Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

Preface written by Marx for A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Written in January 1859, first contained in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (First Instalment), published in Berlin in June 1859.

In the 1830s and 1840s, major capitalist countries such as England and France had completed their bourgeois revolutions one after another, and the capitalist mode of production had already taken over the dominant position. At the same time, the working class entered the arena of history as an independent political actor; but at that time, all kinds of utopian socialist currents seriously affected the development of the workers’ movement, and the practice of proletarian revolutionary struggle urgently was in urgent need of correct guidance of the theory of scientific socialism. In order to accomplish this task, Marx began to systematically study political economy as early as the early 1840s, because he had already discovered that in order to understand the laws of capitalist social movement, it was necessary to study the laws of the capitalist mode of production. However, the European revolutionary movement of 1848–49 temporarily interrupted Marx’s study. After the defeat of the European Revolutions, Marx was forced to emigrate to London and restarted his study of political economy. In the autumn of 1857, a worldwide economic crisis broke out in capitalist countries. Marx predicted that the high tide of revolution was approaching, so he devoted himself to the study of political economy. The Economic Manuscripts 1857–1858 was the great theoretical achievement of Marx’s study of political economy during this period, and in fact, it later became the first draft of Capital. In this manuscript, for the first time, Marx clearly expounded the fundamental points of labor theory of value, and put forth the concept of surplus-value, and initially formed his own theoretical system of political economy.

The Preface is the summary of Marx’s fifteen-year study of political economy. In the Preface, Marx introduced the writing plan of the Critique of Political Economy, clarified the sequences of the study of the bourgeois economic system, presented his motivation and experience in studying economic problems, and focused on giving the most classical formulation of the fundamental principles of the materialist conception of history. The main contents are as follows: First of all, Marx elaborated the fundamental relations of human society—the dialectical relation between the productive forces and the relations of production and between the economic base and the superstructure. Human society is a very complex organism, composed of many elements and spheres, and in which there are intricate and complex social phenomena and relations, from which the fundamental relations of social development are to be identified in order to scientifically elaborate the laws of development of human society. Marx pointed out: “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.” Next, Marx pointed out that the determining force in the development of human society is the mode of production of material life. Human social activities are multifaceted, including aspects of material and intellectual life, so what exactly is the force that determines the development of human society? Marx pointed out that “the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life.” This is because men must first solve the problems of eating, drinking, clothing and housing before they can engage in politics, art, science, religion and a number of other activities. As Marx said, “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social being that determines their consciousness.” Further, Marx expounded that the that the driving force of the historical development of society is the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production. Marx said: “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.” Here Marx points out that the fundamental cause driving the development of human society is the inner contradictory movement between the productive forces and the relations of production. Among them, the productive forces are the principal aspect of the contradiction, and the continuous development of the productive forces constitutes the ultimate determining force for the existence and development of society as a whole, thus scientifically revealing the universal law of the development of human society—the law that the relations of production must correspond to the state of development of the productive forces. Finally, Marx elaborated the laws of natural history that govern the development of human social formations from the lower to the higher. Marx pointed out that the ultimate decisive force determining the natural evolutionary process of human society from the lower to the higher is the contradictory movement between the productive forces and the relations of production. From the concrete social formation of human society, “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.” At the same time, Marx emphasized that the development of human society is a process of natural history, which is independent of their will, and that “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.” The task of social revolution “arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.” With regard to capitalist society in particular, Marx pointed out that capitalist relations of production is the last antagonistic form of the process of production of human society. However, with the development of the productive forces, capitalist society itself created also “the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism”, and it is inevitable that capitalist society will be replaced by socialist society.

The Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy is an extremely important classical text in the development of Marxist theory. In the text, Marx succinctly introduced his motivation for the study of political economy and its course, introduced the chief conclusions he drew from his study of political economy from the 1840s onwards, and gave a concise summary and classical formulation of the fundamental principles of historical materialism, which clarified the dialectical relationship between the productive forces and the relations of production, and between the economic base and the superstructure, and thus revealed the most fundamental laws of the development of human society. It has great significance for the theoretical research and scientific practice of the proletariat and communists in all countries.