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David Riazanov's
KARL MARX and
FREDERICK
ENGELS
An Introduction to Their Lives and Work
written 1927
first published 1937
Translated by Joshua Kunitz
Transcribed for
the Internet
by director@marx.org in between January and April 1996.
When Monthly Review Press reprinted this classic work in 1973, Paul M.
Sweezy wrote the reasons for doing so in a brief foreword:
"Back in the 1930s when I was planning a course on the economics of
socialism at Harvard, I found that there was a dearth of suitable mateiral in English
on all aspects of the subject, but especially on Marx and Marxism. In combing the
relevant shelves of the University library, I came upon
a considerable number of
titles which were new to me. Many of these of course turned out to be useless, but
several contributed improtantly to my own education and a few fitted nicely into the
need for course reading material. One which qualified under both these headings and
which I found to be of absorbing interest was David Riazanov's Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels which had been written in the mid-1920s as a series of lectures for
Soviet working-class audiences and had recently been translated into
English by
Joshua Kunitz and published by International Publishers.
"I assigned the book in its entirety as an introduction to Marxism as long as I
gave the course. The results were good: the students liked it and learned from it not
only the main facts about the lives and works of the founders of Marxism, but also,
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by way of example, something of the Marxist approach to
the study and writing of
history.
"Later on during the 1960s when there was a revival of interest in Marxism
among students and others, a growing need was felt for
reliable works of
introduction and explanation. Given my own past experience, I naturally responded
to requests for assistance from students and teachers by recommending, among
other works, Riazanov's Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
But by that time the book
had long been out of print and could usually be found only in the larger libraries
(some of which, as has a way of happening with useful books, had lost their
copies in
the intervening years). We at Monthly Review Press therefore decided to request
permission to reprint the book, and this has now been granted.
I hope that students
and teachers in the 1970s will share my enthusiasm for a work which exemplifies in
an outstanding way the art of popularizing without falsifying or vulgarizing."
His sentiments are shared. So here's a digital edition, permanently archived
on the net, thus never off the library shelf. Download or print out your own copy.