How to Be a Marxist
Blending Kierkegaard with Hegel and Marx, Martin Hägglund’s This Life offers a new generation of socialists a guide to living a life of radical political commitment.
411 Search Result(s) for: “Karl Marx”
The Feminist Vision of Friedrich Engels
In his book The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, Friedrich Engels linked the “world-historical defeat of the female sex” to the rise of class exploitation. Engels helped lay the foundations for a Marxist understanding of women's oppression.
Erich Fromm and the Mass Psychology of Fascism
The German socialist philosopher Erich Fromm sought to explain the social psychology of right-wing authoritarianism after the Nazis drove him into exile. His work is full of valuable insights that can inform struggles for political and economic freedom today.
The Communist Manifesto Shows Why Capitalism Won’t Last Forever
Published this day in 1848, The Communist Manifesto didn’t offer blueprints for a communist future. But in showing that capitalism is not eternal or natural, Marx and Engels explained how the crises of the present prepare the way for our future liberation.
Comintern History Isn’t Just About Its Leaders
The Communist International’s history is often told in terms of polemics among its leaders. But studying the biographies of lesser-known militants who came to Moscow gives a more real sense of the movement’s internal life and what it was like to belong to it.
How the Frankfurt School Used Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud
The theorists of the Frankfurt School wanted to promote a critical Marxism that wasn’t hobbled by one-dimensional economic determinism. In doing so, they also drew on the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.
Georgii Plekhanov Was the Father Of Russian Marxism Who Disliked His Children
Georgii Plekhanov did more than anyone to popularize Marxist ideas in Russia from the late nineteenth century. While he fell out with the Bolsheviks and condemned the October revolution, Plekhanov had a huge influence over the development of Soviet Marxism.
Marx on Trump’s Abuses of Power
Karl Marx saw how presidential systems with strong executives threatened to eclipse the democratic power of the legislature.
Fight for Your Right to Be Lazy
In the late nineteenth century, French Marxist Paul Lafargue put forward a demand that still resonates nearly a century and a half later: workers have a right to be lazy.
How Analytic Philosophers Have Made Sense of Capitalism
Analytic philosophy, a branch of the discipline that emphasizes rigorous argumentation, is often dismissed as a set of abstract puzzle games. But analytic philosophers have reinterpreted Marxism to provide a radical critique of capitalist society.
Adventures in Marxism
The best of Marx is full of life, full of joy — and above all, deeply human.
Reclaiming the Best of Karl Kautsky
Denounced and then lost to history, the radical Karl Kautsky's thought still offers a compelling vision of how to democratize all aspects of our lives.
How Marxists View the Middle Ages
Class societies didn’t begin with capitalism: the ancient and medieval worlds had their own systems of exploitation. Marxist historians have set out to explain how those systems worked — and what their eventual demise tells us about what might lie ahead.
Jules Guesde Was One of the Great Pioneers of European Marxism
French socialist leader Jules Guesde established the first working-class party in modern history and popularized the ideas of Karl Marx at a crucial time. It’s impossible to imagine the subsequent history of Marxism and the French left without Guesde.
A Half-Century of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital
Harry Braverman’s arguments in his classic book Labor and Monopoly Capital presciently forecasted much of our present labor regime — and can help us move beyond it.
Under Capitalism, There’s No Such Thing as a “Fair Day’s Wage for a Fair Day’s Work”
We’ve got some bad news for you on Labor Day: your boss is exploiting you. Karl Marx explains how.
Rights Are Won Through Struggle, Not Handed Down by the Courts
The US Supreme Court is on the rampage, rolling back progressive gains from abortion rights to climate action. To stop conservative judges, we need to recognize that the law is a product of social struggle and shift the balance of forces outside the courts.
The Left Needs Utopian Thinking
Conservative apologists for the status quo often stigmatize their opponents as “utopian.” But socialists and feminists shouldn’t be afraid of the term, since utopian thought can play an important role in helping us develop practical alternatives.
For a Century, the Frankfurt School Has Studied How Domination Works in Modern Societies
The year 2023 marks a century since the founding of the Institute for Social Research, better known as the Frankfurt School. Its story is that of a long challenge to the status quo — and a refusal to accept that capitalism is the only possible reality.
Joan Robinson Changed the Way We Think About Capitalism
Joan Robinson established herself as one of the world’s leading economists in a deeply sexist field. Drawing on the work of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes alike, she left us with a vital legacy for the critical study of capitalism.