Marx, Engels and the world power system in the 19th century

Abstract

The article deals with Marx and Engels' writings about the diplomatic and political relationship among European states in the 50s and 60s of nineteenth century. Through those years the founders of Marxism worked as international correspondents of the north American newspaper New York Daily Tribune. From this position they analysed a broad variety of themes such as the role performed by the great powers (i.e. England, Prussia, Russia France and Austria) into the international system. As dialectic and revolutionary thinkers, Marx and Engels acknowledged the centrality of the national interests in the shaping of the international behaviour of the world powers into the international scene, at the same time, they took into account the influence exercised by internal political and social conflicts over the process of elaborating and implementing the foreign policy of the national states.