Modeling Ideology: A Distant Reading of Marx/Engels Collected Works

This chapter conducts a macro-level and distant reading of the English edition of the Marx/Engels Collected Works (MECW) using machine learning methods, including the LDA topic model and Named Entity Recognition (NER). Drawing on large-scale textual data, it identifies the central themes, conceptual shifts, and historical trajectories in Marx and Engels’ writings, while also mapping the social networks revealed through their correspondence. The analysis situates the development of Marx and Engels’ thought within broader socio-historical contexts, showing how their theoretical development interacted with concrete political realities. Beyond offering new insights into the intellectual formation of Marxism, this study primarily demonstrates how computational approaches can be used to systematically trace and quantify the temporal evolution of their core ideas, revealing the developmental trajectory of their thought over time.