Marx & Engels Collected Works Volume 21: v. 21 - Hardcover

Karl Marx; Friedrich Engels

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0853154422 ISBN 13: 9780853154426

Publisher: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd, 1987

Synopsis

‘Indispensable to anyone with a serious interest in Marx, Marxism and the 19th century’ - EJ Hobsbawm

Volume 21 of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels contains works dating from November 1867 to mid-July 1870, most of them relating to the activity of the First International—documents, reports, articles, statements, and outlines. Much space is devoted to works, speeches, and preparatory materials on the Irish question. The period covered in this volume saw a sharpening of economic and social conflicts in Europe and the United States of America, mass working-class actions, an intensification of the Irish national liberation struggle, a deepening of the crisis of Louis Bonaparte's Second Empire, and a mounting threat of war in Europe.

About the Collection

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were the authors of an integrated body of philosophical, economic and social-political views, the ideology of communism, which in our time has spread more widely and exercised a greater influence on the course of world history than any other.

This collection, spanning the years 1835 to 1895, is the product of an agreement and collaboration of British, American and Soviet scholars, translators and editors in 1969, and remains the most comprehensive collection of writings by Marx and Engels available in the English language.

About this title

About the Author

Born in Trier and exiled to London, Karl Marx (1818–1883) laid the groundwork for modern social science. In The Communist Manifesto (1848), he mapped how class struggle drives history, while in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), he detailed how political crises emerge when social structures buckle under economic transition. For over 175 years, his framework of historical materialism has explained how material conditions shape human society. Reimagined in the 21st century, Marx’s theories map onto platform capitalism. Today, massive tech monopolies own the digital means of production—cloud infrastructure and proprietary data—while generative AI automates cognitive labor in a modern echo of industrial mechanization. Across global gig economies and remote workforces, his concept of alienation endures: human intellect, harvested into algorithms, becomes a force that competes with workers and concentrates wealth in the hands of a new techno-bourgeoisie.

Born in Barmen, Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) documented the brutal realities of industrialization in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), exposing how structural neglect breeds systemic poverty. Co-authoring The Communist Manifesto (1848) with Karl Marx, Engels established a foundational analysis of class conflict that has shaped socio-economic thought for nearly a century and a half. In the 21st century, his insights sharpen a central claim: platform monopolies control digital infrastructure, while precarious gig workers and algorithmic management echo the factory exploitation he observed in Manchester. Engels’ critique endures, revealing how concentrated capital continually extracts value from labor.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: German
• ISBN 10: 0853154422
• ISBN 13: 9780853154426
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 648