An accessible introduction to the author of Capital and coauthor of The Communist Manifesto, with a focus on his relevance in today’s world. Few thinkers have been declared irrelevant and out-of-date with such frequency as Karl Marx. Hardly a decade has gone by since his death in which establishment critics have not announced the death of his theory. And yet, despite their best efforts to bury him, Marx’s specter continues to haunt his detractors more than a century after his passing. As the boom and bust cycle of global capitalism continues to widen inequality around the world, a new generation is discovering that the problems Marx addressed in his time are remarkably similar to those of our own. In this engaging and accessible introduction, Alex Callinicos demonstrates that Marx’s ideas hold an enduring relevance for today’s activists fighting against poverty, oppression, environmental destruction, and the numerous other injustices of the capitalist system.

Few thinkers have been declared irrelevant and out of date with such frequency as Karl Marx. Hardly a decade since his death has gone by in which establishment critics have not announced the death of his theory. Whole forests have been felled to produce the paper necessary to fuel this effort to marginalize the coauthor of The Communist Manifesto. And yet, despite their best efforts to bury him again and again, Marx’s specter continues to haunt his detractors more than a century after his passing. As another international economic collapse pushes ever growing numbers out of work, and a renewed wave of popular revolt sweeps across the globe, a new generation is learning to ignore all the taboos and scorn piled upon Marx’s ideas and rediscovering that the problems he addressed in his time are remarkably similar to those of our own. In this engaging and accessible introduction, Alex Callinicos demonstrates that Marx’s ideas hold an enduring relevance for today’s activists fighting against poverty, inequality, oppression, environmental destruction, and the numerous other injustices of the capitalist system.

Karl Marx is one of the handful of people who have fundamentally changed the way people see the world. His ideas have always been controversial, misunderstood, attacked and even dismissed. The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx rescues the revolutionary tradition of Marx and demonstrates conclusively the relevance of his ideas today for everyone who wants an end to poverty, economic crisis and war and to see humanity progress. Now back in print in a handy, pocket-sized edition, Alex Callinicos's classic text is a vital reference for any student of Marxism.

Revolution is an idea that has been one of the most important drivers of human activity since its emergence in its modern form in the 18th century. From the American and French revolutionaries who upset a monarchical order that had dominated for over a millennium up to the Arab Spring, this notion continues but has also developed its meanings. Equated with democracy and legal equality at first and surprisingly redefined into its modern meaning, revolution has become a means to create nations, change the social order, and throw out colonial occupiers, and has been labelled as both conservative and reactionary. In this concise introduction to the topic, Jack R. Censer charts the development of these competing ideas and definitions in four chronological sections. Each section includes a debate from protagonists who represent various forms of revolution and counterrevolution, allowing students a firmer grasp on the particular ideas and individuals of each era. This book offers a new approach to the topic of revolution for all students of world history.

Published in 1933, at a time of widespread unemployment and bank failures, this book by the young Sidney Hook received great critical acclaim and established his reputation as a brilliant expositor of ideas. By "revolutionary interpretation" Hook meant quite literally that Marx's main objective was to stimulate revolutionary opposition to class society. Hook later abandoned the revolutionary views expressed in this volume, but he never abandoned his warm positive views of Marx as a thinker and a fighter for freedom. He eventually concluded that 20th century history had proved both him and Marx wrong about the necessity of revolutionary means to achieve their mutual social goals. But, says his son Ernest B. Hook in an introduction, this concession of error "he did not see . . . as an admission of intellectual weakness, but the natural position of a reasonable person when, in the light of observation and experience, he concludes he has erred." This expanded edition makes readily available for scholars an influential work long out of print and provides critical insight into the intellectual development of one of the 20th-century's great thinkers.

“If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are troubled as to why, how and by whom political power is held and used, if you sense there must be good intellectual reasons for your unease, if your curiosity and openness drive you toward wishing to act with others, to ‘do something,’ you already have much in common with the writers of the three essays in this book.” — Adrienne Rich With a preface by Adrienne Rich, Manifesto presents the radical vision of four famous young rebels: Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto, Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution and Che Guevara’s Socialism and Humanity.

The central theoretical argument of this book is that Marx's philosophy of praxis - first formulated in the Thesis on Feuerbach - is at the same time the founding stone of a new world view, and the methodological basis for his theory of (proletarian) revolutionary self-emancipation.