Grundrisse disagreement about the exact relationship between the two texts, particularly around the issue of methodology. Due to its breadth and its incorporation of themes from Marx's earlier writings, the "Grundrisse" is central to Marx's body of work. Its subject matter includes production, relations of production, distribution, exchange, alienation, value, labor, capitalism, the rise of technology and automation, pre-capitalist forms of social organization, and the preconditions for a communist revolution. Scholars have noted major differences between Marx's earlier writings, such as "The German Ideology" and "The Communist Manifesto", and the late ones, "Das Kapital" and "Grundrisse", suggesting that Marx's views evolved,
The Communist Manifesto in theory; Marxist works such as the "Manifesto" or "Das Kapital" were read primarily by party theoreticians. On the other hand, small, dedicated militant parties and Marxist sects in the West took pride in knowing the theory; Hobsbawm says "This was the milieu in which 'the clearness of a comrade could be gauged invariably from the number of earmarks on his Manifesto. Following the October Revolution of 1917 that swept the Vladimir Lenin-led Bolsheviks to power in Russia, the world's first socialist state was founded explicitly along Marxist lines. The Soviet Union, which Bolshevik Russia would become a part of,