Marx/Engels Collected Works (also known as MECW) is the largest existing collection of English translations of works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Its 50 volumes contain publications by Marx and Engels released during their lifetimes, many unpublished manuscripts of Marx's economic writings, and extensive personal correspondence. The Collected Works, for the most part compiled by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the CC CPSU, was issued from 1975 to 2004 by Progress Publishers (1931, Moscow) in collaboration with Lawrence and Wishart (1936, London) and International Publishers (1924, New York City).

History and overview

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Although about a third of Marx and Engels' works were originally written in English and partly published in the British or American press,^[1] the vast majority of their literary legacy was not collected, translated (where necessary) and made available in an extensive English edition for decades after their death.

In the Soviet Union, comprehensive collections of the works of Marx and Engels were already compiled in the 1920s and 1930s (an aborted complete edition, MEGA¹, as well as a first Russian edition in 28 volumes, Sochineniya¹). But only following the publication of new editions in Russian and German in the 1950s and 1960s (Sochineniya² and Marx-Engels-Werke with 39 basic volumes and a few more supplementary ones later on), an English edition begun being prepared by Soviet editors with the help of the publishing houses of the Communist Parties in Great Britain and the USA and translators from these countries.^[2]

After general editing principles had been agreed upon by the representatives of all three sides (Institute of Marxism-Leninism and Progress Publishers, Moscow, the Central Committees of the CPs in Great Britain and the US and their publishers Lawrence and Wishart, London, and International Publishers, New York) at a conference in Moscow in December 1969,^[3] the first volume of the new edition was published in 1975.

More than forty volumes were published before the fall of the USSR; the few remaining ones were completed and issued by 2004 (V. 50).

Large parts of both authors' early writings, many of their newspaper articles (e.g. from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung 1848-49) and most of their letters as well as many of Marx's economic manuscripts were published in English for the first time in the Collected Works.^[4] In total, the 50 volumes comprise 1,968 works and other documents (of which 805 were published in English for the first time) and 3,957 letters (of which 2,283 had never been published in English before).^[5]

The Collected Works consists of writings by Marx between 1835 and his death in 1883, and by Engels between 1838 and his death in 1895. Early volumes (V. 1-2) include juvenilia, such as correspondence between Marx and his father, Marx's poetry, and letters from Engels to his sister. The edition also contains several major, well-known works by Marx and Engels, such as The Condition of the Working Class in England (V. 4), The Communist Manifesto (V. 6), The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (V. 11), and Anti-Dühring (V. 25).

The collection is divided into three parts. Volumes 1-27 collect the political, philosophical, historical and journalistic writings of the authors, in chronological order. Volumes 28-37 specifically collect Marx's writings on political economy, including a large amount of draft material and manuscripts which culminated in the three volumes of Capital (V. 35-37). Finally, volumes 38-50 collect the letters and personal correspondence of the authors.^[6]

Contents by volume

Although most of MECW's volumes include material written by Marx and Engels (whether separately or as co-authors), a large minority of volumes are devoted to material written by only one author. Red check marks indicate the author's presence in a volume, while black X marks indicate that the author's work is absent. Although the volumes typically contain large varieties of material, only major selected items are listed below, for illustration.

Volume	Marx	Engels	Period	Pub. Date	Major Contents
1	Y	N	1835–1843	1975	Early writings of Marx, including doctoral dissertation The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature[7]
2	N	Y	1838–1842	1975	Early writings of Engels[8]
3	Y	Y	1843–1844	1975	Early writings of both, including the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right[9]
4	Y	Y	1844–1845	1975	The Holy Family, The Condition of the Working Class in England[10]
5	Y	Y	1845–1847	1976	The German Ideology, Theses on Feuerbach[11]
6	Y	Y	1845–1848	1976	The Communist Manifesto, The Poverty of Philosophy, Principles of Communism[12]
7	Y	Y	1848	1977	Articles for Neue Rheinische Zeitung[13][14][15]
8	Y	Y	1848–1849	1977
9	Y	Y	1849	1977
10	Y	Y	1849–1851	1978	The Class Struggles in France 1848–1850, The Peasant War in Germany[16]
11	Y	Y	1851–1853	1979	The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany[17]
12	Y	Y	1853–1854	1979	Newspaper articles concerning global politics and other writings, including The Civil War in the United States[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]
13	Y	Y	1854–1855	1980
14	Y	Y	1855–1856	1980
15	Y	Y	1856–1858	1986
16	Y	Y	1858–1860	1980
17	Y	Y	1859–1860	1981
18	Y	Y	1857–1862	1982
19	Y	Y	1861–1864	1984
20	Y	Y	1864-1868	1985	Articles and writings concerning the First International, Value, Price and Profit (V. 20)[26][27][28][29]
21	Y	Y	1867– 1870	1985
22	Y	Y	1870–1871	1986
23	Y	Y	1871–1874	1988
24	Y	Y	1874–1883	1989	Critique of the Gotha Program, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific[30]
25	N	Y	—	1987	Anti-Dühring, Dialectics of Nature[31]
26	N	Y	1882–1889	1990	Origin of the Family, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy[32]
27	N	Y	1890–1895	1990	Late political writings of Engels[33]
28	Y	N	1857–1861	1986	Grundrisse, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy[34][35]
29	Y	N	1857– 1861	1987
30	Y	N	1861–1863	1988	Economic Manuscripts of 1861–1863, which includes Theories of Surplus Value[36][37][38][39][40]
31	Y	N	1861–1863	1989
32	Y	N	1861–1863	1989
33	Y	N	1861–1863	1991
34	Y	N	1861–1864	1994
35	Y	N	—	1996	Capital, Volume I[41]
36	Y	N	—	1997	Capital, Volume II[42]
37	Y	N	—	1998	Capital, Volume III[43]
38	Y	Y	1844– 1851	1982	Letters[44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]
39	Y	Y	1852–1855	1983
40	Y	Y	1856–1859	1983
41	Y	Y	1860–1864	1985
42	Y	Y	1864–1868	1987
43	Y	Y	1868–1870	1988
44	Y	Y	1870–1873	1989
45	Y	Y	1874-1879	1991
46	Y	Y	1880–1883	1992
47	N	Y	1883–1886	1995
48	N	Y	1887–1890	2001
49	N	Y	1890–1892	2001
50	N	Y	1892–1895	2004

Differences with other Marx/Engels collections

Although the Collected Works is the most comprehensive English translation of Marx and Engels' work, it is not their complete work. An ongoing project to publish the pair's complete works in their original language (Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe) is expected to require 114 volumes.^[57] However, as MEGA differs from MECW particularly in content in that it presents numerous excerpts and notes in its fourth section, publishes the letters to Marx and Engels from third persons, and prints various editions of the same works (e.g. Capital), the overwhelming majority of the published writings, manuscripts, and letters of Marx and Engels are in any case included in MECW.^[58]