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In 1846 -- two years before the publication of The Communist Manifesto and twenty-one years before the publication of Das Kapital -- Karl Marx published an essay titled "Peuchet on Suicide." Based on the writings of Jacques Peuchet (1758-1830), a leading French police administrator, economist, and statistician whose extensive memoirs included discussions of suicides, mainly by women, in early-nineteenth-century Paris, Marx's essay was originally presented as a translation of excerpts from Peuchet's memoirs. Because it was considered a translation rather than an original work, and because of its lack of focus on economic class conflict, the essay has not been widely noticed or analyzed as a part of Marx's oeuvre.

As psychiatrist Eric A. Plaut and sociologist Kevin Anderson reveal, however, Marx's "Peuchet on Suicide" is not a straightforward translation, but is in fact an edited version in which Marx omits passages from Peuchet's original, alters language, and adds whole passages of his own, in the process altering the emphasis of the text from a moral and psychological focus to a profoundly social one. Rather than an objective presentation of another critic's work, then, the essay very strongly reflects Marx's own position on the subject.

Marx on Suicide presents Peuchet's essay in the original French, Marx's essay in the original German, and a new translation of Marx's essay in English. Plaut also provides an essay focusing on the psychological aspects of the work, contrasting Marx's thoughts on suicide with those of Freud and Durkheim, and Anderson provides an extensiveintroduction situating this essay in the context of Marx's work, especially that on gender.

This fascinating text casts light not only on its topic but also on its remarkable author and his important works.