[Marxism] Manuscripts Re: Marx on Mathematics

[Steve Palmer]

Marx's Mathematical Manuscripts are available at the MIA:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/mathematical-manuscripts/index.htm

You can download a pdf of them from that page.

Also missing from the MECW are Marx's Notes on Indian History and associated notes on Kovalevsky, Phear, Maine etc, the Ethnological notebooks despite there being published transcriptions and Russian and English translations of these already available.

Capital has been mysteriously modified in the MECW in certain ways without explicit indication or explanation. Some of the translations are also controversial and unexplained. After Ryazanov's blistering attack on the Eden and Cedar Paul translation one would expect a certain caution in this sort of thing.

The MECW is not complete or scholarly, unfortunately. But we can be thankful for the letters and many other previously unpublished materials. I blame it on the Eurocommunists, since it fits so nicely with their agenda, but the case is circumstantial and there is no forensic evidence available so feel free to treat this suggestion as a rant.

Even the new new MEGA has question marks hanging over it (cf Michael Heinrich's comments on neo-Ricardianism). Why Shlomo Avineri is on the International Editorial Board, after his highly tendentious and partial edition of Marx on Colonialism and Modernization turned Marx into a common Euromarxist, is a mystery. Why none of it is available online - easily the cheapest way to publish - has never been explained.

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Steve

> The question for me is whether the mathematical books are
> in the Collected Works. If not, as it appears, why not?
> Also, what else is missing from the MECW? I would be
> grateful for any answers.