Marx and Engels on Tax

Abstract

In 1845, Marx and Engels compiled a list of future research priorities in which they made "taxes" a stand-alone and therefore significant issue (GI). Unfortunately, a systematic analysis of taxation never eventuated. I suspect that this was in part because for Marx, tax was a fairly straightforward issue. Taxation consisted of the ruling class appropriating, often on the basis of previous coercion, a portion of the social surplus "for the bureaucracy, the army, the priests and the court, in short, for the whole apparatus of the executive power" (188). However, scattered throughout Marx and Engels's works is enough commentary to permit a summary of their intriguing insights into taxation.