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The work republished here was Marx's first attempt to explain a piece of contemporary history by means of his materialist conception, on the basis of the prevailing economic situation. In the Communist Manifesto, the theory was applied in broad outline to the whole of modern history; in the articles by Marx and myself in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, it was constantly used to interpret political events of the day. Here, on the other hand, the question was to demonstrate the inner causal connection in the course of a development which extended over some years, a development as critical, for the whole of Europe, as it was typical; hence, in accordance with the conception of the author, to trace political events back to effects of what were, in the final analysis, economic causes.