The Manifesto of the Communists.

£12,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd · No longer available

The first British edition of this hugely consequential bowdlerised edition of the Communist Manifesto produced by the emigré German anarchist Johann Most (1846-1906), being the first edition in English of the Manifesto to be published in book-form in Britain. Most’s bowdlerised edition was of enormous consequence for the history of the Manifesto and stands as an excellent example of the ideological struggle that so often accompanied the translation and publication of Marxist literature. Johann Most imposed an explicitly anarchist interpretation on his edition of Manifesto , and the publication directly prompted Engels to produce the ‘Authorised’ English translation of 1888. Most had a long and fractious relationship with Marx and Engels, an antagonism that accelerated after Marx’s death in 1883 and culminated with the publication of the present bowdlerised version of the Communist Manifesto . Most had earlier produced the earliest abridgement of Das Kapital to appear in any language, published in 1873 under the title Kapital und Arbeit , but would soon veer towards anarchism. After emigrating to America in 1882, and following Marx’s death in 1883, “Johann Most saw an opportunity to use Marx’s ghostly coattails to push himself forward as the chief disciple of the dead leader, who could no longer protest. … The centre piece of Most’s manoeuvring was to be a new English-language edition of the Communist Manifesto ” (Draper). Most’s edition of the Manifesto was originally publish

• Year: 1886

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