Surveys from Exile: Political Writings (Marx's Political Writings)

Karl Marx is known primarily for two titles, The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. At the beginning of the 20th century, the mainstream media and most in the West consider his ideas as failure. However, these opinions reflect a failure to understand what Marx wrote about. First of, Marx lived in Britain most of his adult life, in the libraries of London specifically. The people he associated with were active in the political scene of the British Isles and continental Europe... not Russia or China. Hence Marx's analysis and opinions of capitalism are of its manifestations and consequences in Western Europe, primarily England, France, Germany and Italy. Some of this analyses is found here, "Surveys from Exile: Political Writings". Authored while Marx was living in London, exiled from continental Europe due to censorship of his writings by various government authorities, this book is a collection of long essays, each of which examines the political and economic conditions in a specific country. The essay topics include the United States and its path to Civil War, France and the causes and effects of the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, and the creation of Germany from the unification of Prussia and other smaller kingdoms.Granted that this is an English translation of the original work, the essays themselves are more like editorials filled with satire and wit, and less of scientific analyses of their respective topics. The language of the writing is easy enough to read, but Marx's style can be quite tiresome to slog through at times. A lot of his analyses is composed of contrasts and dichotomies, instead of say the first-person narratives modern American readers are used to from authors such as Thomas Friedman or Malcolm Gladwell. So I must admit it took me several months of on-and-off reading to complete this book. In these essays, Marx relies heavily on anecdotes and poignant examples to get his point across, and only occasionally uses quantitative data, which some might find as the weak spot in his arguments. However, his ideas and points are right on. For example, he rightly defends the cause of the Union in the American Civil War. For those interested in the writings of Marx, specifically his thoughts on history, this is a good book to read. However, for economic analyses, I would skip this one and go straight to his later works such as Kapital.