Since the 1920s, scholars have promoted a set of manuscripts, long abandoned by Marx and Engels, to canonical status in book form as The German Ideology, and in particular its 'first chapter,' known as 'I. Feuerbach.' Part one of this revolutionary study relates in detail the political history through which these manuscripts were editorially fabricated into editions and translations, so that they could represent an important exposition of Marx's 'theory of history.' Part two presents a wholly-original view of the so-called 'Feuerbach' manuscripts in a page-by-page English-language rendition of these discontinuous fragments. By including the hitherto devalued corrections that each author made in draft, the new text invites the reader into a unique laboratory for their collaborative work. An 'Analytical Introduction' shows how Marx's and Engels's thinking developed in duologue as they altered individual words and phrases on these 'left-over' polemical pages.

Terrell Carver is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol, UK. He has published numerous studies, translations and biographical works on Marx and Engels for major international publishers and works of reference. He has been a consultant on the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe edition of the complete works headquartered in Berlin.Daniel Blank was educated at the University of Munster, Germany in political science, and was awarded a PhD in 2008 from the University of Bristol, UK, for his dissertation ''The German Ideology' by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Political History of the Manuscript and its Published Editions.' He lives and works in Bonn, Germany..

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1. Manuscripts and Politics 2. The 1920s: Early Political Disputes over The German Ideology 3. The Stalin Era and the Construction of a Feuerbach-chapter in Volume I/5 of MEGA1 4. Two Popular Study Editions at the beginning of the 'Cold War' 5. The Turbulent 60s: The Publication of Long-lost Pages of the 1845-46 Manuscripts 6. The Historical Origins of the 1845-46 Manuscripts 7. The End of East European Communism and its Impact on the Preparation of Volume I/5 of MEGA2 8. The Marx-Engels-Jahrbuch 2003 edition of The German Ideology 9. Summary, Conclusions and Ideas on How to Publish the so-called 'German ideology' Manuscripts in Future Appendix A Select Bibliography of Editions of The German Ideology Appendix B The Genealogy of Editions of The German Ideology Appendix C A Brief Outline of the Content of a Future 'Contextual Edition' of The German Ideology Notes on Research Methods and Source Materials Methodological ExcursusAbbreviations and Bibliography Index