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 Its 50 volumes contain publications by Marx and Engels released during their lifetimes, many unpublished manuscripts of Marx's economic writings, and extensive personal correspondence.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).

Part of a series on
Marxism
Theoretical works Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 The Condition of the Working Class in England The German Ideology The Communist Manifesto The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Grundrisse Capital Critique of the Gotha Programme Dialectics of Nature The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State What Is to Be Done? The Accumulation of Capital Philosophical Notebooks Terrorism and Communism The State and Revolution Essays on Marx's Theory of Value History and Class Consciousness Prison Notebooks The Black Jacobins On Practice Theses on the Philosophy of History Dialectic of Enlightenment A Critique of Soviet Economics The Long Revolution Guerrilla Warfare The Wretched of the Earth Reading Capital The Society of the Spectacle Pedagogy of the Oppressed Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses Ways of Seeing How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Social Justice and the City Women, Race and Class Marxism and the Oppression of Women Imagined Communities Hegemony and Socialist Strategy The Sublime Object of Ideology Time, Labor and Social Domination The Age of Extremes The Origin of Capitalism Empire Late Victorian Holocausts Change the World Without Taking Power Caliban and the Witch An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital Capitalist Realism Capital in the Anthropocene Towards Socialism or Capitalism? The Revolution Betrayed Literature and Revolution The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany Their Morals and Ours: The class foundations of moral practice
Philosophy Alienation Dialectical materialism Ideology Philosophy of nature Philosophy in the Soviet Union Reification Marxist ethics
Critique of political economy Capital (accumulation) Crisis theory Commodity Concrete and abstract labor Factors of production Falling profit-rate tendency Means of production Mode of production Capitalist Socialist Productive forces Scientific socialism Surplus product Socially necessary labour time Value-form Wage labour
Sociology Base and superstructure Bourgeoisie Class Class consciousness Classless society Commodity fetishism Communist society Critical theory Cultural hegemony Democracy Dictatorship of the proletariat Soviet Radical Democratic centralism Exploitation False consciousness Human nature Immiseration Imperialism Lumpenproletariat Metabolic rift Proletariat Private property Relations of production State theory Working class
History Class struggle Historical determinism Primitive accumulation Proletarian revolution World revolution Theory of historical trajectory
Aspects Aesthetics Archaeology Criminology Cultural analysis Cultural Studies Ethics Film theory Geography Historiography Literary criticism Marxism and religion Sociology Philosophy
Common variants Structural Autonomist Marxism–Leninism Guevarism Maoism Titoism Trotskyism Neo-Gramscianism Regulation school Third-worldist Hegelian Budapest School Frankfurt School Humanist Neue Marx-Lektüre Open Political Praxis School Both Black Classical Communization Feminist Leninism Neo Post Western
Other variants Analytical Austromarxism Centrist Council communism Eurocommunism Instrumental Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Nkrumaism Orthodox Revisionist Situationist Socialism with Chinese characteristics Wertkritik
People Marx Engels Morris Lafargue Rubin Kautsky Plekhanov Du Bois Connolly Lenin Luxemburg Liebknecht Kollontai Bogdanov Stalin Trotsky Grossman Zinoviev Bloch Lukács Korsch Bukharin Ho Serge Gramsci Galiev Pashukanis Bordiga Benjamin Mao Basu Mariátegui Horkheimer Dutt Brecht Marcuse Kalecki Fromm Cox Lefebvre James Adorno Padmore Sartre Deutscher Hoxha Beauvoir Sombart Nkrumah Sweezy Emmanuel Hill Bettelheim Draper Jones Hobsbawm Althusser Hinton Williams Freire Mandel Sivanandan Miliband Cabral Thompson Bauman Fanon Kosik Berger Castro Guevara Liebman Heller Guattari Mészáros O'Connor Wallerstein Mies Tronti Debord Amin Hall Nairn Parenti Negri Jameson Gonzalo Dussel Harvey Laclau Bahro Poulantzas Vattimo Badiou Harnecker Altvater Anderson Löwy Vogel Sison Easthope Rancière Berman Przeworski Cohen Therborn Losurdo Ture Postone Rodney Bannerji Spivak Newton Sakai Wood Federici Wolff Balibar Eagleton Kurz Hartsock Rowbotham Mouffe Geras Brenner Davis Massey Cleaver Bishop Haraway Panitch Clarke Jessop Davis Wright Fraser Burawoy Holloway Rose Screpanti Tamás Hampton Cano Žižek Berardi Sankara Hennessy McDonnell Douzinas Roediger Foster West Ghandy Marcos Heinrich Prashad Kelley Dean Lordon Linera Fisher Li Coulthard Malm Seymour Toscano Bhattacharya Moufawad-Paul Srnicek Horvat Hamza Saito
Journals Antipode Capital & Class Capitalism Nature Socialism Constellations Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory Historical Materialism Mediations Monthly Review New Left Review Race & Class Rethinking Marxism Science & Society Socialist Register
Related topics 21st-century communist theorists Anarchism Creative destruction Conflict theory Criticism of Marxism Communism Communalism Economic determinism History of communism Left-wing politics Marxian economics New Left Old Left Municipalism Political ecology Socialism Authoritarian Democratic Market Reformist Revolutionary Social Utopian Left-wing populism Universal class Vulgar Marxism Economism Worker cooperative Workers' council
Outline Communism portal Philosophy portal Socialism portal
v t e

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]

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

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]

• Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), a project in progress to publish the complete untranslated works of Marx and Engels with extensive critical apparatus.
• The Karl Marx Library, an aborted 13 volume series edited by Saul K. Padover, terminated in 1977.

• "Index to Marx/Engels Collected Works", Marxists Internet Archive