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Marxist Classics For The End of Times and Everything After

A list of new and old Marxist classics for the age of pandemic, the anthropocene, tech giants, and late global capitalism.

Verso Books29 September 2022

Marxist Classics For The End of Times and Everything After

Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto is 174 years old. The legacy of the thinker who changed the course of history and lit the world on fire lives on, but every generation in disparate parts of the world who has inherited this legacy has had to reassess what it will mean to them. What does Marxism have to offer today's Left? This reading list explores some of Marxism's past and current contributions to help us in our future struggles.
 

All books are 40% off as part of our Student Reading Sale. Ends September 30 at 11:59PM EST. See all our student reading lists here.
 

Learn to Read Marx

This is where you begin: the essential manuals for new and long-time Marx readers to best understand Marxist fundamentals.

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This is the Marx handbook. Sophisticated but succinct, Etienne Balibar opens a gateway into Marxist thought in this rich and accessible introduction that examines all the key areas of Marx’s writings in their wider historical and theoretical context—including the concepts of class struggle, ideology, humanism, progress, determinism, commodity fetishism, and the state. It is complete with key “information boxes” for a lucid reading of Marx to address our world today.

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This is the most comprehensive guide and how-to for both first-time and long-time readers of Capital from David Harvey to date, one of the world's foremost Marx scholars, who has written and lectured on Capital for over forty years. A Companion to Marx's Capital brings together volumes I, II, and II of Harvey's guides based on his most recent lectures. Here, he offers fresh, original, and sometimes critical interpretations of a book that changed the course of history and, as Harvey intimates, may do so again.

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Originally published in 1965, Reading Capital is a landmark of French thought and radical theory, reconstructing Western Marxism from its foundations. Through a critical rereading this work offers a revival of Marx's project. Born out of a seminar that Louis Althusser ran with his students at the École normale supérieure, this is the first unabridged edition available in English that restores chapters by Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey and Jacques Rancière with a new introduction by Étienne Balibar.
 

The Key Critics of Yesterday for Today's Crises

Critics have torn apart and rebuilt anew many threads of Marxist thought: you'll need to read them for yourself to decide what Marxism you'll bring into the end of the world, the revolution, or both.

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In the face of the rise of the far right today, Lukács’s critique of post-Hegelian tradition as the root of fascist thought is as necessary as ever. He asks, how did Western philosophy lose its innocence: from Enlightenment to fascism? The Destruction of Reason is Georg Lukács’s trenchant criticism of certain strands of philosophy after Marx and the role they played in the rise of National Socialism: ‘Germany’s path to Hitler in the sphere of philosophy,’ as he put it. Starting with the revolutions of 1848, his analysis spans post-Hegelian philosophy and sociology, and spares no one on the way.

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A critical evaluation of the course and legacy of the Analytical Marxist project. In the 1980s, leading philosophers at Oxford, Chicago and UCLA undertook a controversial reassessment of Marxism using the techniques of analytical philosophy. The aim of these so-called “Non-Bullshit” Marxists was no less than the complete reconstruction of Marxist theory, recasting it on a logical and rigorous basis, free from all metaphysical jargon and sentimentality.

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A compact but masterful synoptic essay on the great currents of Marxist thought. Perry Anderson offers a surveying critique of the nature and evolution of the Marxist theory that developed in Western Europe, after the defeat of the proletarian rebellions in the West and the isolation of the Russian Revolution in the East in the early 1920's. Including Lukács, Korsch and Gramsci; Adorno, Marcuse and Benjamin; Sartre and Althusser; and Della Volpe and Colletti. He asks, What was the structural unity of 'Western Marxism', beyond its individual thinkers? How did it contrast its heritage with the tradition of 'classical' Marxism that preceded it? Moreover, how will both fare with the problems which confront any historical materialism to succeed it?

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What will we inherit from the father of structuralist Marxism?

What is the role of the state in capitalist society? Does the state reproduce the logic of capitalist structure in its economic, legal, and political institutions? Leading figure of structural Marxism, Louis Althusser says yes. 

Read these to decide whether we need to dismantle the state apparatus or the ruling class first.

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A milestone in the development of post-war Marxist thought - this is the work in which Louis Althusser formulated some of his most influential ideas. For Marx, first published in France in 1968, has come to be regarded as the founding text of the school of “structuralist Marxism” which was presided over by the enigmatic figure of Louis Althusser. Structuralism constituted an intellectual revolution in the 1960's and 70's and radically transformed the way philosophy, political and social theory, history, science, and aesthetics were discussed and thought about. For Marx was a key contribution to that process and it fundamentally recast the way in which many people understood Marxism.

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Written in the afterglow of May 1968, this text addresses a question that continues to haunt us today: in a society that proclaims its attachment to the ideals of liberty and equality, why do we witness the ever-renewed reproduction of relations of domination? Available for the first time, in full, in English, On the Reproduction of Capitalism develops Althusser’s conception of historical materialism, outlining the conditions of reproduction in capitalist society and the revolutionary struggle for its overthrow. Its essays have radically transformed the concept of the subject, the understanding of the state and even the very frameworks of cultural, political and literary theory. The text has influenced thinkers such as Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek.

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Nicos Poulantzas' debate with Ralph Miliband is essential reading to understand the differences between structural Marxism and instrumental Marxism on the state and its relationship to capitalism. Nicos Poulantzas is yet another leading structural Marxist, developing seminal analyses of the state and social classes during the crisis of monopoly capitalism. This volume brings together a wide selection of Poulantzas’ key writings in legal philosophy and political sociology, texts include his early analyses of law, his studies of hegemony, authoritarianism, and social classes, and his debate on the state with Ralph Miliband and Ernesto Laclau.

Revolutionary Potential Energy

To carry out the revolutions of tomorrow we will need to gather the right tools. These texts contextualize and historicize the logic of revolutionary thought, the legacy of revolutionary figures, and a lineage of failed or ongoing revolutions.

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This book reinterprets the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century revolutions by composing a constellation of “dialectical images”: Marx’s “locomotives of history,” Alexandra Kollontai’s sexually liberated bodies, Lenin’s mummified body, Auguste Blanqui’s barricades and red flags, the Paris Commune’s demolition of the Vendome Column, among several others.

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Revolution in the Revolution? is a brilliant, pragmatic assessment of the situation in Latin America in the 1960s. First published in 1967, it became a controversial handbook for guerrilla warfare and revolution, read alongside Che’s own pamphlets, with which it can compete in terms of historical importance and insight to this day. Lucid and compelling, it spares no personage, no institution, and no concept, taking on not only Russian and Chinese strategies but Trotskyism as well.

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Literature of Revolution explores the pivotal texts and topics in the Marxist tradition, drawing on the works of Marx, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Lenin, and Althusser. In close dialogue with common themes and arguments in revolutionary Marxist thought, Geras brings some of his persistent preoccupations to the fore: the relationship between Marxism and justice; the debates on political organization; and the role of revolutionary mass action and party pluralism; as well as an enthralling exploration into the literary power of Trotsky’s writing.

 

Are we post-Marx?

What now? Is Marx even relevant anymore? Read these to analyze the legacy of Marxism in radical thought and action in our twenty-first century world.

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Henri Lefebvre saw Marx as an ‘unavoidable, necessary, but insufficient starting point’, and always insisted on the importance of Hegel to understanding Marx. Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche: or the Realm of the Shadows proposes that the modern world is, at the same time, Hegelian in terms of the state, Marxist in terms of the social and society and Nietzschean in terms of civilisation and its values.

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In this pithy and panoramic work—both stimulating for the specialist and accessible to the general reader—one of the world’s leading social theorists, Göran Therborn, traces the trajectory of Marxism in the twentieth century and anticipates its legacy for radical thought in the twenty-first.

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A philosophical jam-session in which the two thinkers improvise freely, often wildly, on central themes of their work—theory and practice, labour and leisure, domination and freedom—in a political register found nowhere else in their writing. A thrilling example of philosophy in action and a compelling map of a possible passage to a new world.

Marx Goes to Italy

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Marx At the End of the World

Everything After The End of the World

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The Philosophy of Marx

The Philosophy of Marx

Written by one of political theory’s leading thinkers, The Philosophy of Marx examines all the key areas of Marx’s writings in their wider historical and theoretical context—including the concepts ...
A Companion To Marx's Capital
In recent years, we have witnessed a surge of interest in Marx’s work in the effort to understand the origins of our current predicament. For nearly forty years, David Harvey has written and lectur...
Reading Capital
Originally published in 1965, Reading Capital is a landmark of French thought and radical theory, reconstructing Western Marxism from its foundations. Louis Althusser, the French Marxist philosophe...
The Destruction of Reason

The Destruction of Reason

A classic of Western Marxism, The Destruction of Reason is Georg Lukács's trenchant criticism of German philosophy after Marx and the role it played in the rise of National Socialism. Originally pu...
Analytical Marxism
In the 1980s, leading philosophers at Oxford, Chicago and UCLA undertook a controversial reassessment of Marxism using the techniques of analytical philosophy. The aim of these so-called “Non-Bulls...
Considerations on Western Marxism
This synoptic essay considers the nature and evolution of the Marxist theory that developed in Western Europe, after the defeat of the proletarian rebellions in the West and the isolation of the Ru...
For Marx

For Marx

This is the work in which Louis Althusser formulated some of his most influential ideas. For Marx, first published in France in 1968, has come to be regarded as the founding text of the school of “...
On the Reproduction of Capitalism
Louis Althusser’s renowned short text "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses" radically transformed the concept of the subject, the understanding of the state and even the very frameworks o...
The Poulantzas Reader
Nicos Poulantzas was one of the leading Marxist theorists of the twentieth century, developing seminal analyses of the state and social classes during the crisis of monopoly capitalism. This volume...
Revolution
This book reinterprets the history of nineteenth and twentieth-century revolutions by composing a constellation of “dialectical images”: Marx’s “locomotives of history,” Alexandra Kollontai’s sexua...
Revolution in the Revolution?
Revolution in the Revolution? is a brilliant, pragmatic assessment of the situation in Latin America in the 1960s. First published in 1967, it became a controversial handbook for guerrilla warfare...
Literature of Revolution
This influential collection explores the pivotal texts and topics in the Marxist tradition. Ranging over questions of social theory, political theory, moral philosophy and literary criticism, it l...
Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche
Henri Lefebvre saw Marx as an ‘unavoidable, necessary, but insufficient starting point’, and always insisted on the importance of Hegel to understanding Marx. Metaphilosophy also suggested the sign...
From Marxism to Post-Marxism?
A comprehensive history of the development of Marxist theory and the parameters of 21st-century politicsIn this pithy and panoramic work - both stimulating for the specialist and the accessible to ...
Towards a New Manifesto
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote the central text of “critical theory”, Dialectic of Enlightenment, a measured critique of the Enlightenment reason that, they argued, had resulted in fascism...
Images of Class
During the 1960s and 1970s, Workerism and Autonomia were prominent Marxist currents. However, it is rarely acknowledged that these movements inspired many visual artists such as the members of Arch...
Workers and Capital
Workers and Capital is universally recognised as the most important work produced by operaismo, a current of political thought emerging in the 1960s that revolutionised the institutional and extra-...
The Knowledge Economy
Adam Smith and Karl Marx recognized that the best way to understand the economy is to study the most advanced practice of production. Today that practice is no longer conventional manufacturing: it...
Old Gods, New Enigmas
Old Gods, New Enigmas is the highly-anticipated book by the best-selling author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums. Mike Davis spent years working factory jobs and sitting behind the wheel of an...
Confronting Capitalism
Why is our society so unequal? Why, despite their small numbers, do the rich dominate policy and politics even in democratic countries? Why is it often difficult for working people to organize arou...