The Revolutions of 1848: Political Writings
Karl Marx was not only the great theorist of capitalism; he was above all else a revolutionary. In Paris in 1844 he made the connection between radical philosophy and the proletariat that would guide his future work, first with the Communist League and later with the International Workingmen’s Association. Marx’s Political Writings display a profound understanding of history and politics that is still relevant to the very different conditions of today.
Volume 1: The Revolutions of 1848: Marx and Engels had already sketched out the principles of scientific communism by 1846. Yet it was from his intense involvement in the abortive German revolution of 1848 that Marx developed a profound practical understanding he would draw on throughout his later career. This volume includes his great call to arms—The Communist Manifesto—and also demonstrates Marx’s unsuccessful attempt to spur the German bourgeoisie to decisive action against absolutism. His articles offer trenchant analyses of events in France, Poland, Prague, Berlin and Vienna, while speeches set out changing communist tactics.
Paperback, 368 pages
ISBN: 9781844676033
August 2010
$19.95 / £12.99
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Other Editions
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Hardback, 368 pages
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ISBN: 9781844676040
August 2010
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Part of the Marx's Political Writings series
Blog
"Men make their own history"—Peter Thompson series in the Guardian on Marx's relevance for our times
The Guardian's Peter Thompson has been writing a multi-part series on Karl Marx. Asking whether Marxism "still has any explanatory power today, in a new age of revolutionary upheaval, or whether we have, in Hegel's and Fukuyama's terms, reached The End of History," Thompson addresses Marx's relationship to religion, socialist thinking, history, power, economics, alienation and modernity. Focusing on how the "process of economic alienation feeds through into religion and ideology and the means by which people manage to cope with being mere playthings of larger forces;" Thompson investigates "how a sense of autonomy, faith and hope are maintained in an apparently constrained, rationalistic and futureless world."
The final article focuses on Marx's relationship to modernity, particularly looking to post-Marxist thought to elucidate theories of the Arab Spring as an example of the eternal desire for human liberation.
Where Alain Badiou talks today of an almost ahistorical "communist hypothesis", Ernst Bloch spoke about an "invariant of direction", a mood of an eternal desire for human liberation that breaks out at certain historical points where the objective conditions allow it. The Arab spring would be an example today, whereas 40 and 20 years ago respectively it was the Prague spring and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tariq Ali: "This is an Arab 1848. But US hegemony is only dented"
Drawing parallels with Europe in 1848, Tariq Ali, writing for the Guardian, remarks that like those European rebels, the
Arab people are fighting against foreign domination (82% of Egyptians, a recent opinion poll revealed, have a "negative view of the US"); against the violation of their democratic rights; against an elite blinded by its own illegitimate wealth - and in favour of economic justice.
Discussions
Begin a discussionOther books by Karl Marx, and David Fernbach
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The Communist Manifesto
by Frederick Engels, and Karl Marx
The second biggest-selling book ever published
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An Unfinished Revolution
by Robin Blackburn, Abraham Lincoln, et al.
The impact of the American Civil War on Karl Marx, and Karl Marx on America.
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The First International and After
by Karl Marx
Volume 3 of Marx’s political writings, including The Civil War In France.
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Surveys from Exile
by Karl Marx
Volume 2 of Marx’s political writings, including The Eighteenth Brumaire.