A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy is a book by Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

, first published in 1859. The book is mainly an analysis of capitalism

Capitalism

Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...

, achieved by critiquing the writings of the leading theoretical exponents of capitalism at that time: these were the political economists

Political economy

Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...

, nowadays often referred to as the classical economists

Classical economics

Classical economics is widely regarded as the first modern school of economic thought. Its major developers include Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus and John Stuart Mill....

; Adam Smith

Adam Smith

Adam Smith was a Scottish social philosopher and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations...

 (1723-90) and David Ricardo

David Ricardo

David Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator,...

 (1772-1823) are the foremost representatives of the genre.

Much of the Critique was later incorporated by Marx into his magnum opus, Capital (Volume I), published in 1867; and the Critique is generally considered to be of secondary importance among Marx's writings. This does not apply, however, to the Preface of the Critique. It contains the first connected account of one of Marx's main theories: the economic interpretation of history

Historical materialism

Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society, economics, and history, first articulated by Karl Marx as "the materialist conception of history". Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans...

. Briefly, this is the idea that economic factors – the way people produce the necessities of life – determine the kind of politics and ideology a society can have:
In English, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy is available in an edition edited by Maurice Dobb

Maurice Dobb

Maurice Herbert Dobb , was a British Marxist economist, and a lecturer 1924-1959 and Reader 1959-1976 at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge 1948-1976.-Life:...

, published in London in 1979; and from Progress Publishers

Progress Publishers

Progress Publishers was a Moscow-based Soviet publisher founded in 1931.It was noted for its English-language editions of books on Marxism-Leninism....

, Moscow (translation by S.W. Ryazanskaya). Lawrence and Wishart (London), and International Publishers (New York) cooperate in the publication of the Progress Publishers edition. It is also available free online.

Sources

Michael Evans, Karl Marx. London, 1975.

Otto Ruhle, Karl Marx: His Life and Works. New York, 1943. First published, New York, 1929. Retrieved from marxists.org.