Preface to the First German Edition (Marx, 1867)
The work, the first volume of which I now submit to the public, forms the continuation of my
Zur
Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie (
A Contribution to the Criticism of Political Economy)
published in 1859. The long pause between the first part and the continuation is due to an illness
of many years’ duration that again and again interrupted my work.
The substance of that earlier work is summarised in the first three chapters of this volume. This is
done not merely for the sake of connexion and completeness. The presentation of the subject
matter is improved. As far as circumstances in any way permit, many points only hinted at in the
earlier book are here worked out more fully, whilst, conversely, points worked out fully there are
only touched upon in this volume. The sections on the history of the theories of value and of
money are now, of course, left out altogether. The reader of the earlier work will find, however,
in the notes to the first chapter additional sources of reference relative to the history of those
theories.
Every beginning is difficult, holds in all sciences. To understand the first chapter, especially the
section that contains the analysis of commodities, will, therefore, present the greatest difficulty.
That which concerns more especially the analysis of the substance of value and the magnitude of
value, I have, as much as it was possible, popularised.
1
The value-form, whose fully developed
shape is the money-form, is very elementary and simple. Nevertheless, the human mind has for
more than 2,000 years sought in vain to get to the bottom of it all, whilst on the other hand, to the
successful analysis of much more composite and complex forms, there has been at least an
approximation. Why? Because the body, as an organic whole, is more easy of study than are the
cells of that body. In the analysis of economic forms, moreover, neither microscopes nor
chemical reagents are of use. The force of abstraction must replace both. But in bourgeois society,
the commodity-form of the product of labour – or value-form of the commodity – is the economic
cell-form. To the superficial observer, the analysis of these forms seems to turn upon minutiae. It
does in fact deal with minutiae, but they are of the same order as those dealt with in microscopic
anatomy.
With the exception of the section on value-form, therefore, this volume cannot stand accused on
the score of difficulty. I presuppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new
and therefore to think for himself.
The physicist either observes physical phenomena where they occur in their most typical form
and most free from disturbing influence, or, wherever possible, he makes experiments under
conditions that assure the occurrence of the phenomenon in its normality. In this work I have to
examine the capitalist mode of production, and the conditions of production and exchange
corresponding to that mode. Up to the present time, their classic ground is England. That is the
reason why England is used as the chief illustration in the development of my theoretical ideas. If,
however, the German reader shrugs his shoulders at the condition of the English industrial and
agricultural labourers, or in optimist fashion comforts himself with the thought that in Germany
things are not nearly so bad; I must plainly tell him, “De te fabula narratur!” [It is of you that the
story is told. – Horace]
Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social
antagonisms that result from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these
laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results. The
7
Preface to the First German Edition (Marx 1867)
country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its
own future.
But apart from this. Where capitalist production is fully naturalised among the Germans (for
instance, in the factories proper) the condition of things is much worse than in England, because
the counterpoise of the Factory Acts is wanting. In all other spheres, we, like all the rest of
Continental Western Europe, suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but
also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern evils, a whole series of
inherited evils oppress us, arising from the passive survival of antiquated modes of production,
with their inevitable train of social and political anachronisms. We suffer not only from the
living, but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif! [The dead holds the living in his grasp. – formula
of French common law]
The social statistics of Germany and the rest of Continental Western Europe are, in comparison
with those of England, wretchedly compiled. But they raise the veil just enough to let us catch a
glimpse of the Medusa head behind it. We should be appalled at the state of things at home, if, as
in England, our governments and parliaments appointed periodically commissions of inquiry into
economic conditions; if these commissions were armed with the same plenary powers to get at
the truth; if it was possible to find for this purpose men as competent, as free from partisanship
and respect of persons as are the English factory-inspectors, her medical reporters on public
health, her commissioners of inquiry into the exploitation of women and children, into housing
and food. Perseus wore a magic cap down over his eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are
no monsters.
Let us not deceive ourselves on this. As in the 18th century, the American war of independence
sounded the tocsin for the European middle class, so that in the 19th century, the American Civil
War sounded it for the European working class. In England the process of social disintegration is
palpable. When it has reached a certain point, it must react on the Continent. There it will take a
form more brutal or more humane, according to the degree of development of the working class
itself. Apart from higher motives, therefore, their own most important interests dictate to the
classes that are for the nonce the ruling ones, the removal of all legally removable hindrances to
the free development of the working class. For this reason, as well as others, I have given so large
a space in this volume to the history, the details, and the results of English factory legislation.
One nation can and should learn from others. And even when a society has got upon the right
track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement – and it is the ultimate aim of this
work, to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society – it can neither clear by bold
leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its
normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.
To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense
couleur de rose [i.e., seen through rose-tinted glasses]. But here individuals are dealt with only in
so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-
relations and class-interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation
of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual
responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively
raise himself above them.
In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as
in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the materials it deals with, summons as foes into the
field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of
private interest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of
its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income. Now-a-days atheism is culpa levis [a relatively slight