Karl Marx publishes A Contribution to the…
1859 CE
The book is mainly an analysis of capitalism and quantity theory of money, achieved by critiquing the writings of the leading theoretical exponents of capitalism at this time: these are the political economists, nowadays often referred to as the classical economists; Adam Smith (1723–90) and David Ricardo (1772–1823) are the foremost representatives of the genre.
Marx expands on the labor theory of value advocated by Ricardo.
The work is enthusiastically received, and the edition will sell out quickly.
Much of the Critique will later be 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 materialist conception of history, and its associated "base and superstructure" model of society, which divides human social development into an economic-technological "base" which determines the forms of its political-ideological "superstructure".
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