During his final decade, Marx deepened his research into non-Western societies, anthropology, and non-capitalist social forms. Anderson argues that this work can be understood through his revisions to the French edition of
Capital; his extensive research notebooks on anthropology and world history; and his writings on the revolutionary potential in Russia.
The Civil War in France and the Paris Commune of 1871, which Marx analysed in
The Civil War in France In 1871, Marx wrote
The Civil War in France, an analysis of and encomium for the
Paris Commune. The text, which served as an address to the General Council of the First International, was an attempt by Marx to "set the record straight" on the Commune in the face of widespread condemnation. Although he was an "anti-utopian thinker" who generally avoided speculating on the form of a future communist society, the concrete example of the Commune led him to outline his views on revolutionary government. Marx praised the Commune's democratic institutions, which he saw as the blueprint for a workers' government: the replacement of the standing army with a people's militia; the election of municipal councillors by
universal manhood suffrage who were responsible to their electorate and could be recalled; the payment of all public officials, from councillors to judges, at working-class wages; and the disestablishment of the church.
French edition of Capital and multilinearity Between 1872 and 1875, Marx dedicated significant time to preparing the French edition of
Capital, the first translation of the book. He described this edition as having a "scientific value independent of the original," which he urged even German-speaking readers to consult. This task proved to be a "real slog," requiring him to rewrite large portions of the text and consuming time he had planned for other work. In this edition, Marx made several crucial revisions that limited the seemingly universal applicability of his theory of historical development. In the preface to the first German edition (1867), a widely cited sentence stated: "The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future." This was often interpreted as presenting England's path as a universal model for all societies. In the French edition, Marx altered the sentence to read: "The country that is more developed industrially only shows,
to those that follow it up the industrial ladder, the image of its own future." This change explicitly excluded societies that had not yet embarked on a capitalist path, such as Russia and India, leaving open the possibility of alternative developmental trajectories. A second, more explicit change was made in the chapter on "The Secret of
Primitive Accumulation." In the German editions, Marx stated that the history of the expropriation of the peasantry "assumes different aspects in different countries, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession ... Only in England, which we therefore take as our example, has it the classic form." In the French edition, Marx added a crucial clarification: This revision explicitly restricted his historical sketch of the origins of capitalism to "Western Europe," a point he would later emphasize in his correspondence on Russia.
Critique of the Gotha Programme '', written by Marx in 1875 and published posthumously by Engels in 1891 Marx's 1875
Critique of the Gotha Programme, a set of marginal notes on the unity programme of the German social-democratic parties, was another key text from this period. It was published posthumously by Engels in 1891. The work contains Marx's most extensive statements on the principles of a
communist society and represents a sharp critique of liberal conceptions of
rights. Marx argued that liberal 'rights' were "indissolubly connected with interests construed not just individualistically but egoistically." He posited that in a communist society, the need for a separate apparatus of enforcement would decline, as cooperative production would generate a "realm of individual interests in collectively beneficial relations" where disputes could be resolved differently.
Russia and an alternate path to communism Marx's late work was deeply engaged with Russia. The 1872 Russian translation of
Capital—its first translation into any language—was widely debated by Russian intellectuals, particularly the
populists (
Narodniki), who sought an agrarian, non-capitalist path to socialism. Marx's thinking on this subject was influenced by the work of the populist writer
Nikolai Chernyshevsky, whose analysis suggested that a given social phenomenon did not need to pass through all the same "logical moments" in every society. In 1877, Marx drafted a response to an article by the populist writer
Nikolai Mikhailovsky, who had interpreted Marx's theory as a "suprahistorical" philosophy of history that mandated all nations, including Russia, must pass through the stage of capitalism. Marx strongly rejected this interpretation, citing the revised French edition of
Capital to argue that his sketch of primitive accumulation was explicitly limited to Western Europe. He wrote that one could never understand social development "with the master key of a general historico-philosophical theory, whose supreme virtue consists in being suprahistorical."
The Zasulich correspondence In February 1881, the Russian revolutionary
Vera Zasulich wrote to Marx, asking directly if Russia's rural commune (the
obshchina or
mir), an ancient form of collective land tenure, could "pass directly into the higher, communist form of communal ownership" or if it was "destined to perish" as Russia underwent capitalist development. Marx composed four lengthy preparatory drafts before sending a brief reply. The drafts show him grappling with the question in depth, drawing on his extensive anthropological research. In the drafts, Marx argued that the Russian commune had a unique vitality compared to other pre-capitalist communal forms. Its "dualism"—the combination of communal land ownership with private household farming and appropriation of produce—created potential for both individual development and collective life. Crucially, the Russian commune was not an isolated, archaic society; it was "contemporaneous with capitalist production." This allowed it the possibility of appropriating "all its positive achievements" of capitalism—such as technology and the mechanisms of a global market—"without undergoing its hideous vicissitudes." For this to happen, a revolution was necessary. The chief threats to the commune were not historical inevitability but "state oppression, and exploitation by capitalist intruders." A Russian revolution, Marx concluded, would have to "concentrate all its forces to ensure the unfettered rise of the rural commune." In his eventual, brief reply to Zasulich, Marx stated that his study of the matter had "convinced me that the commune is the fulcrum for Russia’s social regeneration." This possibility was not, however, a theory of "
socialism in one country." In the 1882 preface to the Russian edition of the
Communist Manifesto, co-authored with
Friedrich Engels, Marx linked Russia's fate to that of the West:
The Ethnological Notebooks and first published in 1972 Between 1879 and 1882, Marx filled numerous notebooks with excerpts and commentaries on anthropological and historical works, totaling over three hundred thousand words. These notebooks, many of which remain unpublished, cover a wide range of societies, including India,
Indonesia,
Algeria,
Latin America, and
ancient Rome, as well as pre-literate societies such as
Native Americans and
Australian Aborigines. The most well-known of these are
The Ethnological Notebooks, compiled primarily between December 1880 and June 1881, and first published in 1972. They contain Marx's studies of
Lewis H. Morgan,
John Budd Phear,
Henry Sumner Maine, and
John Lubbock.
Gender and the clan women at work, 1664 Marx's notes on Morgan's
Ancient Society show a deep interest in the social structure of the
Iroquois and other pre-literate societies. He was particularly attentive to the relatively egalitarian gender relations within the clan (or gens), noting the significant social power wielded by women. For example, he highlighted a missionary's account that Iroquois "women were the great power among the clans" and could depose chiefs. However, unlike Engels, who in
The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) presented a somewhat idealized picture of early clan societies, Marx also noted the "limitations" on women's freedom, such as the fact that they were "allowed to express their wishes and opinions" but the final "Decision [was] given by the [male] Council." Anderson argues that Marx's notes show a more nuanced and
dialectical view than Engels's theory of a singular "world-historical defeat of the female sex." Marx's notes on
classical Greece, for instance, portray male domination as a contradictory phenomenon, where the memory of an "earlier, freer and more powerful position for women" was preserved in the mythology of goddesses like
Hera and
Athena. He also noted that social hierarchy could emerge within the clan itself, long before the rise of private property, through conquest or the rigidification of rank into
caste.
India, colonialism, and communal forms in India, 1857 Marx's extensive notebooks on India from 1879–81, based on the works of anthropologist
Maxim Kovalevsky, ethnologist
John Budd Phear, and historian
Robert Sewell, show a profound shift from his writings of the 1850s. He no longer viewed India as a static, unchanging society. Following Kovalevsky, he traced the historical evolution of communal forms in India, from early clan-based communities to more differentiated village communes. He vehemently rejected the application of the concept of "feudalism" to pre-colonial India, criticizing Kovalevsky for mis-applying "the West European sense of the term." His notes on Sewell's history emphasize moments of Indian resistance to foreign conquest, such as the
Maratha resistance and the
Sepoy Uprising, challenging his earlier view of Indian "passivity." He also noted the relative porosity of the
caste system in pre-colonial India, again moving away from his earlier, more rigid characterization, and the prominent role of women rebels like
Lakshmi Bai in the 1857 uprising. Marx was deeply critical of the impact of British colonialism. He attacked writers like
Henry Sumner Maine, whom he saw as an apologist for empire, for presenting the destruction of Indian communal property as the natural result of "economic progress," when it was in fact the result of violent colonial policy. Marx described this process as an act of "English vandalism which drove the indigenous population backward rather than forward." He argued, in an insertion into his notes on Kovalevsky, that even after British rule had shattered the traditional village system and atomized its members, "Nevertheless among these atoms certain relationships endure," suggesting a persistence that could serve as a basis for resistance.
Algeria and Latin America In his notes on Kovalevsky's work on Algeria, Marx analyzed the
French colonial project to dismantle communal land ownership. He quoted with approval the argument of French legislators that the maintenance of communal property "supports communistic tendencies in peoples minds," seeing a direct link between the state's efforts to impose private property in the colonies and its suppression of working-class movements in France, such as the
Paris Commune. He also studied the
Spanish colonization of the Americas, noting the brutal imposition of forced labor systems (the
repartimiento and
encomienda) and the extermination of indigenous populations, followed by the rise of the
African slave trade. He noted, however, that communal forms in Latin America survived to a greater degree than in British India, because Spanish colonial legislation had created fewer avenues for the privatization and sale of communal lands.
Notes on Adolph Wagner One of the last substantial works Marx penned before his death was his 1880
Notes on Adolph Wagner, a critique of the German political economist
Adolph Wagner. In these notes, Marx challenged static conceptions of human nature, arguing against any fixed concept of 'man' in political theory. Instead, he insisted that his own starting point was "always a fully historical and exceptionally malleable view of 'man,' subject only to constraints that were themselves variable with respect to what 'man' had become and what 'man' was trying to do."
Chronological Extracts and historical studies Between autumn 1881 and winter 1882, following the death of his wife, Marx immersed himself in historical studies, compiling four large notebooks known as the
Chronological Extracts. These notebooks consist of an annotated, year-by-year timeline of world history from approximately 91 BC to the
Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The work drew primarily on the
World History for the German People by
Friedrich Christoph Schlosser and the
History of the Peoples of Italy by
Carlo Botta. The notebooks cover a vast range of topics, including the
fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of France, the development of feudalism, the Italian
maritime republics, the
Islamic conquest of Africa and the East, the
Crusades, the
Mongol Empire, the
Republic of Florence, and the
Protestant Reformation. According to biographer
Marcello Musto, this intensive study of the past was an attempt by Marx to test his historical conceptions and move definitively beyond the unilinear schema of modes of production he had outlined in his 1859
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. == Difficulties in completing
Capital ==