The common theme of the documents in this volume is the methodological uniqueness of Karl Marx's writings in political economy.

Marx set out to trans­form political economy from a rationalisation of existing capitalist society into a scientific criticism of that same society and its dehumanising effects in terms of exploitation and commodity fetishism.

Karl Marx's debt to Hegel is generally acknowledged. Marx himself spoke of being a pupil of that ‘mighty thinker'.¹ Marx's analysis of political economy originated in his critique of Hegelian philosophy, just as Hegel's system was a critical response to the epistemology and moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. This means that to appreciate Marx's work, as a totality, presupposes some familiarity with both Hegel and Kant. Hegel spoke of his dialectical method as a ‘circle of necessity'.^{[86] [87] Marx replied that the ‘rational kernel' of Hegel's method must be separated from its ‘mystical shell'. In the theory of historical materialism, Marx severed Hegelian dialectics from ethical idealism. He began with Feuerbach's humanism in the 1844 Manuscripts; he ended, particularly in the Grundrisse, with the practical prospect of human community through the rational self-determination of an agreed economic plan.}

For Marx, the critique of philosophy involved transcendence, not mere repu­diation. To transcend philosophical ideals required that the ideals be made real: ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it'.^[88] In that sense, Marx's work moved in its own ‘circle of necessity' - from the critical evaluation of Hegelian philosophy, through the economic ana­lysis of capitalist contradictions, to the prospect of fulfilling the human poten­tial in communism. To outline that movement, and thus to provide a larger context for Marx's specific contributions to political economy, will be the pur­pose of this essay, beginning with the pre-history of market philosophy and then proceeding to Smith, Kant, Hegel and Marx.