Preface

Summary

This book is part of the work of the Political Studies Association (uk) Marxism Specialist Group. The group was set up in 1983, and now includes around 100 members worldwide. It studies the work of Marx, Engels and subsequent figures in the Marxist tradition, and investigates Marxist approaches to particular issues. Its membership is open to all: its commitment is to open debate and academic quality.

The idea of a book on the Communist Manifesto was first proposed by Jules Townshend. The suggestion was taken up with great enthusiasm by many members. This book contains contributions which we feel are most helpful for people in the early stages of a study of Marxism, but should also offer some interest to more advanced students and researchers. A further collection of articles appears in Volume 4 of the group's annual volume, Studies in Marxism (1998).

It has been a great pleasure working on this volume with so many cooperative and friendly contributors. I would also like to pay tribute to Nicola Carr and the staff at Edinburgh University Press, who have been most helpful.

Many thanks are also due to my family, who have been most helpful and remarkably tolerant about the intrusion of the spectre of communism into our annual holiday.

The only sad feature of this enterprise has been the death in January 1997 of one of the contributors, Wal Suchting. It is no insult to the other contributors to say that Suchting was overwhelmingly the most scholarly. He had a deep commitment to gaining a profound understanding of Marxism and the philosophy of the natural sciences, putting these together in a series of articles and in his books, Marx: An Introduction (Brighton, Harvester, 1983) and Marxism and Philosophy (London, Macmillan, 1986). This commitment extended to studying texts in the original language (he learned Italian, German, Latin, Greek, Russian, French and Spanish). He objected profoundly to the current pressure in academic life to turn out volumes of trendy nonsense to secure research funding; his output is therefore relatively small but really well worth reading, including his article on ‘Marxism and Experiment’ in Studies in Marxism, Volume 3. Along with all this he was widely known as a friendly and conscientious person to work with. This volume is dedicated to his memory.