Karl Marx: A biography by David McLellan

SIX

The 'Economics'

You can believe me that seldom has a book been written under more

difficult circumstances, and I could write a secret history that would

uncover an infinite amount of worry, trouble and anxiety.

Jenny Marx to Kugelmann, Andreas, Briefe, p. 193

I. THE 'GRUNDRISSE' AND 'CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL

ECONOMY'

In 1857 the economic crisis that Marx had so often predicted did in fact
occur and moved him to a frantic attempt to bring his economic studies
to some sort of conclusion. The first mention of this in his correspondence
is in a letter to Engels of December 1857 where he says: 'I am working
madly through the nights on a synthesis of my economic studies so that,
before the deluge, I shall at least have the outlines clear.'^1 A month later
he was driven to taking a long course of medicine and admitted that 'I
had overdone my night-time labours, which were accompanied on the
one side only by a glass of lemonade but on the other by an immense
amount of tobacco.'^2
He was also composing an extremely detailed day-to-day diary on
events during the crisis. In fact the 'synthesis' that Marx speaks of had
already been begun in August 1857 with the composition of a General
Introduction. This Introduction, some thirty pages in length, tentative in
tone and incomplete, discussed the problem of method in the study of
economics and attempted to justify the unhistorical order of the sections
in the work that was to follow. The Introduction was left unpublished
because, as Marx said two years later, 'on closer reflection any anticipation
of results still to be proved appears to me to be disturbing, and the reader
who on the whole desires to follow me must be resolved to ascend from
the particular to the general.^3
In the first of its three sections - entitled 'Production in General' -
Marx defined the subject of his inquiry as 'the socially-determined pro-
duction of individuals'.^4 He rejected the starting point of Smith, Ricardo