ON July 19, 1870, war broke out between France and Prussia. The ruling classes of both countries had long been secretly preparing for it. Marx had long foreseen that the adventurer Napoleon III and the Prussian Junker Bismarck, who was bent on unifying Germany “by blood and iron”, would embark on policies leading to an armed conflict.

MARX wrote Capital especially for the working class, for the struggle of the workers. With special emphasis on the history of English capitalism, he made clear the manner in which not only the material means of production are being constantly created and reproduced anew in the course of English capitalist production, but the conditions for exploitation as well. With the piling up, the accumulation of, capital, its power is extended over an ever¬¬-increasing number of wage-workers.

MARX’S study of political economy began long before his arrival in England. In 1842, when his political activity as a Correspondent and then Editor of Rheinische Zeitung began, he was immediately confronted with questions of political economy. In 1843 he reached the conclusion that “the anatomy of civil society is to be sought in political economy.”

NEWSPAPER reports of the election of the leading committee, which later became the General Council, of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) carried Marx’s name at the end of the list. Soon, however, Marx’s name was the first in the elected committee, “the soul of this as of all subsequent General Councils” of the International, as Engels described him. A decade later Engels wrote, “To describe Marx’s activity in the International, would necessitate writing the history of the Association itself.”

WHILE immersed in theoretical studies, Marx did not for a moment lose touch with current political affairs. As an active publicist, he closely followed economic development and the policy of the ruling classes in European countries and the United States, and took note of even the smallest success of the democratic and proletarian movement there.