“If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are troubled as to why, how and by whom political power is held and used, if you sense there must be good intellectual reasons for your unease, if your curiosity and openness drive you toward wishing to act with others, to ‘do something,’ you already have much in common with the writers of the three essays in this book.” — Adrienne Rich With a preface by Adrienne Rich, Manifesto presents the radical vision of four famous young rebels: Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution and Che Guevara’s Socialism and Humanity.
"Written with brio, warmth, and historical understanding, this is the best biography of one of the most attractive inhabitants of Victorian England, Marx's friend, partner, and political heir."—Eric Hobsbawm Friedrich Engels is one of the most intriguing and contradictory figures of the nineteenth century. Born to a prosperous mercantile family, he spent his life enjoying the comfortable existence of a Victorian gentleman; yet he was at the same time the co-author of The Communist Manifesto, a ruthless political tactician, and the man who sacrificed his best years so that Karl Marx could have the freedom to write. Although his contributions are frequently overlooked, Engels's grasp of global capital provided an indispensable foundation for communist doctrine, and his account of the Industrial Revolution, The Condition of the Working Class in England, remains one of the most haunting and brutal indictments of capitalism's human cost. Drawing on a wealth of letters and archives, acclaimed historian Tristram Hunt plumbs Engels's intellectual legacy and shows us how one of the great bon viveurs of Victorian Britain reconciled his exuberant personal life with his radical political philosophy. This epic story of devoted friendship, class compromise, ideological struggle, and family betrayal at last brings Engels out from the shadow of his famous friend and collaborator.
Two centuries after his birth, Karl Marx is read almost solely through the lens of Marxism, his works examined for how they fit into the doctrine that was developed from them after his death. With Marx’s Dream, Tom Rockmore offers a much-needed alternative view, distinguishing rigorously between Marx and Marxism. Rockmore breaks with the Marxist view of Marx in three key ways. First, he shows that the concern with the relation of theory to practice—reflected in Marx’s famous claim that philosophers only interpret the world, while the point is to change it—arose as early as Socrates, and has been central to philosophy in its best moments. Second, he seeks to free Marx from his unsolicited Marxist embrace in order to consider his theory on its own merits. And, crucially, Rockmore relies on the normal standards of philosophical debate, without the special pleading to which Marxist accounts too often resort. Marx’s failures as a thinker, Rockmore shows, lie less in his diagnosis of industrial capitalism’s problems than in the suggested remedies, which are often unsound. ? Only a philosopher of Rockmore’s stature could tackle a project this substantial, and the results are remarkable: a fresh Marx, unencumbered by doctrine and full of insights that remain salient today.
This book examines the life and works of Friedrich Engels during the decade before he entered a political partnership with Karl Marx. It takes a thematic approach in three substantial chapters: Imagination, Observation, and Vocation. Throughout, the reader sees the world from Engels’s perspective, not knowing how his story will turn out. This approach reveals the multifaceted and ambitious character of young Friedrich’s achievements from age sixteen till just turning twenty-five. At the time that he accepted Marx’s invitation to co-author a short political satire, Engels was far better known and much more accomplished. He had published many more articles on far more subjects, in both German and English, than Marx had managed. Moreover, he had written a critique of political economy from a perspective unique in the German context, and published his own pioneering and substantial study of working class conditions in an industrializing economy. Offering an innovative approach to a largely neglected period of Engels’s life before meeting Marx, Carver upends standard narratives in existing biographical studies of Engels to reveal him as an important figure not just in relation to his more famous collaborator, but a key voice in the liberal-democratic, constitutional and nation-building revolutionism of the 1830s and 1840s.
The project to publish the works of Marx and Engels continues, and this book, published in 1984, puts together a comprehensive bibliography of their works either written in or translated into English, including books, monographs, articles, chapters and doctoral dissertations, together with the works of their interpreters. The inclusion of the secondary literature makes this a particularly valuable bibliography, and contributes greatly to the understanding of the thought of Marx and Engels.
In this comprehensive overview of Friedrich Engels's writings, Paul Blackledge critically explores Engels's contributions to modern social and political theory generally and Marxism specifically. Through a careful examination both of Engels's role in the forging of Marxism in the 1840s, and his contributions to the further deepening and expansion of this worldview over the next half century, Blackledge offers a closely argued and balanced assessment of his thought. This book challenges the long-standing attempt among academic Marxologists to denigrate Engels as Marx's greatest mistake, and concludes that Engels was a profound thinker whose ideas continue to resonate to this day.
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.
A complete modern compilation of M/E's writings on unions, strikes, labor aristocracy, U.S. labor and more from 1833-1894. Introduction and notes by the editor, formerly a shop steward, now a writer. 1st paperback edition.
