Ben Fowkes taught history at the universities of Sheffield and North London. He carried out archival research in Vienna, Bonn, Prague and Moscow, and wrote a number of books, includingCommunism in Germany under the Weimar Republic. He also did a number of translations, such as Karl Marx: The Economic Manuscript of 1863-1865 (Capital, Book Three) and Henryk Grossman: Selected Works (edited by Professor Rick Kuhn).