Socialism: Utopian and Scientific of thousands of copies. Throughout the decade of the 1860s, Karl Marx, close personal friend and political associate of Friedrich Engels, dedicated himself to the study of economics, culminating in the publication of the first volume of "Das Kapital" in 1867. Marx's lengthy and ponderous volume was extremely difficult for the average to penetrate, however, leading Engels to suggest to Marx in a letter of September 16, 1868 that a short popularized version of "Das Kapital" for a working class audience was urgently needed. "If it is not written, some Moses or other will come along and do it and
Karl Marx short essays on capital, landed property, wage labour, the state and foreign trade and the world market, though this work did not appear in print until 1939 under the title ""Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy"". Finally in 1859, Marx published "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy", his first serious economic work. This work was intended merely as a preview of his three-volume "Das Kapital" (English title: "Capital: Critique of Political Economy"), which he intended to publish at a later date. In "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy", Marx expands on the labour theory of