it, given in the preface to his "Critique of Political Economy," is of more than passing interest, and we shall therefore place it before our readers.
In 1842–43, Marx says, he found himself, as editor of the "Rheinische Zeitung," the leading German radical paper of the time, embarrassed when he had to take part in discussions concerning so-called material interests, such as forest thefts, subdivision of landed property, free trade, and the like, as his previous studies had been only in the domains of philosophy, history, and jurisprudence. At the same time he had to express an opinion on the French schools of socialism of those days, with which he was also unfamiliar. He therefore took advantage of his publishers' desire to pursue a less aggressive course than his, and retired to his "study-room," there to get the needed information.
"The first work undertaken for the solution of the questions that troubled me," he says, "was a critical revision of Hegel's 'Philosophy of Law;' the introduction to that work appeared in the 'Deutsch Franzöisische Jahrbücher,' published in Paris in 1844. I was led by my studies to the conclusion that legal relations as well as forms of state could neither be understood by themselves, nor explained by the so-called general progress of the human mind, but that they are rooted in the material conditions of life, which are summed up by Hegel after the fashion of the English and French of the eighteenth century under the name 'civic society;' the anatomy of the civic society is to be sought in political economy. The study of the latter which I had taken up in Paris, I continued at Brussels whither I emigrated on account of an order of expulsion issued by Mr. Guizot. The general conclusions at which I arrived and which, once reached, continued to serve as a leading thread in my studies, may be briefly summed up as follows:"
Here follows the famous passage, already quoted by us in the first chapter of this book, giving the whole Marxian sys-
