What works did Karl Marx publish in his own lifetime?

Submitted by Agent of the I… on September 26, 2023

I want to know how many works did Marx publish in his own lifetime. Marx was a prolific writer but many of his works I believe were unpublished manuscripts. At least, that is what I learned from Wikipedia. He was also a journalist but he isn't often remembered for that. I'm curious about this question because I wonder what reputation he had in his own time, and how the works he did publish contributed to that reputation.

westartfromhere

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by westartfromhere on September 28, 2023

Marxes most disseminated work in his lifetime and since is the manifesto of the communist party. It is held in high repute.

Anarcho

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Anarcho on September 28, 2023

Well, off the top of my head:

The Poverty of Philosophy (basically ignored at the time -- for good reason, if you have read Proudhon then you know how bad it is)
Capital (volume 1)
The Manifesto of the Communist Party
Demands of the Communist Party in Germany (although they quickly suppressed it as an embarrassment to their strategy of building a cross-class alliance in 1848)
The Civil War in France
The Inaugural Address of the International (although written after the initial meeting)
General Rules and Administrative Regulations
Fictitious Splits in the International

Not to mention various articles written for radical and mainstream newspaper plus various resolutions for the International. A lot of this was subsequently forgotten but was republished later (to the shock of some, like certain writings in during the 1848 revolution).

A lot of what is considered as key notions of "Marxism" is drawn from works unpublished during Marx's lifetime, often Engels' as well. Looking at what was available in the 19th century, a very different picture emerge -- in terms of the Communist Manifesto, may I suggest Praxis, lacking: On The Communist Manifesto and its historical context

adri

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by adri on September 28, 2023

Bakunin by contrast self-published over a million works during his busy life. For example, there was:

God and the State
The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State
The Social Revolution
Man, Society, and Freedom
The Capitalist System
What is Authority?

… wait a second, it seems that people have just taken all of these works from Bakunin’s unfinished manuscript The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution and slapped various titles on them

(Ok, to be fair, some of the titles were taken from the unfinished manuscript itself.)

Reddebrek

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by Reddebrek on September 28, 2023

"Bakunin by contrast self-published over a million works during his busy life. For example, there was:"

Someone's been stung again.

westartfromhere

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by westartfromhere on September 30, 2023

I've "self-published" countless articles and one book. You won't know them though. They float through the ether like a butterfly.

Submitted by Anarcho on October 2, 2023

adri wrote: Bakunin by contrast self-published over a million works during his busy life...

Someone is a bit touchy... All things considered, this response to a very simple and straightforward question (and answer) suggests that ignoring posts by this person is called for.

adri

1 year 1 month ago

Submitted by adri on October 2, 2023

Anarcho wrote: Someone is a bit touchy... All things considered, this response to a very simple and straightforward question (and answer) suggests that ignoring posts by this person is called for.

Thanks for informing me that you will definitely be ignoring me (starting now I'm guessing?). I was sort of already doing the same with you, as some of us are already familiar with your rabid hatred of Marx and Engels and your reluctance to admit that they made any theoretical or other contributions. Your response to the "straightforward" question above sort of confirms this view, as you (likely intentionally) omit books like The Holy Family, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and others. Your unnecessary (and untrue) commentary on Marx's works (e.g. The Poverty of Philosophy—"basically ignored at the time"), and the fact that you don't even bother listing out the countless articles that he wrote, which you presumably deem are unimportant, all attest to your dishonesty and the fact that you're not really worth engaging with (... but here I am!).

Anarcho wrote: A lot of what is considered as key notions of "Marxism" is drawn from works unpublished during Marx's lifetime, often Engels' as well. Looking at what was available in the 19th century, a very different picture emerge -- in terms of the Communist Manifesto, may I suggest. . . .

This statement, which is only half true, applies to a much greater extent to Bakunin, who you're busy promoting in the other thread. Let's just read Paul Avrich's introduction to "Bakunin's book" God and State (which was actually part of the unfinished manuscript The Knouto-Germanic Empire and was given the posthumous title by Carlo Cafiero and Elisée Reclus in 1882, when they published it in pamphlet-form),

Paul Avrich wrote: Bakunin's influence, then, as Peter Kropotkin remarked, was primarily that of a "moral personality" rather than of an intellectual authority. Although he wrote prodigiously, he did not leave a single finished book to posterity.[1] He was forever starting new works which, owing to his turbulent existence, were broken off in mid-course and never completed. His literary output, in Thomas Masaryk's description, was a "patchwork of fragments" (Avrich vi).

1. Statism and Anarchy was published anonymously and was technically incomplete (as Bakunin never wrote the second part that he mentions in the text), though it still found its way to Russia to influence developments there. I think I would also consider it a completed book. - adri

Agent of the I…

11 months 1 week ago

Submitted by Agent of the I… on December 7, 2023

I think this list sums up the major works of his published in his lifetime:

[01.] The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law

[02.] Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

[03.] On the Jewish Question

[04.] The Holy Family

[05.] The Poverty of Philosophy

[06.] Wage Labour and Capital

[07.] The Communist Manifesto

[08.] The Class Struggles in France

[09.] The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

[10.] A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

[11.] The Civil War in the United States, collection of articles

[12.] Capital, volume I

[13.] The Civil War in France

Submitted by Anarcho on December 7, 2023

Thanks for informing me that you will definitely be ignoring me (starting now I'm guessing?). I was sort of already doing the same with you, as some of us are already familiar with your rabid hatred of Marx and Engels and your reluctance to admit that they made any theoretical or other contributions.

I do have better things to do, I must admit, that waste time replying to certain types of people on the internet (I learned that lesson decades ago). I will note that I do not have a "rabid hatred of Marx and Engels", I seek to understand them -- given the many and often contradictory claims about them, I find this wise. That my analysis of their writings is something you disagree with, well, I am sure but I'm confident that I am right.

Ultimately, do not judge others by your own standards.

Your response to the "straightforward" question above sort of confirms this view, as you (likely intentionally) omit books like The Holy Family, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy and others.

Wow, sorry I did not spend hours listing all of them rather than a few minutes listing a few to be helpful. This is now used as "evidence" for some kind of strange and paranoid view of me.

Your unnecessary (and untrue) commentary on Marx's works (e.g. The Poverty of Philosophy—"basically ignored at the time"),

Actually true -- I've read it mentioned in many accounts that it had no influence and was forgotten by the time of the First International. Of course, that is understandable for anyone who has read Proudhon's work will know that Marx invented quotes, cherry-picked quotes, proclaimed Proudhon held views he did not (most obviously, "labour notes"). It is an incredibly shoddy piece of work -- its few valid points are swamped by a flood of distortions.

and the fact that you don't even bother listing out the countless articles that he wrote, which you presumably deem are unimportant, all attest to your dishonesty and the fact that you're not really worth engaging with (... but here I am!).

And how long would it take to list "countless articles"? I really do have better things to do -- but that should be obvious but instead is used to blacken by reputation.

And, yes, you are not worth engaging with. I am here to make that clear -- so starting now, I will be ignoring you. I have better, more constructive, things to do than argue on the internet with people who clearly are not interested in useful discussion.

I may quickly post in an attempt to be helpful, but given how it is interpreted by some, it may be for the best I don't. As I said, I don't have time to waste on pointless discussions with people who are not worth the effort.

westartfromhere

11 months 1 week ago

Submitted by westartfromhere on December 7, 2023

The Address of the International Working Men's Association to Abraham Lincoln must be counted as a major published work as it is a meeting point between the proletarian movement and an important representative of the bourgeoisie.

adri

11 months 1 week ago

Submitted by adri on December 7, 2023

Thanks for responding to the two-month old post (check the timestamps) to inform me yet again that you will be ignoring me. Are you going to write me a letter next?

adri

11 months 1 week ago

Submitted by adri on December 8, 2023

Anarcho wrote: Marx invented quotes

Sort of like you when you falsely claimed that Tristan used an expression that she actually didn't? Or how about when you tried arguing that Paul Mattick was your source for this claim, when he in fact never said that either? He was simply quoting Maximilien Rubel, and Tristan just happened to appear in the quote. Rubel himself—who you meant to paraphrase in the AFAQ—also mentions nothing about Tristan using any "expression." When are you going to fix this error in the AFAQ so people stop going around saying that Marx stole the "self-emancipation" phrase/slogan from Tristan? Why should we bother reading your review of Marx's work when you can't be bothered to tell the truth about what people actually said?

AFAQ wrote: Marx’s use of the famous expression—"the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself"—dates from 1865, 17 years after Proudhon’s comment that "the proletariat must emancipate itself." Moreover, as Libertarian Marxist Paul Mattick pointed out, Marx was not even the first person to use the expression "the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself" as Flora Tristan used it in 1843. [Marx and Keynes, p. 333] Thus a case could be made that Marx was, in fact, the third "major socialist thinker to make the principle of self-emancipation—the principle that socialism could only be brought into being by the self-mobilisation and self-organisation of the working class—a fundamental aspect of the socialist project."

Anarcho wrote: Yes, I referenced Marxist Paul Mattick on the matter -- presumably he was claiming that Marx "stole" the expression as well? And I took him as a reliable source on the matter -- I did not have Tristian's book at the time (I have it now but not got around to read it yet -- sorry for not being able to read everything).

Again, what Mattick actually said (with Mattick quoting Rubel):

Mattick wrote: For a socialist revolution must mean precisely the creation of a social structure in which the producers themselves control their product and its distribution. It is conceivable only as one made by the working class which ends social class relations. "What Marx – and before him, in 1843, Flora Tristan – formulated in one single proposition, namely, that ‘the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class itself’, remains the implicit postulate of all genuine socialist thought" (Mattick 333).

adri

11 months 1 week ago

Submitted by adri on December 8, 2023

I think this list sums up the major works of his published in his lifetime:

Whether something is "major" or not is mostly subjective. If someone's researching British politics in the nineteenth century, then Marx's writings on this topic in the New York Tribune might be quite valuable. It depends on what one is interested in.

westartfromhere

11 months 1 week ago

Submitted by westartfromhere on December 8, 2023

I know how hard it is to watch the whole scale massacre of defenceless workers and the march of counter-revolution but how can we make war on our Enemy when we can't make peace with each other?

The emancipation of our class is the job of our class alone. This is fact, even before it was expressed in writing.

darren p

11 months 1 week ago

Submitted by darren p on December 8, 2023

Marx was coming from the radical democratic tradition. All the language about "self-emancipation", "wage slavery", etc, is due to the influence of radical republican / neo-roman ideas about freedom in that period.

It might be interesting to find out who first penned the phrase in that exact formulation, but the idea that it was some kind of unique intellectual property that could be "stolen" is to somewhat misunderstand the intellectual landscape out of which the idea was formed.

To trace its history, you need to go to ancient Rome via the Renaissance civic humanists such as Machiavelli. Annelien de Dijn's "Freedom: An Unruly History" is a good place to start.

adri

11 months 1 week ago

Submitted by adri on December 8, 2023

It might be interesting to find out who first penned the phrase in that exact formulation, but the idea that it was some kind of unique intellectual property that could be "stolen" is to somewhat misunderstand the intellectual landscape out of which the idea was formed.

Exactly. As I mentioned elsewhere, there was nothing particularly unique about the phrase/idea itself. (I've read the idea repeated multiple times in the Voice of Industry, which was an American labor newspaper from the 1840s.) The people who try arguing that Marx came up with the idea of workers' self-emancipation are just as wrong as the people who claim (encouraged by the AFAQ) that Marx stole the expression from Tristan. What's more, Tristan was essentially a Christian reformer who advocated cooperation with the upper classes in order to improve the condition of the laboring poor. Her conception of workers' emancipation had nothing to do with workers actually emancipating themselves from the yoke of capital. As the editor to her work the Workers' Union notes,

Beverly Livingston wrote: While recognizing the inherent antagonisms of class society, she nonetheless advocated co-operation for peaceful reform, believing bourgeois and upper-class participation feasible and desirable in the workers' struggle. Her challenge did not attempt to subvert private enterprise or deny the manufacturer's right to compete for profits, and she did not call for the total dismantling of the economic order; she simply and soundly demanded a fair share for the laboring poor (Livingston xxiii).

Agent of the I…

9 months 2 weeks ago

Submitted by Agent of the I… on January 25, 2024

Marx wrote over a thousand articles, including 355 articles for the New York Tribune. If you use the collected works linked to in the beginning of this thread, I suppose you can find most of these articles. But I don't find it well organized. There is no single resource where you can find all his articles listed in one place. If anybody knows of such a thing, let me know.

westartfromhere

9 months 2 weeks ago

Submitted by westartfromhere on January 26, 2024

"355 articles for the New York Tribune." Refutes the lie that he never held down a job.

The gaping gap in his work was analysis of proletarian revolution in Haiti.

Might have saved us the anguish of the Bolshevik counter-revolution.