/lit/ - Literature

Don’t get caught up in Hegel if you are just starting out. Like all great thinkers, Marx needs to be approached in terms of a series of approximations that get you closer and closer to the truth, and on your first pass you don’t need to know anything about Hegel. Of course Hegel becomes extremely important when you want to get into the deep weeds of interpreting Marx, but on your first pass you can waste a lot of time trying to read about Hegel while never getting to Marx himself.

If you genuinely have no background in anything then the best starting place is probably The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx by Alex Callincos. That’s the book I’d give to somebody with a highschool level educational background as a first pass.

If you have some background in the history philosophy, then Karl Marx by Allen Wood (2e) is the best introduction. It mostly focuses on the philosophical aspects of Marx’s thought, rather than the economic aspects. A lower division undergrad would find it a comfortable read.

The first volume of The Main Currents of Marxism is an excellent place to start if you are an upper division undergrad or graduate, and you want to get the whole prehistory of marxist thought along with the work of Marx and Engels.

Ultimately you have to read Capital itself, or at the very least the first maybe 4 to 7 chapters. For a first time reader the David Harvey lectures are very helpful. I also really like the book by Ben Fine as a guide as well. Ultimately though you have to read Michael Heinrich for the Real Truth on Capital. The problem is that his intro kind of assumes you already have a vague familiarity with the topic and he’s there mostly to clarify what’s actually going on.


Either the Robert Tucker or David McLellan ‘Selected Works of Marx’ are great, though I’d probably favour Tucker given the choice.