Late Marx

The last photograph of Karl Marx, taken in Algiers in 1882

The late Marx refers to the work of Karl Marx from the late 1860s until his death in 1883. This period is characterized by a sustained engagement with topics that were less central to his earlier work, including non-Western societies, the role of colonialism, and the possibility of multiple paths of social development. Having completed the first German edition of Capital, Volume I in 1867, Marx spent much of his final decade researching and writing on Russia, anthropology, and pre-capitalist social forms. This work was conducted amidst severe ill-health and continued engagement with global political events.

Key texts from this period include Marx's writings on Ireland from 1869–70, his 1871 address on the Paris Commune (The Civil War in France), significant revisions for the 1872–1875 French edition of Capital, his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Programme, his correspondence with Russian populists such as Vera Zasulich, and his anthropological notebooks (known as The Ethnological Notebooks). In these later works, Marx explored the potential for agrarian, non-capitalist societies like Russia to achieve a communist transformation without first undergoing the full development of industrial capitalism, provided such a revolution could link up with a proletarian revolution in Western Europe. He also gave greater attention to gender relations, colonialism as a system of domination, and forms of resistance in colonized societies such as India, Algeria, and Latin America.

Scholarly interpretation of this period is divided. Early scholars and editors of Marx's work, including Friedrich Engels and David Riazanov, tended to view his late-life focus on anthropology and non-European societies as a sign of intellectual decline, marred by digressions from his main work on political economy. However, since the late 20th century, a growing body of scholarship has argued that these late writings represent a crucial and creative development in his thought. This modern perspective sees the late Marx as offering a critique of Eurocentrism and a more nuanced understanding of global history, gender, and the complex relationship between class, race, and nationalism.