Collected Works. This item is unavailable.Collected Works

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

The first volume of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels contains works and letters written by Marx between August 1835 and March 1843. The volume is divided into four sections—works, letters, preparatory material and youthful literary experiments in prose and verse, the material in each section being arranged chronologically. These writings reflect Marx's early, formative period, the path of intellectual development that led an inquiring young man, inspired while still at the gymnasium by the idea of serving the common good, to the forefront of the philosophical and political thought of his day.

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 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels available in the English language.

Karl Marx was a German philosopher, political economist, historian, journalist, political theorist, sociologist, communist, and revolutionary, whose ideas played a significant role in the development of modern communism. Born in Trier, Germany, Marx studied law and philosophy at University. Due to his political writings, he was forced to live in exile in London, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German thinker Friedrich Engels and publish his writings. His best-known titles are The Communist Manifesto and the three-volume Das Kapital (1867-1883). Marx's political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic and political history.

Friedrich Engels (1820-95) wrote several scathing essays on contemporary social and political conditions in Britain, including The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), in which he criticised the working conditions and treatment of the urban poor. After Karl Marx' death, Engels completed and published the last two volumes of Das Kapital (1884, 1894) from surviving papers.