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| Author | Karl Marx |
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| Language | German |
| Subject | Political economy |
| Published | 1859 |
| Part ofa series on the |
| Marxian critique of political economy |
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A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (German:Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie) is a book byKarl Marx, first published in 1859. The book is mainly acritique of political economy achieved by critiquing the writings of the leading theoretical exponents ofcapitalism at that time: these were thepolitical economists, nowadays often referred to as theclassical economists;Adam Smith (1723–90) andDavid Ricardo (1772–1823) are the foremost representatives of the genre.
Much of theCritique was later incorporated by Marx into hismagnum opus,Capital (Volume I), published in 1867, and theCritique is generally considered[citation needed] to be of secondary importance among Marx's writings. This does not apply, however, to the Preface of theCritique. It contains the first connected account of one of Marx's main theories: thematerialist conception of history, and its associated "base and superstructure" model of society, which divides human social development into an economic-technological "base" which "conditions"— not determines — the forms of its political-ideological "superstructure".[1] Briefly, this is the idea that economic factors – the way people produce the necessities of life – conditions the kind of politics and ideology a society can have:
The totality of theserelations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises alegal and political superstructure and to which correspond (entsprechen) definite forms ofsocial consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions (bedingt) the general process of social, political and intellectual life.[2]
Marx expressed this himself in the preface of the book: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines (German:bestimmt,lit. 'determines/specifies/forms/foretells') their consciousness."[3]
In English,A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy is available in an edition edited byMaurice Dobb, published byProgress Publishers, Moscow (translation by S. W. Ryazanskaya). Lawrence and Wishart (London), and International Publishers (New York) cooperated in the publication of the Progress Publishers edition.[4]
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy public domain audiobook atLibriVox| International | |
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