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Now, it goes without saying, that in common editions for the general reading public, even such older ideas, which constitute, so to say, the logical stepping stones to the final stage of the author’s mental evolution, may find a legitimate place, that in the case of such editions, the author as well as the public have an undisputed right to demand an unchanged reprint of such older writings, and for such an emergency it would never have entered my mind, to change even a single word of the original text.
But it is quite a different thing, in case the new edition is destined primarily and almost exclusively for agitation among workingmen. In such a case Marx would have undoubtedly brought into accord the older exposition, dating back to the year 1849, with his later, more mature ideas. And I am sure to act in his spirit by making for the present edition those slight changes and additions, which are required to attain the stated purpose in all principal points. I may then tell the reader beforehand: This is the pamphlet, not as Marx wrote it in the year 1849, but such a one, or nearly such a one, as Marx might have written in the year 1891. Moreover, the original text can be found in quite a number of old copies, and this will do for the time being, until I have occasion to embody it as part of a complete collection of Marx’s writings.
The changes I have made turn all about one point. According to the original text, the workingman sells his labor to the capitalist for a certain wage; according to the new text what he sells is his labor-power. It is concerning this change that I owe some explanation: First of all to the workingmen, so that they may see that, what we are concerned with, is not at all mere nicety of verbage, but one of the most important problems of Political Economy,—and then also to the bourgeois (middle-class people), so that they may convince themselves, how much superior the uneducated workingmen are to the conceited “educated class” of society; for while to the former the closest and most difficult reasoning can be
