Wage-Labor and Capital (Lothrop)/Publisher's Note
Publisher’s Note
In this volume are presented two of the earlier writings of Karl Marx, with a special “Introduction” to each by Frederick Engels.
The first, entitled Wage-Labor and Capital, was translated for us by Dr. Harriet E. Lothrop, of Boston, from the standard German edition prepared by Engels in 1891. This is the only complete English edition of it that has yet appeared, and its accuracy was doubly secured by a critical comparison of its every sentence with the German text, made at the request of the translator by Herman Simpson, of New York, who also added footnotes wherever comment seemed needful. In the performance of their respective task, both kept in mind the all-important consideration, that in the works of Marx, as in all works, truly scientific, the exact expression is an essential factor and should not, therefore, be sacrificed to “literary style” in its transfer from one language to another.
To those who are already acquainted with Marx’s later essay on Value, Price, and Profit, this much earlier one on Wage-Labor and Capital will no doubt seem somewhat familiar. Still more familiar will both appear to the industrious reader of Capital. And for obvious reasons. In both are already promulgated, briefly yet comprehensively, the fundamental economic truths developed exhaustively, together with their many corollaries and sequences, in the magistral work by which Marx is now better known than by any of his previous writings. It will be observed, however, that each of these two essays has its particular merits, and that both may be perused with benefit, even by the advanced student of Capital. For instance in Value, Price, and Profit, which was written in 1865—or only four years before Capital appeared in print—the subject more specially considered is the " law of value," which Marx had by that time worked out to the utmost limit of perfection; whereas in Wage-Labor and Capital, which was written in the early part of 1849, the general propositions are rather formulated than demonstrated, but are in greater number and variety, thus showing already the powerful framework of a vast structure, fully planned out, but requiring twenty years of patient labor for its completion.
Of the discourse on Free Trade, which forms the second part of the present volume, the history is given by Engels in the " Introduction" that precedes it. The excellent translation of it that is presented here was first published some years ago by Lee and Shepard, of Boston. It is the work of Florence Kelley, who not only authorized us to use it, together with the introduction that Engels had written at her own request, but, most kindly also, revised our proofs.