Karl Marx/Frederick Engels —
Collected’ Works. Volume I —
‘Karl Marx 1835-1843. Cloth-
bound, 806 pp., illustrated, 1975.
Books, 487 Adelaide St. W.,
Toronto, Price $7.50.

Reviewed by R. S. KENNY

. MAY seem strange when we
_~ Consider the towering fame
of Karl Marx and Frederick En-
8els that until the year of 1975
/2O volume of a Collected Works
/Of these men in the English lan-
/8uage was on the table before
aS The body of Karl Marx was
id in Highgate Cemetery in
London in 1883; the ashes of En-
/8els were scattered ‘on the
Waters off Eastbourne in 1895.
The English-speaking world has
| ad to wait nearly one hundred
‘Years for the corpus of their
Works to be available.

t
|
|

We must recall the extra-
Heeary circumstances of their
jlves and the fortunes of their
Writings, After their deaths,
‘Most of their literary remains
Were in the hands of what was
Considered the mighty German
/20cial Democratic Party. In any
ternational gathering of social-
Sts no one came to firm conclu-

‘Slons until the German comrades _

wad spoken. Yet during this
Period ng edition of the collected
jrorks ‘was attempted. In Eng-
8nd an edition of Capital did not
4Ppear until twenty years -after
€ publication of Das Kapital.

| interestingly enough an edi-
‘p= Was published \in Tsarist
/“Ussia only five years after its
‘Publication in Germany. The
Permission to publish Capital in
asia in 1872 must be one of
in. Most anomalous acts of
ot censorship. The censors
Ss Msidered the work as “strictly
entific,” “difficult and hardly
'“°mprehensible,” “few would
and it and still fewer would
qyierstand it.” They did require
t. € Temoval of the frontispiece,
Care of Marx; the work it-
btn Bey considered irrelevant

Ussian reality.
ag Promise of a collected
| S took on substance on the
tig of the October Revolu-
Sand Despite the years of stress
“stat anguish, the new socialist
byoted founded an institute de-
“able to assembling -all avail-
moy, records of the socialist
| Worke ne and in particular, the
LE i of Karl Marx, Frederick
Hines S and V. I. Lenin. Today no
Epect in the world, in this res-
ibe Tivals the resources of the
ism-te, of the Institute of Marx-
reso, ninism in Moscow. These
. Urces are indispensable in
3 Preparation of any edition of
i Collected works of Karl
bcluae and Frederick Engels, in-
Ing the edition in the Eng-

lish language.

bin co Marxists and many others
1975 e English-speaking world,

isto 1S an important date in the
ary a of publishing. In Janu-
lfirst Ot this year ‘appeared the
of fifty volumes that will

‘Canadian Distributor: Progress -

iis

Kael ora

house all the known writings of
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
In former times those of us who

-are at home only in the English

language, had to remain con-
tent mainly with the fundamen-
tal works of the founders of
scientific socialism. The fasci-
nating correspondence was limi-
ted to a few books such as a
selected volume and the collec-
tion of letters of Engels and
Paul and Laura Lafargue, Marx’s
daughter. In the Collected
Works there will be no less than
thirteen volumes of correspon-
dence.

There will be a wealth of arti-
cles, many not previously avail-
able in our language, some print-
ed for the first time in any lan-
guage. There have been many
new discoveries of their writings
and these will be incorporated
in the new Collected Works. We
are assured that the accuracy
of the texts and their complete-
ness will make this the great

standard edition. A scholarly ap-

paratus accompanying each vol-

ume will make this edition a |

mine of information for every
serious student of Marxism.

This enterprise is an interna-
tional endeavor with three pub-
lishing houses involved in the

project: in the United States of |

America, International Publish-
ers cf New York; in Great Britain,

Lawrence & Wishart of London;

in the Soviet Union, Progress
Publishers. The actual printing
has been delegated to the press-
es of the Soviet Union. Each
volume will consist of 700-1000
pages. They are finely illustrated

and are bound in rich, red cloth,
gold-stamped. :

The editorial. commission in
Great Britain contains the
names of the distinguished
Marxists, Jack Cohen, Maurice
Cornforth, Maurice Dobb, E. J.
Hobsbaum, James ~ Klugmann
and Margaret Mynatt. In the
United States, James S. Allen,
Philip S. Foner, the late Howard
Selsam, Dirk J. Struik and Wil-
liam W. Weinstone. Together
with the Soviet commission,
these three commissions are
sharing in the production of
these volumes. ~

The edition is designed to
satisfy the highest academic

standards. All previous transla-
tions into English are being
carefully. checked to assure that
they convey into our language
he exact meaning of the origi-
nal. ‘

The commissions have inherit-
ed a.rich legacy. In the past;
efforts have been made to pro-
duce editions of the works of
Marx and Engels, both in- Ger-
man.and in Russian. In 1927 the
Institute of Marxism-Leninism
began the publication in the ori-
ginal language of the collected
works, but this did not extend
beyond twelve volumes. Two
more editions, much extended,
were published in the Russian
language, the first between 1928
and 1947, the second was begun
in 1955. In the German Demo-
cratic Republic a notable edition
was begun in 1956 (Werke). It
is published in forty-four books,
two of them being supplement-
ary volumes. Thus much ground-
work. has been done,

In the General Introduction to

’ the Collected Works the editors

set out their objective: “The
task is to. take into account and
use to the fullest advantage the

best traditions established in ~

this field in Great Britain, the
USA, the USSR, the German
Democratic Republic, and other
countries, as well as the results
achieved by world science in in-
vestigating the literary legacy of
Marx and Engels and the history
of Marxism. Thus this edition
will provide for the first time to
the English-speaking world a
practically complete, organized
and, annotated collection of the

works of the founders and first
teachers of the international
communist movement.”

It is estimated that it will take
ten years to complete this vast
enterprise. When the entire fifty
volumes are placed in their
bookcase we cannot but be awe-
struck by the sheer industry of
these two men. How did these

“men of the nineteenth century,

‘in the midst of their busy politi-
cal lives, ever manage to drive
their quills and pens with such
unflagging energy? And what an
immense array of special knowl-
edge is revealed in the titles of
the works that will occupy these
volumes.

The first volume is devoted to
the writings of the young Marx
who was born in 1818. The sec-
ond volume will contain the
early writings of Engels. The
period of Marx’s early life ex-
tends from 1835 to 1843; the ma-
terial consists of articles, pam-
phlets, letters and poems. It con-
tains Marx’s doctoral thesis, Dif-
ference between the Democri-
tean and Epicurean Philosophy
of Nature,

We are so inclined to think of
Marx as he appeared in his later
photographs that we are apt to
forget that he was once a young
man. A young man of a special
type. We love to think (fondly)
that all young men who later

_ became eminent were terrible as

students. For us a very comfort-
ing doctrine. But in the Reports
on ‘the student work (included
in this volume) his teachers uni-
formly describe the young Marx
as ‘diligent’; some prefer the
term ‘exceedingly diligent’.

Like many young men of sen-
sibility the youthful Marx sur-
rendered to the urge to write
poetry, some of. it in the roman-
tic mood characteristic -of the
age. As to an evaluation of his
poetry, I am not, with my limited
knowledge of the original Ger-
man, prepared to acknowledge
either its merits or its limita-
tions.

From the period of his earliest
writings Marx indicates his
strong social concern. He did not
begin as a socialist; the very
word ‘socialism’ had just entered
man’s consciousness and. man’s
vocabulary. The first volume
marks the beginnings of a tran-
sition; in the words of Lenin,
“Marx’s transition from idealism
to materialism and from revolu-
tionary democracy to commun-
ism.” The volume extends to
1843. Five years later Marx and
Engels were to write The Mani-
festo of the Communist Party,
the foundation-stone of the in-
ternational communist move-
ment.

For Marxists in the English-
speaking world, and a host of
others who have gained invalu-
able insights from their writings,
the appearance of the Collected
Works of Karl Marx and Fred-
erick Engels will be the out-
standing publishing event of our
century.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JANUARY 24, 1975—Page 7