Reception and Influence
It is not possible to summarize the reception and influence of Marx’s economic work, which has spanned more than 150 years, in its entirety within the confines of this entry. In order to show some of the main lines of development, it will be convenient to make use again of the thematic division introduced above.
It is, however, worth noting that Marx’s work, although he was widely considered as the scientific head of the international socialist movement after the publication of volume I of Capital, was at first largely ignored by the so-called “bourgeois economists”. This was not owing to ideological reasons alone, but also had to do with the fact that at first only volume I of Capital was available, and this only in German (a French and a Russian edition were published from 1872 onwards - the French translation having been published by instalments until 1875). Until the turn of the century, the scientific discussion of Marx’s work was therefore mainly confined to Germany and Russia, and to some extent also to France and Italy. In England, where Marx had been living since 1849, he remained largely unknown during his lifetime. (For more detailed assessments of the reception of Marx’s economics, see Howard and King 1989, 1992 and Steedman 1995.)