From Engels’s Sketch to Marx’s Critique of Political Economy: a Historical Sketch and its Interpretation as a Critical Materialism

Abstract

The origin of what would be the homonymous theoretical project of Karl Marx can be traced in the outline for a critique of political economy by Friedrich Engels. The objective of this article is to describe historically the evolution of the critique of Marxian political economy that, through the analysis of the categories of political economy, carried out the critique of capitalist exploitation. However, this criticism would be insufficient without the analysis of the Marxian categories of fetishism and mystification that make it possible to understand in depth the capitalist mode of production. In this sense, the project of criticism of political economy in Marx can be conceived as a critical materialism, as the Spanish philosopher Clara Ramas has pointed out.