A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

Marx published *A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy* as the first installment of what would eventually become *Capital*. The book itself analyzes the commodity and the development of money; the famous Preface lays out for the first time the materialist conception of history — the idea that "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." The Introduction, drafted in 1857 but unpublished in Marx's lifetime, sketches the method of political economy. N. I. Stone's translation includes both texts and is the standard English edition.