The First International and After: Political Writings
Karl Marx was not only the great theorist of capitalism, he was also a superb journalist, politician and historian. In these brand-new editions of Marx’s Political Writings we are able to see the depth and range of his mature work from 1848 through to the end of his life, from The Communist Manifesto to The Class Struggles in France and The Critique of the Gotha Programme. Each book has a new introduction from a major contemporary thinker, to shed new light on these vital texts.
Volume 3: The First International and After: The crucial texts of Marx’s later years—notably The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Programme—count among his most important work. These articles include a searching analysis of the tragic but inspiring failure of the Paris Commune, as well as essays on German unification, the Irish question, the Polish national movement and the possibility of revolution in Russia. The founding documents of the First international and polemical pieces attacking the disciples of Proudhon and Bakunin and the advocates of reformism, by contrast, reveal a tactical mastery that has influenced revolutionary movements ever since.
Paperback, 416 pages
ISBN: 9781844676057
August 2010
$19.95 / £12.99
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Other Editions
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Hardback, 416 pages
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ISBN: 9781844676064
August 2010
$80.00 / £50.00
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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.
Verso commemorates the 140th anniversary of the fall of the Paris Commune
Today marks the 140th anniversary of the fall of the Paris Commune—proclaimed on 28 March 1871 and brutally crushed two months later, on 28 May 1871. To commemorate the anniversary, Verso is sharing this excerpt from The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps, Eric Hazan's extraordinary tour of the city and its revolutionary past.
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 Revolutions of 1848
by Karl Marx
Volume 1 of Marx’s political writings, including The Communist Manifesto.
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Surveys from Exile
by Karl Marx
Volume 2 of Marx’s political writings, including The Eighteenth Brumaire.