus abandoned in its formal aspects, but not in substance. The subject matter treated here was reproduced or rather “summarized,” as Marx himself puts it, in Capital. But that was done in so far as was necessary to secure continuity of treatment. On the other hand, many important matters are treated here more thoroughly than in Capital, especially the part devoted to the discussion of money. This, as well as the chapters on the history of the theories of value and of money, which do not appear in Capital, make “Zur Kritik” a work practically complete in itself.
The recent silver agitation in this country shows how timely and useful this work still is, though written nearly half a century ago. That a great part of the working-men employed in the cities were not carried away by the Democratic-Populist agitation in 1896 and 1900 is probably due in a greater measure than is commonly realized to the direct and indirect influence of Marx, whose economic teachings guided the socialists in their counter agitation. And since the conditions which once gave rise to a demand for an inflated currency have by no means disappeared beyond a possibility of return, this book has a wide field before it, outside of the library of the college and of the student of economics, which the author’s name and prestige with the working class insures for it.