a demand for an inflated currency have by no means disappeared beyond a possibility of return, this book has a wide field before it, outside of the library of the college and of the student of economics, which the author’s name and prestige with the working class insures for it.
There is another reason, if any need be given why this book should have been translated into English. Marx’s preface to the present work contains the classic formulation of his historico-philosophic theory known as the Materialistic Interpretation of History. This theory, which until recently was entertained almost exclusively by socialist writers and was hardly heard of outside of socialist circles in English speaking countries, is at last receiving not only due recognition but sympathetic appreciation at the hands of men of science.1 It is rather a significant coincidence that the work which for the first time clearly formulated the law governing social evolution should have seen the light of day in the same year in which Darwin gave to the world his theory of organic evolution. And as the latter had to fight its way to recognition in the teeth of religious prejudices, so has the recognition of the former been retarded by even more powerful social and political prejudices.
The Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy which is added as a supplement to this book is for the first time published in book form in any language. It was written by Marx in 1857, but for reasons explained by him in the preface was not published and in fact was never finished by him, since according to his changed plans it would have fitted more into the last volume of Capital which was to contain a history of political economy. The introduction has been published but lately in the form of a magazine article by Karl Kautsky, editor of the Neue Zeit and literary executor of Karl Marx.
A few explanations are here in order with reference to the work of translation. No one is more keenly alive to the shortcomings of the