May 5th: A Karl Marx Reading List

Karl Marx's thought has had an impact on several fields of study and his legacy continues to inspire scholars and activists around the world. As we celebrate his life, it is a fitting time to reflect on the continuing relevance and impact of his ideas.

This reading list offers a selection of books that explore the key themes and concepts that underpin Marx's vision. From Marx's own writings to contemporary interpretations and adaptations of his ideas, these books offer a comprehensive exploration of the principles that have inspired generations of activists and intellectuals.

For all of May, we're offering:

30% off all titles in our catalog
40% off if you buy 4
50% off if you buy 5
Discount will be applied in cart. Separate orders can't be combined.

As a friendly reminder: Verso Book Club members enjoy 50% off all titles year-round on purchases of any size. It's a great deal and the best way to support radical publishing!

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The Political Writings

by Karl Marx

Karl Marx was not only the great theorist of capitalism, he was also a superb journalist, politician and historian. For the first time ever, this book brings together all of his essential political...

The Communist Manifesto

by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx

Introduction by Eric Hobsbawm

In the two decades following the fall of the Berlin Wall, global capitalism became entrenched in its modern, neoliberal form. Its triumph was so complete that the word “capitalism” itself fell out ...

A Companion To Marx's Capital

by David Harvey

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...

A Companion to Marx's Grundrisse

by David Harvey

When leading scholar of Marx, Roman Rosdolsky, first encountered the virtually unknown text of Marx's Grundrisse - his preparatory work for his masterpiece Das Capital - in the 1950s in New York Pu...

Mute Compulsion

by Søren Mau

Despite insoluble contradictions, intense volatility and fierce resistance, the crisis-ridden capitalism of the 21st century lingers on. To understand capital’s paradoxical expansion and entrenchme...

Communism and Strategy

by Isabelle Garo

If the question of communism is making a comeback today, this renewed interest is often accompanied by an abandonment of any concrete political perspective. Critical philosophies are flourishing an...

Marx's Literary Style

by Ludovico Silva

In Marx’s Literary Style, the Venezuelan poet and philosopher Ludovico Silva argues that much of the confusion around Marx’s work results from a failure to understand his literary mode of expressio...

Classes

by Erik Olin Wright

Questions of class, power and distribution have reemerged as central concerns in the public discourse. When we talk about class, we don't always know what is meant. Is class about income or affect ...

On Karl Marx

by Ernst Bloch

This study of Marx serves not only as an excellent introduction to that most influential of "worldly philosophers" but is also a significant resume of the central issues of Bloch's own profound and...

The Philosophy of Marx

by Étienne Balibar

Translated by Gregory Elliott and Chris Turner

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 ...

Old Gods, New Enigmas

by Mike Davis

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...

Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche

by Henri Lefebvre

Translated by David Fernbach

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...

The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx

by Ernest Mandel

In this republication of the 1971 original, Ernest Mandel traces the development of Marx's economic ideas from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts to the completion of the Grundrisse. In a ser...

Philosophy and Revolution

by Stathis Kouvelakis

Preface by Fredric Jameson

Translated by G. M. Goshgarian

In this ambitious and original study, Stathis Kouvelakis paints a rich panorama of the key intellectual and political figures in the effervescence of German thought before the 1848 revolutions. He ...

Reconstructing Marxism

by Andrew Levine, Elliott Sober and Erik Olin Wright

Reconstructing Marxism explores fundamental questions about the structure of Marxist theory and its prospects for the future. The authors maintain that the disintegration of the old theoretical uni...

Marx and Human Nature

by Norman Geras

In this passionate and polemical classic work, Norman Geras argues that the view that Marx broke with all conceptions of human nature in 1845 is wrong. Rather, his later writings are informed by an...

The Concept of Nature in Marx

by Alfred Schmidt

Translated by Ben Fowkes

In The Concept of Nature in Marx, Alfred Schmidt examines humanity’s relation to the natural world as understood by the great philosopher-economist Karl Marx, who wrote that human beings are ‘par...

Marx: Towards the Centre of Possibility

by Kojin Karatani

Originally published in 1974, Kojin Karatani’s Marx: Towards the Centre of Possibility has been among his most enduring and pioneering works in critical theory. Written at a time when the political...

Marx on Money

by Suzanne de Brunhoff

The republication of Suzanne de Brunhoff’s classic investigation into Karl Marx’s conception of “the money commodity” shines light on commodities and their fetishism. The investigation of money a...

The Theory of Need in Marx

by Agnes Heller

The basic discoveries underlying Marx's critique of political economy – labour power, surplus value, use value – are all in some way built upon the concept of need. From Marx's varying and passing ...

Reading Capital

by Louis Althusser, Étienne Balibar, Roger Establet, Pierre Macherey and Jacques Rancière

Translated by Ben Brewster and David Fernbach

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...

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