Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. J. L. Joynes (1900).pdf/5



The following pages appeared first in the shape of leading articles in the columns of the New Rhenish Gazette, beginning April 4, 1849. They were based on lectures given by Marx in the year 1847, before the German Workingmen’s Club at Brussels. The series of articles begun remained however a fragment only. The promise “to be continued” (held out in the No. 269 at the end of the article) was never to be realized owing to the rush of events during those days: The invasion of the Russians into Hungary, the risings at Dresden, Iserlohn, Elberfeld, in the Palatinate and Baden, which brought about the suppression of the Gazette itself (May 19, 1849). Among the papers left by Marx there has not been found any Manuscript, containing the continuation of the article in question.

A few editions of “Wage Labor and Capital” have already appeared in pamphlet form, the last in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1884. All these editions were exact reprints of the original articles. But as this new edition, to be used for the purpose of agitation, is to be made up of no less than 10,000 copies, the question had to present itself to my mind, whether Marx himself would under these circumstances have approved a mere reproduction of the original text.

As a matter of fact, during the 40’s Marx had not yet completed his critical study of Political Economy. He did this only about the end of the 50’s. Thus all his writings, which have appeared before the publication of the first part of his “Critique of Political Economy” (1859) differ in some points from those published after 1859, contain expressions and even entire sentences, which from the point of view of his later writing, appear rather ambiguous and even untrue.