Marx did not leave any major methodological statements, comparable, for instance, to the philosophical part of Engels's Anti-Dühring. His methodology must be reconstructed from his writings on economics, politics, and history. It might be more accurate to speak of his “methodologies,” since one of the more remarkable features of Marx's work is the coexistence in it of Hegelian thinking and elements of analytical social science.

The texts included here illuminate Marx's thought from different angles. Selection 1, the best known of Marx's explicitly methodological texts, addresses some problems in political economy. Selection 2 is a famous early statement of the relation between social theory and political practice. Selection 3 lays out the conceptual foundations of historical materialism.

This text is probably Marx's most important methodological contribution. It was written in August 1857 and first published in 1903, several decades before the main body of the Grundrisse. The introduction, like the rest of the manuscript, remains in the form of a draft. Among its many suggestive and brilliant observations, one may note, for instance, the comments on conquest and pillage; the distinction between “barbarians who are fit by nature to be used for anything, and civilized people who apply themselves to everything”; and the remarks on art which are among Marx's most important dicta on the topic. On the more systematic side, one should note the teleological statement that the human anatomy contains a key to the anatomy of the apes, and the five-part plan for the projected economic opus. This plan was later modified slightly to a six-part one and then abandoned for the tripartite structure of Capital.