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Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx

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The essays on the question and history of the concept of ideology are alone worth the 20 bucks. Very well written. One of the best collections of marxist essays/theory since the death of Adorno.

Balibar's collection-'Masses, Classes, Ideas,' is an excellent book about a wide range of political concerns, from Spinoza's formulation of human bondage to the problem of working class ideology in Marx and Engels. At the core of this work is an attempt to think through the problem of the absence of proletarian ideology. Balibar makes an interesting distinction between the working class and the masses-at a glance this appears to be a semantic gesture, but his conceptual developments overcome much of the teleology ascribed to the Marxist tradition. In particular, Balibar's work on the problem of historicity vs. history "in the strong sense," with regard to the development of Capital, is a much needed philosophical contribution to the rather hackneyed critiques of Marxist economics.