Preface

Summary

Karl Marx is the last of the great “classical” economists − Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Malthus, and Say − with whom I have been engaged since the 1960s. As a gifted polemicist with a malicious sense of humor, he is certainly the most animated and amusing. Choice of the title Poverty of Philosophy to counter Proudhon's Philosophy of Poverty or his aside that Proudhon “certainly hears the bells ringing, but never knows where …” are typical; while representation of contemporary approaches to distribution in terms of “the trinity formula” is a stroke of genius. Marx's attractiveness was discerned by an English reviewer of Capital 1 on its appearance: “The presentation of the subject invests the direct economic questions with a certain peculiar charm”; while a Russian reviewer wrote of the work that it was “distinguished … in spite of the scientific intricacy of the subject, by an unusual liveliness,” opinions that were cited with understandable satisfaction by Marx himself (MECW 35: 16n). The correspondence can also be a delight to read.