Marx's writings

Most of Marx's writings have been preserved. They include not only his books, but also most of his correspondence and the notes of his speeches.

Philosophic essays. Some of Marx's philosophic essays were published during his lifetime, but others were not discovered until the 1900's. Marx wrote some of them alone and some with Engels. The essays range from one of about 15 sentences to a 700-page book, The German Ideology (1845-1846), written with Engels.

Marx wrote his essays between 1842 and 1847. They spell out the philosophic foundations of his radicalism. The chief themes in the essays include Marx's bitter view that economic forces were increasingly oppressing human beings and his belief that political action is a necessary part of philosophy. The essays also show the influence of the philosophy of history developed by the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

The Communist Manifesto was a pamphlet written jointly with Engels on the eve of the German revolution of 1848. Its full title is the Manifesto of the Communist Party. The manifesto is a brief but forceful presentation of the authors' political and historical theories. It is the only work they produced that can be considered a systematic statement of the theories that became known as Marxism. The Communist Manifesto considers history to be a series of conflicts between classes. It predicts that the ruling middle class will be overthrown by the working class. The result of this revolution, according to Marx and Engels, will be a classless society in which the chief means of production are publicly owned.

Das Kapital (Capital) was Marx's major work. He spent about 30 years writing it. The first volume appeared in 1867. Engels edited the second and third volumes from Marx's manuscripts. Both of these volumes were published after Marx's death. The fourth volume exists only as a mass of scattered notes.

In Das Kapital, Marx described the free enterprise system as he saw it. He considered it the most efficient, dynamic economic system ever devised. But he also regarded it as afflicted with flaws that would destroy it through increasingly severe periods of inflation and depression. The most serious flaw in the free enterprise system, according to Marx, is that it accumulates more and more wealth but becomes less and less capable of using this wealth wisely. As a result, Marx saw the accumulation of riches being accompanied by the rapid spread of human misery.

Other writings. Marx and Engels also wrote what today might be called political columns. They discussed all sorts of events in and influences on national and international affairs--personalities, overthrowing of governments, cabinet changes, parliamentary debates, wars, and workers' uprisings.

Marx also wrote about the practical problems of leading an international revolutionary movement. The major source of these comments is his correspondence with Engels and other friends.