Marx and Engels on the Trade Unions

Virtually everything Marx and Engels ever wrote on labor strikes and trade unions has been collected in this volume for the first time. It includes vivid, often eyewitness accounts of many of the greatest strikes and labor struggles of the last century.

This original and valuable collection challenges the prevailing assumption that Marx and Engels cared little for trade unions and their role in the transition to socialism or that they had little practical involvement with unions. Lapides illuminates the immense part personally played by Marx and Engels in helping to establish the modern labor movement. Covering the period 1844-1894, the book features graphic and moving portrayals of contemporary labor stuggles, candid personal views of various labor leaders, biting polemics against socialist rivals, and eloquent passages. Lapides provides an introduction that places the excerpts in historical and theoretical context.

Kenneth Lapides is an independent Marx scholar. He is the author of "Marx's Wage Theory in Historical Perspective: Its Origins, Development and Interpretation" (Praeger, 1998).

“. . . Marx and Engels on the Trade Unions, scholars, trade unionists, and activists have for the first time in one volume, as the editor notes in the Introduction, `virtually everything that Marx and Engels ever wrote on strikes and trade unions.' Kenneth Lapides, a freelance writer and co-editor (along with Philip Foner) of a Documentary History of the First International in the United States, has performed a valuable service in putting this collection together.”
–Science & Society

“Every page...offers nuggets of information and illumination....The editing is first-rate, the notes copious and helpful.”
–Herbert Aptheker

“...an invaluable supplement to the various editions extant of Marx's and Engels' writings; or indeed a valuable basis for study, by itself.”
–Hal Draper

“...fills an important vacuum in the literature relating to both the works of Marx and Engels and of the labor movement...should be of value to all students of Marxism and trade unionism.”
–Philip S. Foner