The Political Writings

All of Marx’s essential political writing in one volume

Karl Marx was not only the great theorist of capitalism. He was also a superb journalist, politician, and historian. This book brings together all of his essential political and historical writings in one volume for the first time. These works allow us to see the depth and range of thought in the mature Marx, covering a period from the tumultuous revolutions of 1848 that rocked Europe through to the end of his life. With a foreword by Tariq Ali, and including The Communist Manifesto, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, The Class Struggles in France, and The Critique of the Gotha Programme, this volume shows Marx at his most astute, analysing the forces of global capitalism as they played out in the world around him.

Karl Marx was born in 1818, in the Rhenish city of Trier, the son of a successful lawyer. He studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, completing his doctorate in 1841. In Paris three years later, Marx was introduced to the study of political economy by a former fellow student, Frederick Engels. In 1848 they collaborated in writing The Communist Manifesto. Expelled from Prussia in the same year, Marx took up residence first in Paris and then in London where, in 1867 he published his magnum opus Capital. A co-founder of the International Workingmen's Association in 1864, Marx died in London in 1883.