Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/16



present work was written in the winter of 1846–7, at a time when Marx had just elucidated the principles of his new historical and economic theory. The "Système des Contradictions EconomiqueÉconomiques [sic] ou Philosophie de la Misère," of Proudhon, which had just appeared, gave him the opportunity of developing his principles in opposing them to the ideas of the man who from then was to take a preponderating place among the French Socialists of his epoch. From the moment when both of them at Paris had lengthily discussed economic questions together, often for whole nights at a stretch, their tendency had been to drift further and further apart: Proudhon's book showed that there was already