A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (German: Zur Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie) is a book by Karl Marx first published in 1859. The book represents an early attempt by Marx at an exposition of his his critique of political economy (now known as classical economics). The work was later adapted and expanded into Capital (1867), for which reason it is rarely cited outside of specialist Marxist research.[citation needed] The work is best known today for its Preface, which is one of the most concise and explicit introductions to Marx's materialist theories, including historical materialism, from the man himself.
Preface
The Preface contains the first connected account of one of Marx's main theories: the materialist 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". 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 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.