Economic & Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (also referred to as The Paris Manuscripts) are a series of notes written between April and August 1844 by Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

. Not published by Marx during his lifetime, they were first released in 1927 by researchers in the Soviet Union

Philosophy in the Soviet Union

Philosophical research in the Soviet Union was officially confined to Marxist-Leninist thinking, which theoretically was the basis of objective and ultimate philosophical truth. During the 1920s and 1930s, other tendencies of Russian thought were repressed...

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The notebooks are an early expression of Marx's analysis of economics and critique of G.W.F. Hegel. The notes cover a wide range of topics including private property

Private property

Private property is the right of persons and firms to obtain, own, control, employ, dispose of, and bequeath land, capital, and other forms of property. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which refers to assets owned by a state, community or government rather than by...

, communism

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

, and money

Money

Money is any object or record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts in a given country or socio-economic context. The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange; a unit of account; a store of value; and, occasionally in the past,...

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