Selected Works of Karl Marx

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those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction;that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to beexclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from thenever ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that,with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders thematerial conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society.Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!" they ought toinscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wages system!"After this very long and, I fear, tedious exposition, which I was obliged to enter into to do somejustice to the subject matter, I shall conclude by proposing the following resolutions:Firstly. A general rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but,broadly speaking, not affect the prices of commodities.Secondly. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the averagestandard of wages.Thirdly. Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital.They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. The fail generally from limitingthemselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead ofsimultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the finalemancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
Preface to A Contribution to the Critique ofPolitical Economy (1859)I examine the system of bourgeois economy in the following order: capital, landed property,wage-labour; the State, foreign trade, world market.The economic conditions of existence of the three great classes into which modern bourgeoissociety is divided are analysed under the first three headings; the interconnection of the otherthree headings is self-evident. The first part of the first book, dealing with Capital, comprisesthe following chapters: 1. The commodity, 2. Money or simple circulation; 3. Capital in general.The present part consists of the first two chapters. The entire material lies before me in the formof monographs, which were written not for publication but for self-clarification at widelyseparated periods; their remoulding into an integrated whole according to the plan I haveindicated will depend upon circumstances.A general introduction, which I had drafted, is omitted, since on further consideration it seemsto me confusing to anticipate results which still have to be substantiated, and the reader whoreally wishes to follow me will have to decide to advance from the particular to the general. Afew brief remarks regarding the course of my study of political economy are appropriate here.Although I studied jurisprudence, I pursued it as a subject subordinated to philosophy andhistory. In the year 1842-43, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I first found myself in theembarrassing position of having to discuss what is known as material interests. Thedeliberations of the Rhenish Landtag on forest thefts and the division of landed property; theofficial polemic started by Herr von Schaper, then Oberpräsident of the Rhine Province, againstthe Rheinische Zeitung about the condition of the Moselle peasantry, and finally the debates onfree trade and protective tariffs caused me in the first instance to turn my attention to economicquestions. On the other hand, at that time when good intentions “to push forward” often took theplace of factual knowledge, an echo of French socialism and communism, slightly tinged byphilosophy, was noticeable in the Rheinische Zeitung. I objected to this dilettantism, but at thesame time frankly admitted in a controversy with the Allgemeine Augsburger Zeitung that myprevious studies did not allow me to express any opinion on the content of the French theories.When the publishers of the Rheinische Zeitung conceived the illusion that by a more compliantpolicy on the part of the paper it might be possible to secure the abrogation of the death sentencepassed upon it, I eagerly grasped the opportunity to withdraw from the public stage to my study.The first work which I undertook to dispel the doubts assailing me was a critical re-examinationof the Hegelian philosophy of law; the introduction to this work being published in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher issued in Paris in 1844. My inquiry led me to the conclusion thatneither legal relations nor political forms could be comprehended whether by themselves or onthe basis of a so-called general development of the human mind, but that on the contrary theyoriginate in the material conditions of life, the totality of which Hegel, following the example ofEnglish and French thinkers of the eighteenth century, embraces within the term “civil society”;that the anatomy of this civil society, however, has to be sought in political economy. The studyof this, which I began in Paris, I continued in Brussels, where I moved owing to an expulsionorder issued by M. Guizot. The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached,became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarised as follows.In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which areindependent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in thedevelopment of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of productionconstitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal andpolitical superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. Themode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political andintellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but theirsocial existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, thematerial productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of productionor - this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms - with the property relations within the
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égime, which has been through its
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sins of all state forms. That this
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It has not occurred to any one of t
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gradually accumulated small capital
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from this nonsensical ‘prehistory
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property: the nucleus, the first fo
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which produces in all nations simul
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[8. The Inconsistency of the Ideali
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The ‘essence’ of the fish is it
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hence of the relationships which ma
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labour. In the first case, therefor
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production and commerce soon calls
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period begins with the Navigation L
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more advanced countries, still have
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over against the individuals, so th
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eality is only a product of the pre
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never became more than a city; its
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Only at this stage does self-activi
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Modern industry has established the
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these crises, there breaks out an e
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Further, as we have already seen, e
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abolish that; the development of in
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For the rest, nothing is more ridic
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III. Socialist and Communist Litera
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conscious of having overcome “Fre
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The undeveloped state of the class
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Selected Works of Karl Marx

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