Socialism: Utopian and Scientific of thousands of copies. Throughout the decade of the 1860s, Karl Marx, close personal friend and political associate of Friedrich Engels, dedicated himself to the study of economics, culminating in the publication of the first volume of "Das Kapital" in 1867. Marx's lengthy and ponderous volume was extremely difficult for the average to penetrate, however, leading Engels to suggest to Marx in a letter of September 16, 1868 that a short popularized version of "Das Kapital" for a working class audience was urgently needed. "If it is not written, some Moses or other will come along and do it and
The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx "locate the essential elements of continuity or discontinuity" in Marx's thought and to correct misinterpretations of it. He credited Avineri with "a close and insightful reading of the whole body of the primary sources, aided by a selective and judicious reading of the secondary literature", and described his writing as "learned and at the same time limpid" and his treatment of Marx as "solidly grounded, fair, and enlightening." However, he criticized Avineri for devoting insufficient space to discussing "Das Kapital" and Marx's views on the nature of capitalist society, and for failing to address the work of the philosophers Louis