Marx-Engels Works

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The "Blue Volumes" from MEW on a bookshelf.

The Marx-Engels-Werke ( MEW , also known as the Blue Volume ) are a widespread and much-cited study edition of the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . There are 44 volumes (in 46 books) that were published from 1956 by the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED (Vol. 1-42), by the Institute for the History of the Labor Movement (Vol. 43), and by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (Vol. 44) published by Dietz Verlag in Berlin . The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation has been the publisher of MEW since 1999.

With the 1700 writings and 4170 letters printed in the 44 volumes of MEW, the edition will remain the most comprehensive edition of the literary estate of Marx and Engels in German until the Marx-Engels Complete Edition (MEGA 2 ) is completed. Its high circulation and widespread distribution is based not least on the fact that approx. 60% of the texts edited in the MEW are in the original German wording, which in the past made the edition an internationally popular basis for translations and research work. The MEW volumes are regularly reissued to this day and continue to be published by Karl Dietz Verlag.

Edition history

The decision to publish a multi-volume German-language Marx-Engels work edition was taken by the SED Central Committee in 1953, the “Karl Marx Year”. The edition had to be based expressly on the second Russian-language Marx-Engels work edition ( Sotschinenija 2 ), which was divided between 1955 and 1966 in 39 (main) volumes, which between 1968 and 1981 contained three index and 11 supplementary volumes (40– 50), was published by the Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the CPSU in Moscow . The volume structure, text selection, forewords, commentary and apparatus were taken from the Russian mother edition in the MEW. The texts - already largely in German - were edited in the MEW on the basis of the original manuscripts or translated into German from the original languages.

Building on the fundamental character of Sotschinenija 2 , the MEW is not a historical-critical complete edition, but a large study edition with a representative selection of texts, which includes all completed and published works, writings and articles by Marx and Engels, as well as a selection of manuscripts, drafts and preparatory work, and finally the letters of the two authors. In contrast to the volumes of the first and second MEGA, the “complete publication of excerpts, rough drafts, sketches - i.e. preliminary work in general” and “reproduction of the texts in the language of the original” were deliberately avoided (MEW Vol. 2, pp. IX-X ).

The 39 main volumes of MEW appeared between 1956 and 1968, followed by two supplementary volumes in 1967 and 1968 (Vol. 40 and 41) with writings, manuscripts and letters by Marx and Engels from the period up to and including that were previously omitted in Vol. 1 and 27 of the edition 1844 on, 1983 also a volume with Marx's “ Grundrissen der Critique of Political Economy ” (vol. 42), and in 1990 and 2018 respectively two volumes with Marx's economic manuscript from the years 1861–1863 (vol. 43 and 44). The output also includes two index volumes and one register volume.

The academic examination of Marxism based on the MEW in the Federal Republic of the Adenauer era and during the Cold War sometimes also had legal consequences. For example, Oskar Negt reported on the confiscation of ordered MEW volumes from the GDR by a West German district court in 1960, because it was "propaganda material that was dangerous to the state" from the "socialist occupation zone", which was "based on the legal provisions of the district court in Rothenburg has been confiscated ”. Nevertheless, the MEW quickly became a recognized reference base for individual and selected editions and for citation in scientific papers and publications in German-speaking countries.

In the international Marx-Engels edition and research, the MEW held a special position for a long time because they are largely based not on translations from other languages ​​but on the original German manuscripts (otherwise only those between 1975 and In 2004 published 50-volume English-language work edition Marx / Engels Collected Works (MECW) , in which approx. 30% of the texts are based on the English original wording ). The volumes of the MEW published up to 1989 had about 4–5 editions per volume, ie over 60,000 copies each. By the end of the GDR, a total of around 3.5 million MEW volumes had been printed. A total of approx. 1500 copies per volume were exported to over 30 countries, including approx. 500–600 to Japan .

After the publication of the MEW was stopped due to the collapse of the GDR, the PDS -near Rosa Luxemburg Foundation took over the editing of the edition in 1999 . In order to maintain their availability, around a dozen MEW volumes have been reprinted unchanged since then (including volumes 5, 6, 12, 17, 23, 24, 25, 26.1, 26.2, 32, 34 and 42), and revisions appear regularly, the The text and pages are identical to the previous editions, but have been completely reissued in forewords, comments, chronicles and personal registers (e.g. volumes 1, 8, 13, 40 and 41). In the spring of 2018, after a long period of editing, volume 44 of MEW was published by Karl Dietz Verlag, the editing of which began in GDR times but had to be canceled in 1990.

structure

The MEW volumes 23-25 ​​( Das Kapital ) as a separate edition, 1973.

Although the MEW, unlike the MEGA, for example, does not have a designated division into different departments (instead, the volumes are numbered continuously), the output can be divided into three or four areas:

  • Vol. 1–22 (Works and Writings): The well-known philosophical, economic, historical and political works, publications, articles and speeches by Marx and Engels are printed here, including, for example, “ Die deutsche Ideologie ” (Vol. 3), the " Communist Manifesto " (vol. 4), " The eighteenth Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte " (vol. 8), " Critique of the Gothaer Program " (vol. 19) or Engels' " Anti-Dühring " (vol. 20).
  • Vol. 23–26.3 (economic writings): This area comprises the three volumes of Marx's main work “ Das Kapital ” (Vol. 23–25) and the “ Theories of Added Value ” (Vol. 26.1–26.3), part of the economic manuscript from 1861–1863.
  • Vol. 27–39 (letters): The volumes of letters include the correspondence between Marx and Engels and to third parties (however, unlike the MEGA 2, not third party letters to Marx and Engels) from the period 1842–1895.
  • Vol. 40–44 (supplementary volumes ): Volumes 40 and 41 supplement previously omitted material by Marx and Engels from the period up to 1844, Vol. 42 comprises the “ Grundrisse ” from 1857/58 and Volumes 43 and 44 complete volumes 26.1 –26.3 by completing the economic manuscript for the years 1861–1863.

In addition:

  • Two volumes of directories: A first volume ( Marx Engels Directory - First Volume: Works, Writings Articles ) in 1966, a second ( Marx Engels Directory - Second Volume: Letters, Postcards, Telegrams ) 1971.
  • Subject index for vol. 1–39: Aftera subject index for MEWhad already appeared in 1983 by Pahl-Rugenstein , the official edition of Dietz Verlag followed in 1989 ( Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels works. Subject index (volumes 1–39) ).

criticism

On the part of the history of philosophy and within Marxism itself, the MEW were partly controversial. Due to their origin as a German-language version of the second Russian edition, they were edited according to the political and ideological guidelines of the SED and CPSU leadership. By adopting forewords and the system of notes and registers from the Russian edition, the MEW made themselves vulnerable to accusations of canonization and dogmatization , which some critics believe should lead the reader to believe that Marxism-Leninism is the only one correct Marx interpretation.

Controversies that arose over the selection of the texts in the MEW had been settled relatively quickly after, for example, the omission of the " Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts " (1844) by Karl Marx and other early writings by the two authors in the first volume of the edition (1956) by the both supplementary volumes 1967/68 had been corrected. Since the texts edited in the MEW were also based on the original manuscripts, the correctness of the texts themselves is undisputed and the MEW is recognized as the authoritative edition by scholars from different schools and currents. The comments on the editions published before 1989 are mostly ignored today, especially since the volumes of the MEW that have been reissued since the 1990s contain updated forewords that differentiate themselves from old interpretations and incorporate the latest research.

literature

Comments

  • Carl-Erich Vollgraf, Richard Sperl, Rolf Hecker (eds.): The Marx-Engels work editions in the USSR and GDR (1945–1968). Argument Verlag, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-88619-691-7 .

Subject index

  • Institute for Marxism-Leninism at the Central Committee of the SED (Ed.) Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels works. Subject index (volumes 1–39) , Dietz Verlag 1989.
  • Willi Herferth: Subject index on Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels works (MEW) . 3 vols., (A – E, F – M, N – Z). Academy for Social Sciences at the Central Committee of the SED, Berlin 1980.
  • Willi Herferth, Hans Heinz Holz , Hans Jörg Sandkühler (ed.): Subject index to the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (MEW) . Pahl-Rugenstein, Cologne 1983.
  • Jutta Nesler: On the design of the index for the Marx-Engels work edition (volumes 1–39) . In: Contributions to Marx-Engels research. 17, Berlin 1984, pp. 158-161.
  • Jutta Nesler: Selected key words from the subject index for the Marx-Engels work edition (volumes 1–39) . In: Contributions to Marx-Engels research. 17, Berlin 1984, pp. 162-189.

Web links

  • Complete content of volumes 1 to 43 including comments and registers in html format in the MEW area at: DEA Archiv.de ( Memento from April 23, 2019 in the Internet Archive )
  • All MEW volumes can be downloaded in PDF format from: Marx really study!
  • Volumes 1 to 25 complete and further individual texts from MEW as html text on: mlwerke.de

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rosa Luxemburg Foundation: Does anyone still need the Marx-Engels edition today?
  2. ↑ a b c d Richard Sperl: "Each edition is a child of its time" . On the edition history of the literary estate of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 2017 (online).
  3. ↑ a b Marx-Engels area in the online shop of Karl Dietz Verlag.
  4. ↑ Mis`kevič, Larisa Romanovna: The second Russian Marx-Engels's complete works (Sočinenija). Your principles and peculiarities , in: Vollgraf, Carl-Erich; Sperl, Richard; Hecker, Rolf (ed.): The Marx-Engels work editions in the USSR and GDR (1945–1968) , Hamburg 2006, pp. 153–158.
  5. ^ Volumes of Sotschinenija 2 on marxists.org (online).
  6. ↑ Really study the MEW volumes on Marx! (on-line).
  7. ↑ Oskar Negt: "My relationship to the Frankfurt School"
  8. ↑ All figures in this section from note 73 in: Richard Sperl: "Each edition is a child of its time" , cf. Individual proof 2.
  9. ↑ Tom Strohschneider: Karl Marx and a Velvet from Schimmel, November 4, 2017 (online).
  10. ↑ An overview of the contents of the individual volumes is available on DEA Archiv.de ( Memento from April 23, 2019 in the Internet Archive ).
  11. ↑ Cf. in particular entries in the personal directory of WI Lenin's political opponents , for example: “ Kautsky, Karl (1854–1938) writer, editor, developed from vulgar socialist to Marxist at the end of the 1970s; 1883–1917 editor of Neue Zeit , the theoretical organ of the Social Democratic Party; developed in the nineties into the theoretician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Second International, initially contributed a lot to the spread of Marxism, later became, especially from 1910, the spokesman for centrism, betrayed Marxism during the First World War and became an opponent of revolutionary labor movement. ”MEW Vol. 39, p. 665.