Karl Marx celebrated liberalism’s achievements, such as freedom of the press, while excoriating its fidelity to private property rights. We can hold the same tension in our minds — fiercely opposing capitalism while fighting to make liberal rights real through socialist transformation.
The first edition of Capital, Volume I, was published on this day in 1867. Over the years that followed, Karl Marx and his partner Friedrich Engels continued working on the final text, showing how it remained part of a living critical project.
The Right never seems to stop talking about “Marxism” and its wily tricks. But for all their denunciations, conservative pundits really just keep proving they don’t even know the basics of Karl Marx’s thought.
The German Ideology marked an essential turning point in Marx and Engels’s intellectual development. A major achievement in the tradition of idealist philosophy, it allowed them to get beyond philosophical systems and engage with the world to transform it.
Friedrich Engels once wrote that he played “second fiddle” to Marx. On the 200th anniversary of his birth, we should remember the profound influence that Engels had on his friend and comrade, as well as his own theoretical contributions.
Karl Marx believed in the self-emancipation of the working class, while Friedrich Nietzsche had nothing but disdain for the masses. But a provocative new book claims the two thinkers can be read together to develop a socialism for today.
A recent biography tries to prove Marx’s irrelevance. It fails miserably.
In recent years, the grand questions of strategy that once animated the Left have found a new home in the world of business and management. But strategy is an essential component of political activity, and it needs a Marxist analysis at its core.
More than 150 years ago, when the corporation as we know it today was still new, Marx saw in it both the essence of capitalism and a prefiguration of socialism: “The abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself.”
The Young Karl Marx is an entertaining and surprisingly funny portrait of the Old Man.
A new book brings to life Marx's formative years in London, filtered through the prism of magical realism.
This Valentine’s Day, the life of Jenny Marx reminds us of the love it takes to be a revolutionary socialist.
Jenny and Karl Marx remembered the lessons of their fathers, but also broke from the limits of their liberal politics.
Karl Marx is often understood to have dismissed morality as bourgeois ideology. But Vanessa Wills, author of the new book Marx’s Ethical Vision, argues that his account of class exploitation sought to explain injustice, not sideline it.
Conservatives are spreading lies about Karl Marx. Not only was Marx a consistent campaigner against slavery, he supported the efforts of all those who organized to fight it.
On the occasion of his birthday, let’s celebrate the incredible contributions of Marx collaborator Friedrich Engels.
The transatlantic convergence of two revolutionaries.
The Young Karl Marx is a nuanced and surprisingly accurate portrait of the revolutionary as a young man.
The financial crash didn’t kill off neoliberalism — it actually embedded its logic ever deeper in our lives. Marxist geographer David Harvey says the only way to end this system for good is to change how we fight it.
The analysis of capitalism that Karl Marx presented in the three volumes of Capital remains vital to understanding our social world. A renowned Marxian economist talked to Jacobin to break down the key points of Marx’s economic theory.