Karl Marx publishes A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

Background. Marxism as a body of thought draws in large part on three influences: Hegel's dialectics, French utopian socialism, and British political economy. The study and critique of political economy was a project Marx would pursue for the rest of his life, ultimately resulting in his major economic work, the three-volume Das Kapital. By 1857 he had accumulated over 800 pages of notes and short essays on capital, landed property, wage labour, the state, foreign trade, and the world market, though these remained unpublished until 1939 as the Grundrisse. In 1859 he issued A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, his first serious critique of political economy.

Content and Theory. The book critically examined axioms and categories of economic thinking, focusing on classical economists like Adam Smith and David Ricardo. It contained the first connected account of Marx's materialist conception of history and the base and superstructure model, which posits that an economic base conditions, rather than determines, the political-ideological superstructure.

Publication and Reception. First published in 1859, the work was intended as a preview for Das Kapital. The successful sales of the book stimulated Marx in the early 1860s to finish work on the three large volumes that would compose his major life's work, including Das Kapital and Theories of Surplus Value.