Karl marx : Selected writings in sociology & social philosophy.

MARX was a social scientist, a political philosopher, and a revolutionary. His reputation as a scientist has suffered, to some extent, from the combination of these activities and still more from the historical vicissitudes of 'Marxism' as a political ideology.

It has also suffered from ignorance of his work, much of which remained unpublished until recent years. It was only in 1927 that the first volume of the projected complete works of Marx and Engels was published by the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, under the direction of D. Riazanov. This, and the succeeding volumes, made available for the first time the defini tive texts of Marx's writings prior to 1847. These texts are indispensable to any serious examination of Marx's work, not only for their direct contributions to social theory, but also for the indications which they give concerning the vast project of sociological analysis which Marx elaborated in his youth, and of which he was able to publish, or even to write, only a small part. In the light of these youthful plans, even the substantial volumes of Capital and of Theories of Surplus Value appear as fragments only of a much larger work which was to have been devoted to a general analysis of social institutions.