Saturday, November 23, 2024

Books After Marx

Here is a list of books by Marxists that have stood the test of time. I am being impressionistic and probably idiosyncratic. I am more interested in analysis of what is than political organizing. What should be added? Removed?

  • Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, 1877. I think German comrades learned Marxism during the second international more from this thick tome. I recommend other works for introductions these days.
  • Vladimir Lenin, What is to be Done?, 1902. Lenin lays out a strategy and defines a vanguard party. And the Bolsheviks are in power at the end of 1917.
  • Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital, 1913. Luxemburg argues that capitalism needs a less advanced sector (or maybe military purchases from the state) to provide demand. Growth paths can be defined by Marx's scheme for expanded reproduction, but why would capitalists make these invevestments?
  • Rudolf Hilferding, Finance Capital, 1910. I have not read this one. Hilferding recognizes that joint stock companies and financial institutions have changed capitalism from the era of small business.
  • Nikolai Bukharin, Economic Theory of the Leisure Class, 1919. Extends the approach of Marx's Theories of Surplus Value to analyze works of the marginal revolution. Where does Bukharin have the time for scholarly work?
  • Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1971. Originally written in Mussolini's prisons. Argues that in advanced societies, communists must first change civil society before obtaining state power.
  • Paul A. Baran and Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 1966. How should Marx's analysis be updated for the world of modern corporations? The editors of Monthly Review have ideas.
  • Piero Sraffa, The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, 1960. Minimalist, as in modern art. I think many have still not absorbed this.
  • Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 1967. This is more Marxist than I expected. Builds on the idea of commodity fetishism. I could learn more about the situationists in Paris in May 1968.

But I do not want to get into current events.

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