Karl Marx
Karl Marx was born in 1818, in the Rhenish city of Trier, the son of a successful lawyer. He studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin, completing his doctorate in 1841. In Paris three years later, Marx was introduced to the study of political economy by a former fellow student, Frederick Engels. In 1848 they collaborated in writing The Communist Manifesto. Expelled from Prussia in the same year, Marx took up residence first in Paris and then in London where, in 1867 he published his magnum opus Capital. A co-founder of the International Workingmen's Association in 1864, Marx died in London in 1883.
Blog
The working-class in the saddle: A reading list for May Day
The 1st of May marks International Workers' Day, a festival of working-class self-organisation stretching back over 130 years. It was originally inaugurated to commemorate the "Haymarket Massacre" of 1886 in Chicago, where a bomb thrown during a worker's strike kicked off a police crackdown followed by a period of anti-labor hysteria.
In 1890, the first internationally co-ordinated demonstration for an 8-hour day was held, in commemoration of those killed in the massacre, and those eight anarchists executed on trumped-up charges after the event.
Here, Verso staff present "A Reading List for May Day", looking at the radical history of the festival in the European and North American labor movements, and how that spirit lives on in grassroots workplace struggles.
A Library for #Occupy: Part 4
After the Occupy Wall Street "People's Library" was brutally dismantled by the police, Paolo Mossetti of Through Europe asked some of his favourite writers, activists, and academics to help him compile a list of books that would recreate, though only virtually, the library's shelves.
Here is the fourth part, with contributions from Linda Martina Alcoff, Ariella Azoulay (author of A Civil Imagination) Milford Bateman, Norman Finkelstein, Bill Fletcher Jr, David Goodway, Ramsey Kanaan, Loop Magazine, Gigi Roggero.
A Library for #Occupy: Part 3
After the Occupy Wall Street "People's Library" was brutally dismantled by the police, Paolo Mossetti of Through Europe asked some of his favourite writers, activists, and academics to help him compile a list of books that would recreate, though only virtually, the library's shelves.
Here is the third part, with contributions from Gar Alperovitz, Mike Davis, Enrico Donaggio, Ann Ferguson, Shabnam Hashmi, John Holloway, Sandro Mezzadra, Douglas Rushkoff, Felix Stalder.
The fourth part of the reading list will be online next week.
Books
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The Communist Manifesto
The second biggest-selling book ever published
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An Unfinished Revolution
The impact of the American Civil War on Karl Marx, and Karl Marx on America.
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The First International and After
Volume 3 of Marx’s political writings, including The Civil War In France.
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The Revolutions of 1848
Volume 1 of Marx’s political writings, including The Communist Manifesto.
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Surveys from Exile
Volume 2 of Marx’s political writings, including The Eighteenth Brumaire.