The 14th and 26th volumes of the second Chinese edition of Marx/Engels Collected Works were recently published by the People’s Publishing House, according to the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau (CCTB).

Recent years have seen the orderly compilation and publication of the second Chinese edition of Marx/Engels Collected Works, with 24 volumes so far released.
 

The newly-published 14th volume includes a total of 107 political commentaries, reviews and military articles that German philosophers Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) wrote from January to June in 1855. The topics cover the Crimean War (1853-1856), political and economic development of major European capitalist countries, as well as internal and external policies of the ruling class, and how to advance labor movements, mass revolutions and democratic campaigns under those circumstances.
 

Compared with the first Chinese edition, the addition of 11 articles including "Situation of the Crimean War" and "Prospect of Crimea" is noteworthy.
 

The 26th volume incorporates Anti-Dühring composed by Engels between 1876 and 1878, and relevant literature alongside his Dialectics of Nature written from 1873 to 1882. A comparison with the 20th volume of the first Chinese edition reveals that Anti-Dühring embraces the manuscripts of two articles in the 10th chapter of Marx’s Discussion of ‘Criticism History’ and Dialectics of Nature takes in seven articles concerning mathematics and physics produced by Engels.

According to Ji Zhengju, director of the Department of Marxist Studies at CCTB, the second Chinese edition of Marx/Engels Collected Works is based on Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, the largest collection of works by Marx and Engels in German, and refers to English and Russian editions as well. It comprises 70 volumes.
 

The second Chinese edition features a more reasonable structure, more reliable basis, better translation quality and more detailed documents.
 

“The release of the 14th and 26th volumes of the second Chinese edition of Marx/Engels Collected Works will facilitate theorists specializing in Marxist studies to study brilliant ideas of classic Marxist works more comprehensively,” Ji said.

Chen Yejun is a reporter from Chinese Social Sciences Today.