The Collected Works of Marx

Written during a formative period in Paris in 1844, the Economic Philosophic Manuscripts (also known as Paris Manuscripts or Manuscripts of 1844) were left unpublished during Marx's lifetime and only became accessible in the 1930s after being discovered among his papers. These pages, unfinished and repetitive, capture a moment of theoretical transition as Marx grapples with the works of Feuerbach, Hegel, and classical political economy in an effort to synthesize materialist anthropology with a critique of alienated labor. Despite their fragmented state, they mark one of the first systematic efforts to conceptualize estrangement within capitalist production, where man becomes estranged from the product of his labor, but from his species being and from other men.

Composed between April and August of that year, these manuscripts sketch a humanist critique of private property, money, and political economy through the viewpoint of speculative philosophy and are saturated with allusions to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Adam Smith's economic theory, and Feuerbach's human centered theology. Although never completed, they state early formulations of alienation, need, labor, and species life that would reappear in transmuted forms in his later economic works. The third manuscript includes a prefatory section that retroactively is a key to the other two, offering a theoretical justification for the method and categories being deployed. Their disordered form belies the underlying coherence of an author attempting to locate the conditions under which man could be restored to himself through the transformation of the economic base.

For contextual study, Economic Philosophic Manuscripts is accompanied by an afterword tracing Marx's intellectual relationships with revolutionary thinkers and philosophers (including Hegel, Feuerbach, Engels, and Ricardo), containing research into his ideological development and economic metaphysical theories, a complete timeline of his life and works, a glossary of Marxist terminology, and a detailed index of all of Marx's writings. In Economic Philosophic Manuscripts, Marx's dialectical prose is presented in contemporary English with attention to the argument's original force and precision. The supporting material situates Economic Philosophic Manuscripts within Marx's wider intellectual project and the political, economic, religious, and philosophical debates surrounding it.