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nydus/A Contribution to the Critique of Political EconomyPublic

This work presents Karl Marx’s initial installment of a projected treatise on political economy, later incorporated into the broader scope of Capital. It provides a detailed analysis of money and the history of value theories, while also featuring the foundational formulation of the author’s materialistic interpretation of history.

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Table of Contents

Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy.

7. Diese Auffassung erscheint als nothwendige Entwicklung. Aber Berechtigung des Zufalls. Varia.165 (Die Freiheit und anderes noch.) (Einwirkung der Kommunikationsmittel.) Weltgeschichte eigentlich166 nicht immer in der Geschichte als weltgeschicht[liches] Resultat.

8. Der Ausgangspunkt [ist] natürlich von der Naturbestimmtheit [zu nehmen]; subjektiv und objektiv, Stämme, Rassen etc.

It is well known that certain periods of highest development of art stand in no direct connection with the general development of society, nor with the material basis and the skeleton structure of its organization. Witness the example of the Greeks as compared with the modern nations or even Shakespeare. As regards certain forms of art, as e. g. the epos, it is admitted that they can never be produced in the world-epoch making form as soon as art as such comes into existence; in other words, that in the domain of art certain important forms of it are possible only at a low stage of its development. If that be true of the mutual relations of different forms of art within the domain of art itself, it is far less surprising that the same is true of the relation of art as a whole to the general development of society. The difficulty lies only in the general formulation of these contradictions. No sooner are they specified than they are explained. Let us take for instance the relation of Greek art and of that of Shakespeare’s time to our own. It is a well known fact that Greek mythology was not only the arsenal of Greek art, but also the very

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