Marx begins the Grundrisse notebooks

Written after Louis-Napoleon’s coup, the analysis traced how class alliances, rural politics, and the state enabled authoritarian rule. Marx treated political outcomes as shaped by inherited...

Marx analyzed the 1851 coup in France, showing how class alliances, political institutions, and state power shaped authoritarian rule. The work turned recent political defeat into a method for...

In journalism prompted by the Taiping upheaval and European politics, Marx linked China’s anti-dynastic rebellion to the commercial and political order of Europe. His account sometimes repeated...

Marx’s journalism condemned British violence and economic extraction but also framed colonial rule as a destructive force that would remake Indian society. The writing contains Eurocentric assumptions...

Engels followed Spain’s revolutionary crisis and examined the roles of military officers, popular mobilization, and liberal factions. His reporting linked local struggles to wider European contests...

The panic of 1857 disrupted trade and employment across the Atlantic world. Their correspondence connected market turmoil to industrial production and popular hardship; Marx used the crisis as an...

The book developed Marx’s analysis of commodity, money, and social production. Its preface summarized a historical-materialist approach that later shaped debates over class, social change, and the...

Engels examined the strategic rivalry around Italian unification and Austria. The work illustrates his sustained interest in military affairs and national struggles, while also showing the limits of a...

Marx’s long polemic answered accusations by Carl Vogt and exposed factional conflict among European exiles. The book demonstrates how political movements were shaped by journalism, personal...

As the U.S. Civil War began, Marx and Engels followed the conflict as a struggle whose outcome would shape slavery, labor, and democracy. Marx’s later journalism supported emancipation and...