The formation of Marx's critique of political economy: from the studies of 1843 to the Grundrisse

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reconstruct the stages of Marx’s critique of political economy in the light of the philological acquisitions of Marx Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA 2), and hence to offer a more exhaustive account of the formation of Marx’s thought
than has previously been offered. The text first seeks to reconstruct the studies in political economy that Marx conducted in Paris, Manchester and Brussels between 1843 and 1847, and to consider Marx’s political and personal fortunes during the revolutions of 1848 and his exile in London. The longest section of the piece focuses on the 26 notebooks of excerpts that he compiled from 1850 to 1853, known as the London Notebooks. These bear the traces of his immersion in dozens of works of political economy, and make possible to reconstruct an important phase in Marx’s thought that few interpreters have investigated until now. Finally, the last sections review the development of his position in the articles he wrote for the New York Tribune on the possibility of an economic crisis in the 1850s. The outbreak of such crisis eventually coincided with his initial work on the Grundrisse. A table, printed as an appendix, sets out the chronological order of the notebooks of excerpts, the manuscripts and the works on political economy from the 1843-1858 period.