The “Introduction” (“Enleitung”) was written at the end of August 1857, a month or so before Marx started to write the actual 1857-58 Manuscript itself. Although it is an important text, it is not easy to say what it is the “introduction” to, exactly. The 1857-58 Manuscript was never intended for publication, but seems to have been an exercise whereby Marx could set out his ideas in written form. The “Introduction” is clearly not an introduction to this manuscript. When Marx did publish a version of his economic theories, at least in part, in the form of the 1857 Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, he wrote a “Preface” to it, in which he remarked that a “general introduction [to my work], which I had drafted, is omitted, since on further consideration it seems to me confusing to anticipate results which still have to be substantiated, and the reader who really wishes to follow me will have to decide to advance from the particular to the general.” It is generally agreed that the “general introduction” that Marx refers to in the 1859 Preface is the August 1857 “Introduction”, although it is not entirely clear to which specific “results” Marx’s comment makes reference.

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