Marx/Engels Collected Works (
MECW) is the largest collection of translations into
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
of the works of
Karl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and
Friedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
. It contains all works published by Marx and Engels in their lifetimes and numerous unpublished manuscripts and letters. The
Collected Works, which was translated by Richard Dixon and others, consists of 50 volumes. It was compiled and printed between 1975 and 2005 by
Progress PublishersProgress Publishers was a Moscow-based Soviet publisher founded in 1931.It was noted for its English-language editions of books on Marxism-Leninism....
(
MoscowMoscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
) in collaboration with
Lawrence and WishartLawrence & Wishart is a British publishing company formerly associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain. It was formed in 1936, through the merger of Martin Lawrence, the Communist Party's press and Wishart Ltd, a family-owned liberal and anti-fascist publisher.It publishes the journals...
(
LondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
) and
International PublishersInternational Publishers is a book publishing company based in New York City specializing in Marxist works of economics, political science, and history. The company was established in 1924 by A.A. Heller and Alexander Trachtenberg, using funds earned through a lucrative trade concession granted...
(
New YorkNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
).
The
Collected Works contains material written by Marx between 1835 and his death in 1883, and by Engels between 1838 and his death in 1895. The early volumes include
juveniliaJuvenilia is a term applied to literary, musical or artistic works produced by an author during his or her youth. The term often has a retrospective sense. For example, written juvenilia, if published at all, usually appear some time after the author has become well-known for later works.The term...
, including correspondence between Marx and his father, Marx's poetry, and letters from Engels to his sister. Several volumes collect the pair's articles for the
Neue Rheinische ZeitungThe Neue Rheinische Zeitung - Organ der Demokratie was a German daily newspaper, published by Karl Marx in Cologne between June 1, 1848 and May 19, 1849. Its name refers to a paper earlier edited by Marx, the Rheinische Zeitung...
.
Other volumes in the
Collected Works contain well-known works of Marx and Engels, including
The Communist ManifestoThe Communist Manifesto, originally titled Manifesto of the Communist Party is a short 1848 publication written by the German Marxist political theorists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It has since been recognized as one of the world's most influential political manuscripts. Commissioned by the...
,
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis NapoleonDer 18te Brumaire des Louis Napoleon was written by Karl Marx between December 1851 and March 1852, and originally published in 1852 in Die Revolution, a German-language monthly magazine published in New York and established by Joseph Weydemeyer...
, and
CapitalDas Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie , by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of capitalism as political economy, meant to reveal the economic laws of the capitalist mode of production, and how it was the precursor of the socialist mode of production.- Themes :In Capital: Critique of...
, lesser-known works, and previously unpublished or untranslated manuscripts. The
Collected Works includes 13 volumes of correspondence by the mature Marx and Engels, covering the period from 1844 through 1895.
Although the
Collected Works is the most complete collection of the work by Marx and Engels published to date in English, it is not their complete works. A project to publish the pair's complete works in
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
is expected to require more than 120 volumes.
See also
- The Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), the complete works of Marx and Engels in German.
External links