The Marx-Engels Reader

Very informative. It was a slow burn reader for me; it elucidated many things I completely forgot. Where to go next.

You know more about Marx and Engels than I did in 2008, when I first bought this book for a college course, but I was pleasantly surprised - not so much by what was said - but by what wasn't. It's far less authoritarian, far more abstract, and ironically far more capitalist than popular-capitalism. The theory of communism, as it turns out, isn't at all what I expected.

read this in a social studies class at Berkeley. i grew up in a military home and detested Marx.... precisely b/c i had no idea what he was about and what he was trying to address. marx is one of the most important and amazing writers in the world, and this book is very good. this book, plus Weber's Protestant Ethic and Freud's reader (see review) are as good as it gets. some of the smartest men on record.

This is my second copy since the lst was lost by movers. The editors capture most of the essential texts that define Marx and Engels. Its fairly comprehensive and I highly recommend it.

Their critique of capitalism remains incisive and relevant, but their vision of communism owes more to the Christian conception of the afterlife than a practical assessment of human nature. If anything, the Marxist analysis of capitalism is regaining legitimacy as our economy limps from crisis to crisis and has less and less to offer the middle class in terms of meaningful work or material compensation. I found Marx's description of "estranged labor" particularly relevant to my experience as a corporate drone. But theirs is a utopian philosophy that requires the proletariat to overthrow the elite and then behave as angels once they've seized power. This idea of an historical "evolution" out of capitalism merely places the Christian heaven in the material world and calls it "communism." They're far too optimistic about the hypothetical behavior of an idealized "species-being" uncorrupted by societal institutions. They're also drunk on the myth of scientific progress eventually freeing us from all drudgery. Unfortunately, this myth still has a stranglehold on the Western imagination, although it seems to be slowly losing its grip.

This book has a great collection of works from Marx and Engels. The book layout is also great. Paper quality awesome. This is a must-read to learn about Marx's philosophy by actually reading his work.

The book is in very good condition, it has a little amount of writing. Nothing considerably large. Great price for this book, as a college student on a budget, it's great that I can find the book I need at such a low price. Shipped very fast and enjoyed the ability to track my package.

This was for a college course and we barely used it

I like the information that I required to simplify and verified comparable ideas for my paper.

This excellent book contains some of the shorter writings of Marx and Engels in full, as well as extracts from their longer works. In his speech at Marx’s graveside (which is included in this collection), Engels outlines the three key elements of Marxism. Firstly, there is the materialist conception of history. Engels states that: “Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history…” As Marx himself puts it in “Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”: “In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.” Secondly, Engels points out that Marx “also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production…” and particularly emphasises the “discovery of surplus value”, which is the mechanism through which the capitalist class exploits the working class (which today includes both manual and white collar workers). As Marx wrote in “Capital”: “The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer.” (Marx’s analysis of capitalism also makes good use of his dialectical approach and his theory of alienation.) Thirdly, Engels shows that Marxism is the theory of working class revolution. “For Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was to contribute to… the liberation of the modern proletariat…” A revolution was necessary partly because “... the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another...” (The Civil War in France) and partly because in the process of the class struggle the ideas of the majority of the working class would change, as is shown in these two passages from “The German Ideology”: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time the ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production...” “Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.” Finally, the democratic nature of the revolution that Marx envisaged (in total contrast to the bureaucratic and tyrannical Stalinist regimes which claimed to be following Marx, but which in fact were/are state capitalist societies) is shown when Marx writes (in “The Civil War in France”) about the short-lived Paris Commune as his model for a workers’ state: “(The Paris Commune) filled all posts — administrative, judicial and educational - by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, subject to the right of recall at any time by the same electors. And in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers.” Extracts like these make this book a must for anyone interested in Marxism. And don’t forget that: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” (Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”.) Phil Webster.

Essential for anyone interested in Marxism.

C'mon! I assume that you're interested in this book because you're some kind of Marxist or anti-Marxist. Either way, it[s worth reading to see what Marx & Engels were actually saying.... However, alternatively, Verso & Penguin have published the writings of Engels and Marx, or it's all available at Marxist Internet Archive.

Read the 50 volumes from marx or you get the important material here. The book is structured beautifully and has a good balance with letters and with material and does not become overburden with minute details, which is easy when it comes to marx and Engel. Is this book for the beginner who wants just to know what these two where on about? Yes and no. First pick up David Harvey instead and continue with Robert Paul Wolff. Both have lectures on YouTube and complement each other, and you will to get a good baseline. Then come back to this book and enjoy it.