Collected Works. Volume 10. Marx and Engels: 1849-1851

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

Volume 10 of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels covers the period from the autumn of 1849 to the summer of 1851. Marx and Engels had already embarked on their scientific analysis of the European revolutions of the mid-nineteenth century, in which the revolutionary energies of society as a whole had become concentrated in the proletariat. Here, they set out to deepen this analysis by defining the features of the 1848-49 revolutions and drawing the practical lessons for the consolidation of the proletariat as a class. Marx’s The Class Struggles in France and Engels’ The Peasant War in Germany are both of note here.

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.

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.