Capital returns

In 1888, five years after Marx’s death, Engels published a small book called Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. In it he introduced the now familiar distinction between the early and the later Marx. To bolster his argument that Marx had rejected the Hegelian philosophy of his youth so as to develop instead the materialist science of his maturity, he included as an appendix the famous “Theses on Feuerbach,” which he had found among Marx’s literary remains. Whether he knew it at the time or not, Engels was instituting a long tradition of scholars plundering Marx’s archive to develop new interpretations of his work, to challenge established orthodoxies, and to make Marx relevant to new situations. Of course, something like this happens with all great thinkers. But, if only for the simple empirical fact that owing to the commitment of Marx’s followers, scholars have so much posthumous material to work with, Marx’s case is almost certainly unique. No other thinker has died and been reanimated in this fashion as many times as Karl Marx.