(OPE-L) Re: Questions About Marx's Unpublished Manuscripts

From: Gerald A. Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Thu May 27 2004 - 13:49:13 EDT


----- Original Message -----
From: "Regina Roth" <roth@bbaw.de>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 9:53 AM
Subject: Re: (OPE-L) Questions About Marx's Unpublished Manuscripts


Dear Gerald,

thank you for forwarding these questions about Marx's unpublished
manuscripts. Let
me give you some information from the view of the MEGA.

As to the 12,000 pages of unpublished manuscripts I am not quite sure what
they
could mean, but I think these could be the manuscripts, that are drafts for
texts, not
published in the lifetime of Marx or Engels. (By the way, where did Agnus
Maddison
note this number?)

To a)
Most of the manuscripts mentioned there are already published, in German as
well as
in English, in several editions. The most popular ones are the
Marx-Engels-Werke
(MEW) and the Collected Works (CW). These editions present all the works
published
in the authors' lifetimes, a selection of their manuscripts or drafts, and
also several
excerpts.

A special case are the drafts of Marx for Volumes 2 and 3 of "Capital". Up
to now there
are only published the drafts for Volume 3 and the first draft for Volume 2
from 1863-
1865 in the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), vol. II/4.2 and II/4.1. Not
yet
published but being prepared for publication are the drafts of Volume 2 from
1868 to
1882 and some manuscripts with regard to Volume 3 from 1867/68. They will
probably
be out by 2006. There will be no edition of these manuscripts within the
"Collected
Works", because former versions and drafts of work that was published by one
of the
authors are explicitly excluded.

To b) and c)
Not yet out are 1. the drafts for "Capital" mentioned above, 2. most of the
excerpts of
Marx which reflect his diverse and comprehensive studies, mostly those from
1851
onwards (10 volumes out of 32 planned for the excerpts in MEGA have already
appeared). Some, like the ethnological excerpts from the late 1870s have
already been
published in other editions. Within the MEGA, the chemical excerpts appeared
recently. (For a detailed overview see
http://www.bbaw.de/forschung/mega/abt4.html
and http://www.bbaw.de/forschung/mega/revplan.html#anhang4)

Generally, all the works and manuscripts produced by both authors (published
and
unpublished), and also every existing draft and excerpts from the writings
of other
authors will be published within the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), that
is the
historical-critical edition of the complete writings of Marx and Engels. The
MEGA is
divided into four sections (Abteilungen). The first section deals with
works, articles, and
drafts; the second with "Capital" and preliminary studies; the third with
correspondence; and the fourth with excerpts, notes, and marginalia. Work on
this
edition is currently being carried out by the Brandenburg Academy of
Sciences and
Humanities, who also coordinates the work of several teams of researchers
from
Germany, Russia, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, the USA and Japan.
The language of the publication will be mainly German (althoug a lot of the
excerpts
were written in a mix of German and English, sometimes also French or other
languages).

I hope some of this information can help.

Best wishes,
Regina

*****************************************************************
Dr. Regina Roth
Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
- Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe -
Jaegerstrasse 22-23
10117 Berlin
Tel.: 030 / 203 70 274
e-mail: roth@bbaw.de
*****************************************************************

From:           "Gerald A. Levy" <Gerald_A_Levy@msn.com>
To:             <OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU>
Copies to:      "Regina Roth" <roth@bbaw.de>, <info@marxforschung.de>,
  "Jerry-P" <glevy@pratt.edu>
Subject:        (OPE-L) Questions About Marx's Unpublished Manuscripts
Date sent:      Wed, 26 May 2004 10:38:58 -0400

>
> Jurriaan wrote:
>
> > As Agnus Maddison noted, Marx wrote about 12,000 pages of
> > unpublished manuscripts in total ....
>
> I wonder:
>
> a) How many pages of manuscripts by Marx have _still_ not been
> published?  E.g. does Maddison's figure _include_ or _exclude_  the
> Paris Manuscripts of 1844, the Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58,
> the drafts that were published posthumously by Engels as Volumes II
> and III of _Capital_ and the manuscripts on the history of
> economic thought later  edited and published as _Theories of Surplus
> Value_ by Kautsky,  his mathematical manuscripts, marginal notes on
> Wagner, etc.?
>
> b) For whatever quantity of manuscripts that remain unpublished,
> what are the reasons? E.g. are they in a form that makes publishing
> very difficult?  Is there a shortage of finance and labour to do the
editing
> and publishing? Or what?
>
> c) What are the plans for publishing the remaining manuscripts?
> When can we expect the remaining works to be published (and
> in what languages)?
>
>  In solidarity, Jerry
>
>
>  Ernesto wrote:
> > By the way, Marx studied the Ciompi revolutioin and, so it seems, he
> > considered it as the first modern proletarian revolution (but I am not
> >  sure of this). His notes are unpublished and I could not read them.


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