Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe
Summaries
I-31:
Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels: Werke, Artikel, Entwürfe. Oktober 1886 bis Februar 1891.
III-13:
Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels: Briefwechsel Oktober 1864 bis Dezember 1865.
IV-3:
Karl Marx: Exzerpte und Notizen. Sommer 1844 bis Anfang 1847
IV-31:
Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels: Naturwissenschaftliche Exzerpte und Notizen. Mitte 1877 bis Anfang 1983
IV-32:
Vorauspublikation zu: Die Bibliotheken von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels. Annotiertes Verzeichnis des ermittelten Bestandes
Erste Abteilung: Werke. Artikel. Entwürfe
Band 31: Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels: Werke, Artikel, Entwürfe. Oktober 1886 bis Februar 1891
Bearbeitet von Renate Merkel-Melis.
Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002. Text: XI, 583 p.; Apparatus: pp. 584–1440; 22 ill.
ISBN 3-05-003482-3. € 168,–
The volume presents the "elderly" Friedrich Engels in a new light. The 67 edited writings here present are principally political pieces that the seventy-year old Engels produced alongside his preparation of Marx's manuscripts for the third volume of "Capital" and his correspondence with men and women in countless lands of Europe as well in the United States.
Engels here investigates the origins of the German Empire and the politics of Bismarck, the foreign policy situation in Europe and the consequent growing danger of war. In the article "The Foreign Policy of Russian Czarism" he deals with two hundred years of Russian history. With regard to this text, which in the history of Marx-Engels editions and biographies has had a non-linear destiny (Stalin prohibited it and in biographical works it was hushed up), this volume offers for the first time a detailed study of the origins of the first Russian translation.
The extensive manuscript "The Role of Violence in History" and the connected five preparatory pieces are, for the first time with regard to the original hand-written text, presented in a complete, chronological and precisely deciphered manner. The critical notes on this text utilizes books from Engels' own library and identifies exactly where Eduard Bernstein intervened in the preparation of its first publication.
The volume also documents Engels' role with regard to the organization of the international Paris Workers Congress in 1889 which came to be the founding congress of the Second International. How Engels disseminated his own and Marx's writings is shown through ten forwards for new editions and translations. The defense of Marx's point of view is present in two polemical writings: in the article "Lawyers' Socialism", written together with Kautsky, one can see for the first time which parts can be ascribed to each of the authors; with regard to the pamphlet "In the case Brentano versus Marx. Regarding Alleged Falsification of Quotation" the accusation against Marx of having falsified quotations is critically examined. The two biographical sketches of Johann Philipp Becker and Sigismund Borkheim show the particular interest Engels showed, after the death of Marx, in the history of the early socialist movement and the Revolution of 1848/49.
The main part of the text volume contains three pieces which for the first time are published in either their original language or with Engels indicated as the author. The appendix contains several works which are published for the first time in an Engels edition. Among these as "dubiosa" are an excerpt from his speech at the funeral of Helena Demuth and an anonymously printed drawing of Friedrich Wilhelm IV there is also a translation of excerpts from the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In the appendix there are in addition eight texts to which Engels collaborated and which are published for the first time. Included are Engels' interventions and completion of the following material: Hermann Schlüter's "The Chartist Movement in England" and two of Edward Aveling's signed Circulars of his defense against the accusation by the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Labor Party that he and his wife Eleanor Marx-Aveling had squandered money during a propaganda tour in the United States for this party. Two texts of Karl Kautsky, which were completed with Engels' collaboration, are also here published: the biographical sketch "Friedrich Engels" as well as the pamphlet "The Class Conflict in 1789". Aside from the already known leaflets for the preparation of the Paris Workers Congress which were drawn up with Bernstein, the volume contains from the latter an additional one as well as an article he wrote on the 1889 London dockworkers' strike; both were directly encouraged through letters from Engels.
For 43 texts in this volume the dating, with regard to previous publications and information, has been either corrected, rendered more precise or newly researched.
Dritte Abteilung: Briefwechsel
Band 13: Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels: Briefwechsel Oktober 1864 bis Dezember 1865
Bearbeitet von Svetlana Gavril'cenko, Inna Osobova, Ol'ga Koroleva und Rolf Dlubek.
Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002. Text: XIX, 616 p.; Apparatus: pp. 617–1443; 28 ill.
ISBN 3-05-003675-3. € 168,–
This extensive volume is the first of a series in the Correspondence section of the MEGA which deals principally with the activity of Marx and Engels in the International Working Men's Association (IWA). It contains 354 letters of which 120 from Marx and Engels and 234 to them; 153 of the latter are published here for the first time.
The correspondence shows how Marx rapidly acquired a leading influence in the Central Council of the Association. Among those for the first time published are letters from Council members Johann Georg Eccarius, Hermann Jung, Friedrich Leßner, Victor Le Lubez and William Randall Cremer; this material contains information on the preparation of the Association's Inaugural Address, its Provisional Statutes, and the Addresses to the United States Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson—all written by Marx—as well as on the distribution and resonance of these documents.
One group of letters clearly documents the influence of Marx on the activities of the IWA in the most important countries. The letters of the early Chartist leader Ernest Jones make clear Marx's efforts to encourage the trade unions to participate in the suffrage movement with the object of obtaining the universal right to vote. The correspondence with Victor Schily in Paris demonstrates how Marx sought to strengthen the section of the IWA in that city. He also received and sent many letters as the temporary Corresponding Secretary for Belgium. The letters from Joseph Wedemeyer are, on the other hand, one of the most important sources for the analysis by Marx and Engels of the Civil War in the United States.
They both gave special attention to Germany where they sought, after the death of Ferdinand Lassalle, to gain influence over the Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein. The volume contains letters from Johann Baptist von Schweitzer and Johann Baptist von Hofstetten to Marx and Engels which are here for the first time published. Above all, the volume sheds much light on the all-encompassing collaboration with Wilhelm Liebknecht, their most assiduous correspondent in this period. 33 of the 46 letters of Liebknecht, in fact, are first here published in a complete form. Many letters with Germans deal with the origins and distribution of Engels' pamphlet "The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party".
The letters document in many ways that Marx, despite his involvement in the IWA, dedicated great effort to the writing down in fifteen months of both an outline for the second volume of "Capital" and the main manuscript itself of the third volume. Having reached this point, he considered that it would be possible by the beginning of 1866 to apply himself to the final version of the first volume. The letters also give information about the composition and influence of his lecture "Value, price and profit" which he delivered during the great strike wave in 1865 to the Central Council of the IWA.
Equally important, this volume offers insights into the personal lives of Marx and Engels. Among the letters here for the first time published are those from Engels' mother Elisabeth and his brother Hermann as well as from colleagues in the Manchester Schiller-Anstalt of which he became president in 1864.
The letters are published in strict chronological order and thus present a sort of collective journal of the authors and their correspondents; given their faithful relationship to reality and the many themes they contain, they are of great interest to a broad circle of readers. Specialists will find in the scholarly Apparatus of the volume—of more pages than the text itself—the results of much new research with regard to the letters; of these, 46 have been more accurately dated and many have been more correctly transcribed.
Vierte Abteilung: Exzerpte. Notizen. Marginalien
Band 3: Karl Marx: Exzerpte und Notizen. Sommer 1844 bis Anfang 1847
Bearbeitet von Georgij Bagaturija, Lev Curbanov, Ol'ga Koroleva und Ljudmila Vasina. Unter Mitwirkung von Jürgen Rojahn
Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998. Text: IX, 434 p.; Apparatus: pp. 435-864; 18 ill.
ISBN 3-05-003398-3. € 158,-
The volume contains excerpts and notes that Marx made during the last months of his first stay in Paris (October 1843 to February 1845) and in the first months of his stay in Brussels (February 1845 to March 1848). Also, it contains Marx's personal notebook from the years 1844-47. Most of these materials have not been published previously.
The excerpts, from the works of thirty authors, document Marx's economic studies between the summer of 1844, when he drafted the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and his first trip to England in July/August 1845. While he was still in Paris, Marx made excerpts from works of Boisguillebert, Law, and Lauderdale. In particular, Marx's excerpts from Boisguillebert and his comments on them are closely related to the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.
The majority of the excerpts - six of the eight excerpt notebooks - date from the Brussels period. They are from general works on political economy (Storch, Rossi), books and articles on the situation of the working classes in various countries (Buret, Sismondi, La Sagra), books on the "machinery question" (Gasparin, Babbage, Ure), and works on the "History of Political Economy" (Pecchio, MacCulloch, Ganilh, Blanqui et al.). At that time Marx was primarily interested in the sources of public and private wealth, the causes of social differences, the role of private property, the emergence and development of class conflict, the nature of money, problem of defining value, and the concept of capital. As the French scholar Maximilien Rubel stated, these notebooks are especially important because they give detailed information about the intellectual sources of Marx's ideas during the months that he developed his materialistic theory of history, outlined for the first time in The German Ideology (1845/46). However, some of the excerpts published in the volume also reveal the sources of fundamental Marxian concepts developed only at a later time; e.g. it is from a book by Villegardelle that Marx took the idea that the proletarian revolution would have to "break" the bourgois state machine.
The contents of Marx's personal notebook from the years 1844-47 mainly consist of lists of books - books that Marx already owned or that had aroused his particular interest and that he planned to purchase and/or read. These lists represent an indispensable source of information regarding the wide range of Marx's reading at that time. Also, this notebook contains Marx's famous "Theses on Feuerbach", in which, according to Engels, "the brilliant germ of the new world view" was set down. They are published here for the first time in their original context.
Vierte Abteilung: Exzerpte. Notizen. Marginalien
Band 31: Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels: Naturwissenschaftliche Exzerpte und Notizen Mitte 1877 bis Anfang 1983
Bearbeitet von Anneliese Griese, Friederun Fessen, Peter Jäckel und Gerd Pawelzig.
Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999. Text: XV, 614 p.; Apparatus: pp. 615-1055; 22 ill.
ISBN 3-05-003399-1. € 158,-
Karl Marx was one of the last great polymaths. Until recently his natural scientific studies were a little known aspect of his theoretical work. As early as the 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts' of 1844 he had developed a concept of the unity of man and nature: man is an active being in Nature. Natural science has transformed human life by means of industry, preparing the way for human emancipation. The actual presuppositions of history - as stated in the 'German Ideology', written in conjunction with Friedrich Engels - are the physical creativity of men and the given natural conditions. 'All historical writing must proceed from this natural basis and its modification in the course of history through the action of men.'
Marx's most intensive engagement with the natural sciences came in the period after 1870, when he completed comprehensive excerpts on physiology, mineralogy, geology, chemistry, physics and electricity. The major part of the present volume comprises his excerpts and notes on inorganic and organic chemistry. For chemistry 1870 represents a watershed, distinguished by the introduction of the periodic table of elements, molecular theories of chemical bonding, and theories concerning the structure of the atom. Marx made use of relevant standard works of that time (Lothar Meyer, Henry Enfield Roscoe, Carl Schorlemmer, Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne). Apart from the analysis of chemical compounds, he was interested in examples of their extraction, their properties and possibilities for use in industry and agriculture. He also concerned himself with questions as to how far he could demonstrate analogies between the fundamental principles of chemistry and those of political economy. After further excerpts on physics (Benjamin Witzschel), physiology (Ludimar Hermann, Johannes Ranke) and geology (Joseph Beete Jukes), the first part of the volume concludes with an excerpt on the theory of electricity (Édouard Hospitalier).
The second part of the volume contains two excerpt notebooks with passages from works by William Thomson and Peter Guthrie Tait, Carl Fraas and Hermann Helmholtz, which Engels used while writing the 'Dialectics of Nature' (MEGA, Bd. I/26). These notebooks allow us to see how Engels not only acquired expertise by using generally recognized works on mechanics and electricity, but also how he sketched out his line of argument for the chapters on 'Fundamental Forms of Motion', 'The Measure of Motion - Work', and 'Electricity' by commenting critically at particular points. We also see how Marx notified Engels of the new standards for measuring electricity agreed in Paris in 1881.
The major part of the materials in this volume are published here for the first time.
Vierte Abteilung: Exzerpte. Notizen. Marginalien
Vorauspublikation zu Band 32: Die Bibliotheken von Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels. Annotiertes Verzeichnis des ermittelten Bestandes
Bearbeitet von Hans-Peter Harstick, Richard Sperl und Hanno Strauß. Unter Mitarbeit von Gerald Hubmann, Karl-Ludwig König, Larisa Mis'kevic und Ninel' Rumjanceva
Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1999. 738 p.; 32 ill.
ISBN 3-05-003440-8. € 158,-
Historians of the arts and sciences have long had the libraries of notable writers and intellectuals in their sights. Marx and Engels undoubtedly belong to that group of authors whose use of sources has inspired particular interest. In the specific case of Marx it is well known that he was a painstaking as well as polymathic reader. However, he was no bibliophile. For him books were 'intellectual tools' (Paul Lafargue). He wrote this (in Eng-lish) about his relationship with books: 'I am a machine, condemned to devour them and, then, throw them, in a changed form, on the dunghill of history' (to Laura Lafargue, 11 April 1868). His own, ever-growing library was an especially important tool of his trade.
After Marx's death Engels merged the major part of his friend's collection with his own. This was 'a library so singular and at the same time so complete for the history and study of modern socialism as well as of all the sciences he referred to' (letter to Laura Lafargue and Eleanor Marx-Aveling, 14 November 1894). It was bequeathed by Engels to the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), which incorporated it into its library in Berlin. After 1933 that library was fatefully divided, and Marx and Engels' books were consequently dispersed over the whole of Europe.
This volume is the result of laborious searches lasting a decade. With 1,450 titles located - representing 2,100 volumes - nearly two-thirds of the original complement of Marx and Engels' library can be verified. Out of 800 volumes approximately 40,000 pages contain underlining and marginal notes.
The libraries of Marx and Engels were typical of those of 19th century intellectuals - universalist rather than specialist. They comprised philosophical, economic, historical, natural scientific works, textbooks and dictionaries of different languages, works of belles lettres. There are books in a total of 10 languages. At least a third of the verified contents are in German, about a quarter in English, about a quarter in French, a sixth of the titles are in Russian.
The books that have been located are indexed in alphabetical order by author and title. Supplementary to this there is a subject index and a register of authors. After the exact bibliographical description of each book its present location is given. Dedications, marks of ownership and inscriptions are recorded. Also, the pages containing marginalia or other marks by Marx and Engels are noted. Finally there is documentation showing whether a particular work is included in one of the various lists compiled by Marx himself, whether there are excerpts from it, and whether it is mentioned in the writings of Marx or Engels - as far as these are already published in the MEGA volumes or in the collected works in German (Marx-Engels Werke). In the introduction to the volume the turbulent history of the acquisition and reconstruction of this unusual collection of books is laid out in detail.
For research on Marx and Engels this volume is indispensable. It originated in international cooperative research at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences as a preparatory publication for MEGA-Band IV/32. That volume will complement the catalogue of the library with a contextual edition of the marginalia , and a commentary on the significance of each book in its time and for Marx, based on the entire MEGA as ultimately completed.