A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (First Instalment)

Marx’s first economic work. It was written between August 1858 and January 1859, and published by the Berlin publisher Duncker in June 1859.

In the late 1850s, with the outbreak of the economic crisis, there were signs of an impending revolutionary high tide in various European countries, which meant that the low tide of the proletarian revolutionary movement, which had lasted for a long time since the defeat of the European Revolutions of 1848, was about to come to an end. In order to cater for the new revolutionary high tide that might be coming, Marx immediately set out to sum up the results of his economic research over the past 15 years, so as to ideologically arm the proletariat. In 1857, Marx set out to write his economic masterpiece, and by May 1858, he wrote the voluminous A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Manuscripts of 1857–1858). It was in the process of writing that Marx gradually formed the plan of a six-book economic masterpiece entitled Critique of Political Economy.

The first book, which was intended to examine capital, was planned to be written in four parts, and the first part, which Marx called “Capital in General”, included (1) value, (2) money, and (3) capital. At the beginning of 1858, Marx decided to publish his works in instalments, and after signing a preliminary publishing contract with Berlin publisher F. Duncker, he began to write the first instalment and changed the three chapters of the original plan into two. In January 1859, the writing of A Critique of Political Economy (First Instalment) was completed.

A Critique of Political Economy (First Instalment) consists of three chapters: Preface, The Commodity and Money or Simple Circulation.

In the Preface, Marx presented the essence of the materialist conception of history and the universal laws of development of human society in a concentrated manner, and gave a classical expression of the fundamental principles of historical materialism. He pointed out: “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.” In this way, he separated the economic sphere from the various spheres of social life, and the relations of production from all social relations, considering them to be fundamental and decisive, that is, “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.” 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 being that determines their consciousness. From this, Marx further presented the realization of the laws of development of society: “No social order 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.”

In the chapter The Commodity, Marx discovered that the commodity is the “unit” (“elementarisches Dasein”) of bourgeois wealth, and in order to understand the true nature of the contradictions contained in capital, it is necessary to begin by analyzing this cell, the commodity. Therefore, he demonstrates the essential relationship between the use-value and the exchange-value of a commodity, and pointed out that the inherent contradiction of the commodity is determined by the twofold character of labor spent in its production, which in the final analysis reflected the contradiction between the private labor of the producer of the commodity and the social labor.

The founding of the doctrine of the twofold character of labor by Marx was a major breakthrough in his study of political economy, which laid a solid foundation for his later correct understanding and scientific elaboration of a series of major economic categories, and for solving a series of puzzles that had rendered bourgeois classical economics bankrupt. In a world of commodity producers, especially in bourgeois society, the social relations of individuals appear in the perverted form of a social relation between things, which leads people to worship things as gods.

In the chapter Money or Simple Circulation, Marx exhaustively elaborated on the theory of money and circulation of money. Marx was the first person to formulate a scientific theory of money. He revealed the economic essence of money and analyzed the historical origin of money and its role in bourgeois society. Marx also elaborated in detail the functions of money as a measure of value, a means of circulation, a means of payment and a world money. On the basis of analyzing these functions, Marx arrived at the laws of money circulation. Marx’s analysis of money circulation has shown that the possibility of a commercial crisis already exists in the simple circulation of commodities. Therefore, the capitalist economic crisis has deep roots and its outbreak is inevitable.

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (First Instalment) is a glorious chapter in Marxist political economy, as it opened up many firsts in the history of Marxist economics: It was the first time that the theoretical framework of political economy was scientifically outlined, the first time that the dialectical relationship among the four moments of production, distribution, exchange and consumption in social reproduction was incisively analyzed, and the first time that the method for the creation of a system of political economy was summarized at a high level. The work has made a classical generalization of the materialist conception of history, a thorough theoretical analysis of the two “Nevers”, a holistic account of the process of social reproduction, and a systematic formulation of the methodology of economics, etc. And the series of fundamental principles and methods elaborated in the work are also the general lock and key to the study, understanding and research of Marxist economics and even Marxism as a whole. Marx once highly praised his own work, pointing out: “(1) It is the product of 15 years of research, i.e. the best years of my life. (2) In it an important view of social relations is scientifically expounded for the first time.” Engels also gave the work high praise, calling it a “scientific and independent” economic work based on the materialist conception of history.