Plan of the "Library of the Best Foreign Socialist Writers"

Author(s)	Karl Marx
Written	March 1845

Source: Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 4, p. 667;
Written: between March 7 and 17, 1845;
First published: in Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, Abt. 1, Bd. 5,1932

Note from MECW vol. 4, 1975 :

The Plan of the "library of the Best Foreign Socialist Writers" is in Marx's Notebook for 1844-1847, among the notes relating to March 1845. (Concerning Marx and Engels' intention to put out such a publication and the causes which prevented its realisation see Note 89.) As is seen from further entries in his Notebook, Marx returned to this plan in the following months, recording the names of authors whose works should be added to the "Library" (in particular the names of Thompson, Campanella, Lamennais), and also the persons to be enlisted in the proposed publication (M. Hess was to translate the works of Buonarroti, Dézamy and others).

In listing the names of the Socialists Marx also mentions Lalande. This is probably a slip of the pen. He might have meant de Labord. True, further on in his Notebook Marx mentions Lalande's De L'Association, but in Capital, Vol. 1, he quotes Labord's book De l'esprit d'association dans tous les intérêts de la Communauté, Paris, 1818.

Morelly Mably Babeuf Buonarroti

Cercle soc[ial]^[1] Hébert Jac. [Le]Roux Leclerc

Bentham Godwin

Holbach Fourier

Owen (Lalande)

Helvétius St. Simon

Considérant

Cabet

Producteur. Globe.

Writings of the School

Dézamy. Gay. and x

"Fraternité" l'égalitaire, etc. l'humanitaire^[2]

Proudhon

↑ Cercle social — an organisation established by democratic intellectuals in Paris in the first years of the French Revolution. Its chief spokesman, Claude Fauchet, demanded an equalitarian division of the land, restrictions on large fortunes and employment for all able-bodied citizens. The criticism to which Fauchet and his supporters subjected the formal equality proclaimed in the documents of the French Revolution prepared the ground for bolder action in defence of the destitute by Jacques Roux, Théophile Leclerc and other members of the radical-plebeian "Enragés".
↑ The revolutionary and materialistic trend of French utopian communism included also the secret Babouvist societies of the 1840s influenced by the "travailleurs égalitaires", which consisted mainly of workers and published the journal l'Égalitaire, and the "humanitaires", supporters of the journal l'Humanitaire. In 1843 Engels wrote about the criticism of bourgeois marriage and family relations by representatives of these societies in his article "Progress of Social Reform on the Continent"

[1] Cercle social — an organisation established by democratic intellectuals in Paris in the first years of the French Revolution. Its chief spokesman, Claude Fauchet, demanded an equalitarian division of the land, restrictions on large fortunes and employment for all able-bodied citizens. The criticism to which Fauchet and his supporters subjected the formal equality proclaimed in the documents of the French Revolution prepared the ground for bolder action in defence of the destitute by Jacques Roux, Théophile Leclerc and other members of the radical-plebeian "Enragés".

[2] The revolutionary and materialistic trend of French utopian communism included also the secret Babouvist societies of the 1840s influenced by the "travailleurs égalitaires", which consisted mainly of workers and published the journal l'Égalitaire, and the "humanitaires", supporters of the journal l'Humanitaire. In 1843 Engels wrote about the criticism of bourgeois marriage and family relations by representatives of these societies in his article "Progress of Social Reform on the Continent"

[1]

[2]