Farewell to The German Ideology

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of the long-awaited MEGA2 I/5, which contains the manuscripts that Marx and Engels wrote for their failed journal project of 1845/46. This essay considers what it will mean to study Marx’s ideas and intellectual development in the wake of its publication. The volume offers an uncommon opportunity to develop new ways of reading and teaching these manuscripts, and thus of understanding the corresponding period in Marx’s intellectual development, but certain features of the MEGA2 I/5 also risk another outcome: little will change due to deeply ingrained habits.