Book description
Written during the winter of 1857-8, the Grundrisse was considered by
Marx to be the first scientific elaboration of communist theory. A
collection of seven notebooks on capital and money, it both develops the
arguments outlined in the Communist Manifesto (1848) and explores the
themes and theses that were to dominate his great later work Capital.
Here, for the first time, Marx set out his own version of Hegel's
dialectics and developed his mature views on labour, surplus value and
profit, offering many fresh insights into alienation, automation and the
dangers of capitalist society. Yet while the theories in Grundrisse make
it a vital precursor to Capital, it also provides invaluable
descriptions of Marx's wider-ranging philosophy, making it a unique
insight into his beliefs and hopes for the foundation of a communist
state. Karl Marx (1818-1883). The core of Marx's economic analysis
found early expression in the konomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus
dem Jahre 1844 (Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844) (1844).
There, Marx argued that the conditions of modern industrial societies
invariably result in the estrangement (or alienation) of workers from
their own labor. In his review of a Bruno Baier book, On the Jewish
Question (1844), Marx decried the lingering influence of religion over
politics and proposed a revolutionary re-structuring of European
society. Much later, Marx undertook a systematic explanation of his
economic theories in Das Kapital (Capital) (1867-95) and Theorien ber
den Mehrwert (Theory of Surplus Value) (1862).
