001 Preface to the First German Edition (Marx, 1867)

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]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.

万事开头难，一切科学皆然。对经济现象的分析，无法借助显微镜或化学试剂，只能借助抽象力。

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]

本卷中我要研究资本主义的生产方式，及其生产条件、交换条件。

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 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]

活人在欺负活人，已死之人发明的制度，也在欺负活人。

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.

我将社会经济形态的演进过程，视为自然历史的演进过程。我不要求任何个体对他的社会角色负责，无论他主观上多么超脱他的社会身份。

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 sin, c.f. mortal sin], as compared with criticism of
existing property relations. Nevertheless, there is an unmistakable advance. I
refer, e.g., to the Blue book published within the last few weeks:
“Correspondence with Her Majesty’s Missions Abroad, regarding Industrial
Questions and Trades’ Unions.” The representatives of the English Crown in
foreign countries there declare in so many words that in Germany, in France, to
be brief, in all the civilised states of the European Continent, radical change
in the existing relations between capital and labour is as evident and
inevitable as in England. At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic
Ocean, Mr. Wade, vice-president of the United States, declared in public
meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations
of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day. These are
signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks. They
do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen. They show that, within the
ruling classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present society is
no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing.

在政治经济领域，科学研究的敌人不只是其他领域中的那些敌人。私人利益的束缚，严重阻碍着政治经济领域的科学研究。

The second volume of this book will treat of the process of the circulation of
capital (Book II.), and of the varied forms assumed by capital in the course of
its development (Book III.), the third and last volume (Book IV.), the history
of the theory.

本书第二卷论述资本循环的过程（册II）和资本的各种形式（册III），最后一卷（册IV）是价值理论的历史。

Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. As to prejudices of
so-called public opinion, to which I have never made concessions, now as
aforetime the maxim of the great Florentine is mine:

“Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti.”
[Follow your own course, and let people talk – paraphrased from Dante]

任何基于科学研讨的意见我都欢迎。至于所谓的舆论偏见，我从不鸟之，正如从前伟大的佛罗伦萨人所说：“走自己的路，让他们说去吧”-意大利诗人但丁。

Karl Marx
London
July 25, 1867

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1. 1 This is the more necessary, as even the section of Ferdinand Lassalle’s
   work against Schulze-Delitzsch, in which he professes to give “the
   intellectual quintessence” of my explanations on these subjects, contains
   important mistakes. If Ferdinand Lassalle has borrowed almost literally from
   my writings, and without any acknowledgement, all the general theoretical
   propositions in his economic works, e.g., those on the historical character
   of capital, on the connexion between the conditions of production and the
   mode of production, &c., &c., even to the terminology created by me, this
   may perhaps be due to purposes of propaganda. I am here, of course, not
   speaking of his detailed working out and application of these propositions,
   with which I have nothing to do. ↩︎