Grundrisse

The Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Rohentwurf) (German: [ˈɡʁʊntˌʁɪsə]; lit. "Foundations/Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft)") is a lengthy, unfinished manuscript written by Karl Marx in 1857–1858. Comprising seven notebooks of economic studies, the work represents the first major draft of Marx's critique of political economy and is widely considered the preparatory work for his magnum opus, Das Kapital. The text was written for self-clarification during the Panic of 1857, and remained unpublished during his lifetime. A first edition was published in German in Moscow in 1939 and 1941, but the work only became widely available and influential in the 1960s and 1970s; a full English translation appeared in 1973.

The manuscript's scope is vast, covering all six sections of Marx's intended economic project. It explores key themes such as alienation, the nature of capital as a self-expanding process or "value in motion," and an analysis of pre-capitalist economic forms. It contains the well-known "Fragment on Machines," in which Marx analyses the effects of automation, foreseeing a point where social knowledge becomes a direct productive force, a concept he termed the "general intellect." The work also outlines the dialectical method Marx considered "scientifically correct," which proceeds from simple abstract categories to an understanding of the concrete world as a "rich totality of many determinations and relations."

Because of its raw, experimental style and its late publication, the Grundrisse is often described as the "laboratory" for the more structured arguments of Das Kapital. The Ukrainian Marxist Roman Rosdolsky's seminal study, The Making of Marx's 'Capital' (1968), was crucial in establishing the manuscript's importance as the link between Marx's early philosophical writings and his later economic analysis, with some scholars such as David McLellan calling it the "centrepiece" of his entire corpus. Its eventual publication had a profound impact on Marxist scholarship, revealing a more philosophical and historical dimension to Marx's thought and sparking diverse interpretations among thinkers from Louis Althusser to the Autonomist school.