Historical Unfolding of Communitarian Marxist Property and Justice Theory

Abstract

The second stage of Marx’s communitarian property ethics unfolds in a block of communitarian Marxist writings on different social forms of property, from a time period stretching between Le Capital, the French translation of Das Kapital to texts applying Morgan’s account of tribal property in Ancient Society. This period between 1872 and 1883 reflects communitarian Marxist study of a variety of noncapitalist property systems. Indeed, communitarian Marxist theories of property ethics become increasingly sophisticated, the more the anthropological diversity of property comes to light. The new view is first clearly expressed in changes in Das Kapital of 1867 which Marx introduced into Le Capital, serialized between 1872 and 1875, when Marx became increasingly sympathetic to humanity’s communal property heritage. Exploration of this heritage flourished in (1) Marx’s own increasingly detailed research into Russian property, and (2) Engels’s research into Germanic-European property.¹ Among the texts that stand out are Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks (EN) notes on Morgan of 1881–82; Marx’s concrete interventions into Russian politics, including his letter and four drafts of a letter to the exiled Russian Narodnik, Vera Zasulich; his letter to the Russian newspaper, Otechestvennye Zapiski; and Marx and Engels’s 1882 preface to the Russian edition of the Communist Manifesto; Engels’s 1882 “Mark” and 1884 OFPPS, and his prefaces and notes to the 1888 English and 1890 German editions of The Communist Manifesto.²