The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

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Two classic arguments against capitalism - Rated
This volume combines two texts from early in Marx's writing career: the 1844 Manuscripts, his first written work, and the 1848 Communist Manifesto, which for many scholars marks the turning-point into Marx's "mature" work.

The Manuscripts were written when Marx was still an adherent of the "Young Hegelian" philosophical school he was to repudiate in The German Ideology, and the text is awash with technical and philosophical terminology. There is some controversy over whether or not Marx's later work (such as Capital) represents a continuation of the theses developed here. Readers of a "postmodern" disposition will no doubt be irritated by the Manuscripts' blatant essentialism, and Marx's almost subjectivist philosophising in the Manuscripts is an embarassment to those (supporters and opponents alike) who want to pigeonhole him as a gross economic determinist. The Manuscripts were central to the emergence of "Western Marxism" in the twentieth century and were a point of departure for many who aspired to develop a humanist Marxism in opposition to the anti-human, productivist dogmas of the Stalinist and post-Stalinist leaders of the USSR. The concept of "species-being" has also gained some recent interest from scholars wishing to incorporate Marx into an ecological political agenda.

Perhaps the most important contribution of the Manuscripts is the idea of alienation or "estrangement", contained most especially in the section entitled "Estranged Labour" but also running through the text as a more general theme. Marx's basic thesis is that it is the agency of workers in creating and altering physical objects which is the motor-force behind social life and which expresses the essence of human beings. However, under capitalism, this capacity is estranged from workers through the labour process, which subordinates workers to capitalists and turns the produced objects into commodities for sale in a market. This also turns the workers into commodities, forced to sell their labour on the market. As a result, the world is upside-down; it is objects which seem to be capable of moving of their own accord - for instance, of setting their own prices - and workers who seem (or indeed, who are) powerless to affect anything.

The Manifesto, written four years later, is a very different kind of text, and the only thing the two have in common is their hostility to capitalism. The Manifesto, written for a political group called the Communist League during a time of upheavals in Europe, is a clarion-call for socialist revolution. It contains the briefest statement of Marx and Engels' critique of capitalism, although large sections of the text are also taken up with polemics against other socialists and with replies to "bourgeois" critics. It remains the best entry-point into Marxist theory, even though it is open to criticism for lacking any discussion of organisational forms or of parliamentary politics (two issues of continuing debate among Marx's followers down the years), and even though some of the proposed policies (such as armies of labour) are likely to seem quaint or even dangerous to a contemporary reader. This is still one of the most powerful indictments of capitalism, and large sections of it still seem relevant over 150 years later - a truly monumental achievement.

Marx's true theory - Rated
Karl Marx. His ideas have been interpreted and reinterpreted time and time again. Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, Luxembourg, Debs, and countless others have used him, some of them more faithfully than others. Most people see Marx as the older Capital Marx. Yet these manuscripts show his true spirit, his devotion to mankind, and why democracy cannot be accomplished without communism. Marx here convincingly shows why capitalism alienates man from man and why equality cannot be accomplished under it. These texts are easily ten times more important than Capital. You can see the youth in this book, the yearning for a better society, and a man with the ideas to do so. If you are opposed to communism, read this book before making any more denouncements. If you believe, this book will show you that Marx was truly for mankind, that he had very little to do with the so-called communist countries today. Also included are a work by Engels attacking the other forms of socialism, all of which are undemocratic socialism-from-above. Finally, the Communist Manifesto is included, for those who want to see a concise outline of what communism is really about.