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
Karl Marx Library Publishers of New York City, and Lawrence and Wishart of London. The abruptly-terminated series proved to be a short-lived focal point for Marx scholarship during the first half of the decade of the 1970s. The formal Karl Marx Library series was terminated in 1977, with two tangential volumes by Padover subsequently published during the last years of his life, including a full-length biography of Marx. An ambitious scholarly project entitled "The Karl Marx Library" was launched in 1971 by historian and Karl Marx scholar Saul K. Padover. A total of 13 volumes were projected for the series, each to contain