Two Unpublished Manuscripts by Karl Marx

Extract

In the past forty-three years Marxologists were compelled to absorb two new manuscripts of extraordinary significance. Although prepared in Moscow by D. Rjazanov, the Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe was issued in Berlin in 1932 and contained the first publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts In 1939 and 1941 respectively, single volumes of a limited two-volume edition of the Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie were published by the Foreign Language Publishers in Moscow. Generally, this edition went unnoticed until a single-volume publication of the Grundrisse was issued by Dietz Verlag of Berlin 1953. and shortly thereafter the Grundrisse became a manuscript of enormous importance to Marxist theory. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and the Grundrisse caused a revolution in the interpretation of Marxism. The Marx of the Second International, of Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky, the Marx of Bolshevism, of Lenin and Stalin and “Diamat,” was completely revised. In essence, the publication of these new sources commenced forty-three years of extensive revision and intensive contention which still continue. This was not surprising, because the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts and the Grundrisse proved to be major repositories of Marxist philosophy: they revealed for the first time the full amplitude of Marxist humanism.