Marx: Later Political Writings

by Karl Marx

Published 18 January 1996
Marx: Later Political Writings, first published in 1996, brings together translations of Marx's most important texts in political philosophy written after 1848. Marx challenged political theory to its very fundamentals, as his works do not follow traditional models for exploring politics theoretically. In his introduction, Terrell Carver situates Marx in a politics of democratic constitutionalism and revolutionary communism. The works are presented here complete, according to the first editions or the earliest manuscript state, and include the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the Preface of 1859 to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, The Civil War in France, and the little-known Notes on Adolph Wagner. More than most political theorists, Marx made contemporary politics the focus for his theoretical work. He created a distinctive kind of political theory, and this volume makes it accessible today.

The political doctrine of Karl Marx is to be found in a broad range of both published and unpublished writings. This volume, the first of two which together span his entire output, presents his early texts of 1843–7, which predate the Communist Manifesto. excerpts from the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and from the Paris Notebooks, Points on the State and Bourgeois Society and other writings are newly translated and arranged in a sequence that illuminates the development of Marx's thought, while the introduction discusses the intellectual context of the theories he constructed. A chronology of Marx's life and career and an annotated bibliography complete a volume which will be an invaluable guide to the formation of one of the most influential doctrines in the history of political thought.