Citing a lifelong engagement with Marxism, critic and writer Marshall Berman reveals the movement's positive points and suggests a new beginning for Marxism may be on the horizon with its recent 150th anniversary attention.
The unabridged versions of these definitive works are now available together as a highly designed paperback with flaps with a new introduction by Robert Weick. Part of the Knickerbocker Classics series, a modern design makes this timeless book a perfect travel companion. Considered to be one of the most influential political writings, The Communist Manifesto is as relevant today as when it was originally published. This pamphlet by the German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, published in 1884 as revolutions were erupting across Europe, discusses class struggles and the problems of a capitalist society. After being exiled to London, Marx published the first part of Das Kapital, a theoretical text that argues that capitalism will create greater and greater division in wealth and welfare and ultimately be replaced by a system of common ownership of the means of production. After Marx's death, Engels completed and published the second and third parts from his colleague's notes. The Knickerbocker Classics bring together the essential works of classic authors from around the world in stunning editions to be collected and enjoyed.
Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure. This edition contains the most salient extracts from Marx's great work, selected and introduced by Hugh Griffith. Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, first printed just before the French revolution of 1848, is his most accessible and famous work. In his powerful call to arms, Marx expounds his famous theory that class struggle is the real determinant of historical change. Next in this volume comes his treatise, Wages, Price and Profit, written in 1865, which serves as an accessible introduction to the ideas which Marx went on to develop in Capital, his masterful, multi-volume analysis of how the world was irreversibly changed by the industrial revolution. Whilst old-style Marxism is now dead and buried, today's conflicts within capitalism are as sharp as ever and Marx’s brilliant, painstaking writings remain incredibly relevant.
The end of Soviet Socialism signalled to some observers that the ghost of Marx had finally been laid to rest. But history's refusal to grind to a halt and the global credit crisis that began in 2008 have rekindled interest in capitalism's most persistent critic. Written during the mid-nineties, a period of Western complacency and neo-liberal reaction, Marx for Our Times is a critical reading of dialectical materialism as a method of resistance. Without denying the contradictory character of Marx's thought, and with a sensitivity to the plurality of theories it has inspired, Daniel Bensaid sets out to discover what in Marx remains dynamic and relevant in our era of accelerating economic change. Marx's theory emerges, not as a doctrinal system, but as an intellectual tool of social struggle and global transformation in a world where capital continues to dominate social relations.
At this date, it is unnecessary to explain the continuing concern with a short pamphlet published over a century and a half ago. Page for page, no other publication has rivaled the historical impact of the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The oft-repeated statement that the Manifesto gained no attention whatever when it first came off the press is, to be sure, inaccurate. But it is certainly true that, decade by decade, the significance of the Manifesto increased, until now it blankets most of the globe. The number of books and essays which, in whole or in part, devote long discussions and evaluations to the views of the Manifesto-for and against-is enough to fill this book from cover to cover. But this book is not one of them. It is, logically, anterior to all of them for the following reason.
Brilliantly researched and wonderfully written, Love and Capital reveals the rarely glimpsed and heartbreakingly human side of the man whose works would redefine the world after his death. Drawing upon previously unpublished material, acclaimed biographer Mary Gabriel tells the story of Karl and Jenny Marx's marriage. Through it, we see Karl as never before: a devoted father and husband, a prankster who loved a party, a dreadful procrastinator, freeloader, and man of wild enthusiasms -- one of which would almost destroy his marriage. Through years of desperate struggle, Jenny's love for Karl would be tested again and again as she waited for him to finish his masterpiece, Capital. An epic narrative that stretches over decades to recount Karl and Jenny's story against the backdrop of Europe's Nineteenth Century, Love andCapital is a surprising and magisterial account of romance and revolution -- and of one of the great love stories of all time.
Offers the latest contextual and biographical scholarship with innovative interpretations and is supplemented by the first and latest English translations.
He was relatively unknown in his lifetime, but Karl Marx’s theories about society, economics, and politics changed the world, led to the Russian Revolution and the formation of the Soviet Union and the creation of the People’s Republic of China, and inspired variants from Leninism and Stalinism to Trotskyism and Maoism. Marx is one of the most influential thinkers of the modern age, but in recent times “Marxism” has become a vague, contestable, and uncertain term. In this concise, accessible book, Paul Thomas casts a clarifying light on Marx’s life and writings, providing a cogent introduction to a contemporary audience. Illuminating Marx’s development as a critical thinker and revolutionary politician, Thomas explores how the events of Marx’s life influenced his doctrines. Thomas follows Marx from his birth into a wealthy family in Prussia, to his period of study of philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin and his subsequent work as a journalist for radical newspapers in Cologne and Paris, where he began to develop the concepts that would lead to Marxism. As Marx found himself exiled to Brussels and finally to London, Thomas illustrates how he was inspired by his relationships with other socialist thinkers, particularly Friedrich Engels, and the tumultuous and fluctuating state of the governments in Europe. These experiences and their influence on Marx inspired The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, along with the many other books and pamphlets that continue to be read and discussed today. A valuable resource for anyone trying to understand the governments, wars, and movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Karl Marx is an enlightening book about this potent thinker and the world that created him.
"The story of literature in sixteen acts, from Alexander the Great and the Iliad to ebooks and Harry Potter, this engaging book brings together remarkable people and surprising events to show how writing shaped cultures, religions, and the history of the world"--