Since the 1920s, scholars have promoted a set of manuscripts, long abandoned by Marx and Engels, to canonical status in book form as The German Ideology, and in particular its 'first chapter,' known as 'I. Feuerbach.' Part one of this revolutionary study relates in detail the political history through which these manuscripts were editorially fabricated into editions and translations, so that they could represent an important exposition of Marx's 'theory of history.' Part two presents a wholly-original view of the so-called 'Feuerbach' manuscripts in a page-by-page English-language rendition of these discontinuous fragments. By including the hitherto devalued corrections that each author made in draft, the new text invites the reader into a unique laboratory for their collaborative work. An 'Analytical Introduction' shows how Marx's and Engels's thinking developed in duologue as they altered individual words and phrases on these 'left-over' polemical pages.

2011 Reprint of 1939 Edition. Parts I & III of "The German Ideology." Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. Originally published by the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow in 1939. "The German Ideology" was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels circa 1846, but published later. The original edition was divided into three parts. Part I, the most significant, is perhaps the classic statement of the Marxist theory of history and his much cited "materialist conception of history." Since its first publication, Marxist scholars have found Part I "The German Ideology" particularly valuable since it is perhaps the most comprehensive statement of Marx's theory of history stated at such length and detail. Part II consisted of many satirically written polemics against Bruno Bauer, other Young Hegelians, and Max Stirner. These polemical and highly partisan sections of the "German Ideology" have not been reproduced in this edition. We reprint Parts I & Parts III only. Part III treats Marx & Engels' conception of true socialism and is reprinted in its entirety. Part II has not been reprinted in this edition in order to produce a small and inexpensive book which contains the gist of the "German Ideology." Appendix contains the "Theses on Feuerbach." Index of authors, with scholarly citations and footnotes.

Nearly two years before his powerful Communist Manifesto, Marx (1818-1883) co-wrote The German Ideology in 1845 with friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels expounding a new political worldview, including positions on materialism, labor, production, alienation, the expansion of capitalism, class conflict, revolution, and eventually communism. They chart the course of "true" socialism based on Hegel''s dialectic, while criticizing the ideas of Bruno Bauer, Max Stirner, and Ludwig Feuerbach. Marx expanded his criticism of the latter in his now famous Theses on Feuerbach, found after Marx''s death and published by Engels in 1888. Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, also found among the posthumous papers of Marx, is a fragment of an introduction to his main works. Combining these three works, this volume is essential for an understanding of Marxism.

Since the 1920s, scholars have promoted a set of manuscripts, long abandoned by Marx and Engels, to canonical status in book form as The German Ideology, and in particular its 'first chapter,' known as 'I. Feuerbach.' Part one of this revolutionary study relates in detail the political history through which these manuscripts were editorially fabricated into editions and translations, so that they could represent an important exposition of Marx's 'theory of history.' Part two presents a wholly-original view of the so-called 'Feuerbach' manuscripts in a page-by-page English-language rendition of these discontinuous fragments. By including the hitherto devalued corrections that each author made in draft, the new text invites the reader into a unique laboratory for their collaborative work. An 'Analytical Introduction' shows how Marx's and Engels's thinking developed in duologue as they altered individual words and phrases on these 'left-over' polemical pages.

Communism as a political movement attained global importance after the Bolsheviks toppled the Russian Czar in 1917. After that time the works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, especially the influential Communist Manifesto (1848), enjoyed an international audience. The world was to learn a new political vocabulary peppered with "socialism," "capitalism," "the working class," "the bourgeoisie," "labor theory of value," "alienation," "economic determinism," "dialectical materialism," and "historical materialism." Marx's economic analysis of history has been a powerful legacy, the effects of which continue to be felt world-wide. Serving as the foundation for Marx's indictment of capitalism is his extraordinary work titled Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, written in 1844 but published nearly a century later. Here Marx offers his theory of human nature and an analysis of emerging capitalism's degenerative impact on man's sense of self and his creative potential. What is man's true nature? How did capitalism gain such a foothold on Western society? What is alienation and how does it threaten to undermine the proletariat? These and other vital questions are addressed as the youthful Marx sets forth his first detailed assessment of the human condition.

Marx's early work is well known and widely available, but it usually interpreted as at best a kind of stepping-stone to the Marx of Capital. This book offers something completely different; it reconstructs, from his first writings spanning from 1835 to 1846, a coherent and well-rounded political philosophy. The influence of Engels upon the development of that philosophy is discussed. This, it is argued, was a philosophy that Marx could have presented had he put the ideas together, as he hinted was his eventual intention. Had he done so, this first Marx would have made an even greater contribution to social and political philosophy than is generally acknowledged today. Arguments regarding revolutionary change, contradiction and other topics such as production, alienation and emancipation contribute to a powerful analysis in the early works of Marx, one which is worthy of discussion on its own merits. This analysis is distributed among a range of books, papers, letters and other writings, and is gathered here for the first time. Marx's work of the period was driven by his commitment to emancipation. Moreover, as is discussed in the conclusion to this book, his emancipatory philosophy continues to have resonance today. This new book presents Marx in a unique, new light and will be indispensable reading for all studying and following his work.

Since the 1920s, scholars have promoted a set of manuscripts, long abandoned by Marx and Engels, to canonical status in book form as The German Ideology, and in particular its 'first chapter,' known as 'I. Feuerbach.' Part one of this revolutionary study relates in detail the political history through which these manuscripts were editorially fabricated into editions and translations, so that they could represent an important exposition of Marx's 'theory of history.' Part two presents a wholly-original view of the so-called 'Feuerbach' manuscripts in a page-by-page English-language rendition of these discontinuous fragments. By including the hitherto devalued corrections that each author made in draft, the new text invites the reader into a unique laboratory for their collaborative work. An 'Analytical Introduction' shows how Marx's and Engels's thinking developed in duologue as they altered individual words and phrases on these 'left-over' polemical pages.

No other Marxist text has come close to achieving the fame and influence of The Communist Manifesto. Translated into over 100 languages, this clarion call to the workers of the world radically shaped the events of the twentieth century. But what relevance does it have for us today? In this slim book Slavoj Zizek argues that, while exploitation no longer occurs the way Marx described it, it has by no means disappeared; on the contrary, the profit once generated through the exploitation of workers has been transformed into rent appropriated through the privatization of the ‘general intellect’. Entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have become extremely wealthy not because they are exploiting their workers but because they are appropriating the rent for allowing millions of people to participate in the new form of the ‘general intellect’ that they own and control. But, even if Marx’s analysis can no longer be applied to our contemporary world of global capitalism without significant revision, the fundamental problem with which he was concerned, the problem of the commons in all its dimensions – the commons of nature, the cultural commons, and the commons as the universal space of humanity from which no one should be excluded – remains as relevant as ever. This timely reflection on the enduring relevance of The Communist Manifesto will be of great value to everyone interested in the key questions of radical politics today.

This book offers a complete presentation of the most important themes of Marx’s thought, following the development of Marx’s theory from the beginning to his death and offering a reconstruction and analysis that covers the whole of Marx’s life and works. Each chapter presents one of the central topics of Marx’s reflection: the confrontation with the Hegelian theory of the State (1843); the critique of political liberalism in the “On the Jewish Question”; the discovery of Political Economy in the Manuscripts of 1844; the new theory of history developed in The German Ideology; the political theory and the revolution of 1848; the critique of political economy from the Grundrisse to Capital; and the political thought of the last Marx (the Paris Commune and the critique of the German Social Democratic Party).Stefano Petrucciani is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy.

Reading different or controversial intentions into Marx and Engels’ works has been a common but somewhat unquestioned practice in the history of Marxist scholarship. Engels’ Dialectics of Nature, a torso for some and a great book for others, is a case in point. The entire Engels debate separates into two opposite views: Engels the contaminator of Marx’s “new materialism” vs. Engels the self-educated genius of dialectical materialism. What Engels, unlike Marx, has not enjoyed so far is a critical reading that considers the relationship between different layers of this standard text: authorial, textual, editorial, and interpretational. Informed by a historical hermeneutic, this book questions the elements that structure the debate on the Dialectics of Nature. It analyzes different political and philosophical functions attached to Engels’ text, and relocates the meaning of the term “dialectics” into a more precise context. Arguing that Engels’ dialectics is less complete than we usually think it is but that he achieved more than most scholars would like to admit, this book fully documents and critically analyzes Engels’ intentions and concerns in the Dialectics of Nature, the process of writing, and its reception and edition history in order to reconstruct the solved and unsolved philosophical problems in this unfinished work.