Caveat: The other reviews cover the content, but as for the format (at least in the elder edition this reviewer has), the pages are stubby and short given the length of the binding. Increasing the width by another 1.5'' would have reduced the somewhat crammed text, but Norton must have needed the paper to print other books at the time.
Great ebook: Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Includes Capital (Das Kapital) and Communist Manifesto. FREE Authors' biographies and essays in the trial version.
This ebook contains essential works of Marx & Engels. Great digital item!
If you can only have one book on Marx then this is really the volume to get. Besides it's Norton: headnotes, footnotes, delicious paper, quality binding, good selections, a good look at Marx as far I can see.
The Marxist Legacy: Not a Theory, but a set of tools This is an excellent compilation of Marx and Engels's works. Tucker's version is one of the foremost used by scholars and educators in the academic setting and is considered one of the best. Although I admittedly have not read all of the works in the reader, I was consistently impressed with the classics such as Capital, Crisis Theory, and the Communist Manifesto (most of which were actually written by Engels, not Marx).
The Marxist legacy lies not in his theories, but in the questions and concerns that he raises regarding other Enlightenment theorists. Indeed, Marx continues in the Enlightenment tradition in that he is deeply committed to science and rationality as a basis for legitimating a certain governmental regime and he has an intense regard for individual rights, which he believes can only be ensured if class differences are eradicated through the elimination of exploitation. Marxists believe that the role of government is to prevent exploitation, although more contemporary theorists such as Roemer have argued that exploitation theory is little more than a distraction from what they should actually worry about--which Roemer believes is domination. Anyone interested in exploitation theory should read Marx and Engels alongside Roemer's "Why should Marxists be interested in exploitation theory?" which is a great companion in helping you scrutinize Marx and Engels's argument.
Although the communist utopia where distributive justice is defined as, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" (as opposed to the transition state between capitalism and communism, socialism, has distributive justice defined as "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work") never does emerge as Marx predicts, Marx and Engels do raise some interesting arguments that everyone interested in political philosophy should be familiar with. Although their belief in their own infallibility and the failure of their theories--notably, the crisis theory--to hold up empirically have been used to downplay their relevance, Marx and Engels left behind several important tools with which to critically analyze all other political theories. The concerns they have with the existing system are not altogether irrelevant.
a pleasure to read This book was used in one of the classes I took as an undergraduate. It seems to be a thorough and well chosen collection of the writings of Marx and Engels, with some insightful commentary by the editor, Robert Tucker. I'm not a scholar of the work of these two men, but reading through this again I'm struck with the notion that their ideas are still very much alive and relevant today. Marx is much maligned in the United States, but in many ways he was a humanitarian who wanted to change the world into a better place. And, as he argued, capitalism (including how it is practiced today) is deeply flawed in many ways. Author of Adjust Your Brain: A Practical Theory for Maximizing Mental Health.