Customer Reviews

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I'm taking anthropology in College, and Marx has been a big influence in the studies. One of the required textbooks was this one. It was great. It goes deep into socilogical culture analysis, communism, and religion.

i would recommend this book to anyone!

Karl Marx is absolutely brilliant concerning his approach to peasant revolution. Such examples of his brilliance is China, Russia, Southeast Asia, and Cuba. Marx understood the importance of the proletarian's existence in the social order and food chain. In these selected writings, Marx discusses the manipulation of the proletarian by the bourgeois social class, the importance of a collectivist society, the failures of capitalism, the advantages of socialism, etc... Ultimately, Marx states that, with the exception of China, capitalism will evolve into perfect communism. He also states on page 175 10 characteristic of a capitalistic society evolving into communism: 1)abolition of land property and rent, 2)a progressive income tax, 3)abolition of all inheritance, 4)confiscation of property, 5)centralization of credit into the state, 6)centralization of communication, 7)state-owned businesses, 8)equal liability to all labor, 9)abolition of difference between town and country, and 10)free education in public schools. This book is an excellent edition to any student of political philosophy.

A good introduction but the professor's introductions are sycophantic, eulogizing and unbearably pedantic. The religious insinuation of Marx with Axial wise men is voluptuous and intellectually vulgar; as one of the first anti-State economists Marx deserves better. This edition is used widely by universities, so this treatment comes to no surprise.

Other recommendations:

Actually reading the volumes of Capital

The Trotsky compiled reader.

From Marx to Mises: Post-Capitalist Society and the Challenge of Economic Calculation
-- David Ramsay Steele

The Myth of National Defense
-- Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Nation, State and Economy
Theory of Money and Credit
--Ludwig von Mises

marxists.org
mises.org

(avoid the viking portable Marx, get the real deals)

I just finished this book last night. I read this book because I wanted to learn more about Karl Marx's thoughts on communism. Communism was my ONLY interest in reading this book. A narrow interest? Yes, but that was what I wanted.

This book gave me a lot of insight on the foundations of communist thought-alienation of labor, use-values, labor, etc... What it did not include was a very explicit connection between Marx's view of the political economy and how communism addresses these wrongs. It also did not give Marx's vision of a communist utopia in explicit format. To be sure, it gave me glimpses of BOTH-and I can infer a lot from them. His comments on the Paris commune, and some of his other political writings gave a little more insight. But still, any understanding I have is based on inferences and not on concrete explicit writing.

This book also included a great deal of material about religion, philosophy (not strictly communist philosophy)-specifically Marx's conflicts with Haeglanism (sp?) Since I did not care about these things, I found them to be very VERY difficult to get through.

Another review had some comments about the editor. I largely agree with that comment-but would expect nothing else. I mean, would you really want to read a book edited by someone who dislikes Marx? I think not. I could do without the pedantic nature, though.

A final word about Marx's writing. I understand that a lot of this material was in the form of notes and unedited manuscripts. But that does not change the fact that Marx's writing is incredibly difficult to follow at times. His sentences are incredibly long. They full of parenthetical phrases and clarifications of conditions of the sentence. I often found myself reading paragraph long sentences 2 or 3 times just to keep track of his point. As I said before, a lot of this writing was in the form of manuscripts or even personal notes. I'm sure with editing, these writings would have been more readable as were his more polished writings. Although even his more polished writings tended to get a little confusing for the same reason.