The Marx-Engels Reader Paperback – March 17, 1978

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

This has long been my go-to collection. I first bought it in 1980 and I continue to purchase it when I've worn it out! The editor also has a Lenin anthology which is equally helpful.

This tome is massive. I needed it for a graduate level class on classical sociological theory. It can be confusing at times because translations from German to English are difficult, but this is still an excellent read to get the full range of Marx's ideas in his own words. There is also a lot from Engels but most of it is Marx.