The most recommended Karl Marx books

Who picked these books? Meet our 25 experts.

25 authors created a book list connected to Karl Marx, and here are their favorite Karl Marx books.
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Book cover of Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies

Peter Hudis Author Of Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism

From my list on envisioning alternatives to capitalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since before I was a teenager, I have been painfully aware of two things: the society I am living in is an extremely racist one, and capitalism fosters egotism, greed, selfishness, and a degradation of what is best in life. Ever since then I have been pursuing the goal of envisioning, and in some way advancing, an alternative to both (which in my view are related). I have suggested these five books because they have given me much inspiration for pursuing this goal, difficult as it surely is. I hope they will prove to be for you as well.

Peter's book list on envisioning alternatives to capitalism

Peter Hudis Why did Peter love this book?

This book, published in 2010, focuses on a much-neglected dimension of Marx’s work—his writings in defense of anti-colonial movements in Ireland, India, China, and elsewhere as well as his support for anti-racist movements in the U.S.

In contrast to claims that Marx was a class reductionist whose body of thought was incapable of accounting for issues of race and ethnicity, this work shows how he overcome many of the Eurocentric biases found in his earliest writings as he engaged in a systematic study of the non-Western world in the last decades of his life.

This a book that will change your view of what Marx was about from top to bottom.

By Kevin B. Anderson,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Marx at the Margins as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Marx at the Margins, Kevin Anderson uncovers a variety of extensive but neglected texts by Marx that cast what we thought we knew about his work in a startlingly different light. Analyzing a variety of Marx's writings, including journalistic work written for the New York Tribune, Anderson presents us with a Marx quite at odds with conventional interpretations. Rather than providing us with an account of Marx as an exclusively class-based thinker, Anderson here offers a portrait of Marx for the twenty-first century: a global theorist whose social critique was sensitive to the varieties of human social and historical…


Book cover of Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution

Michael Roberts Author Of The Long Depression: Marxism and the Global Crisis of Capitalism

From my list on love and capitalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

Marxian Economics and its relevance to a better world and socialism has been my passion since I became an adult. My expertise in this subject, such as it is, has been sharpened by the study of Marx and Engels’ great works, but also by the efforts of so many others since; some of whom are included in my five best books. But above all, it is the knowledge that in this world of nearly 8 billion people, most do not have a happy and fulfilling life but face daily toil and struggle to live (and die). Humanity has the power and technology to do better; we just need to organise our social and governmental structures to achieve it.

Michael's book list on love and capitalism

Michael Roberts Why did Michael love this book?

It’s a page-turner, taking us through the lives and tribulations of Karl Marx’s wife, Jenny, and her daughters, in living and working with the world’s most well-known revolutionary. It’s a rare glimpse into the human side of the formidable critic of capitalism showing him as a devoted father and husband. And above all, the book opens us up to the important but forgotten role of Jenny in the romance of revolutionary change in the mid-19th century.

By Mary Gabriel,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Love and Capital as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Brilliantly researched and wonderfully written, LOVE AND CAPITAL is a heartbreaking and dramatic saga of the family side of the man whose works would redefine the world after his death.

Drawing upon years of research, acclaimed biographer Mary Gabriel brings to light the story of Karl and Jenny Marx's marriage. We follow them as they roam Europe, on the run from hostile governments amidst a secret network of would-be revolutionaries, and see Karl not only as an intellectual, but as a protective father and loving husband, a visionary, a jokester, a man of tremendous passions, both political and personal.

In…


Book cover of Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel: The Marx Brothers' Lost Radio Show

David P. Murphy Author Of Zombies for Zombies: Advice and Etiquette for the Living Dead

From my list on absurdity.

Why am I passionate about this?

It is said that Michelangelo could see a statue inside of a block of marble. I believe I have a similar gift – I can find the most idiotic angle to any given story or event and free it into the world. Okay, so some gifts are better than others but this “talent” has afforded me the ability to stay relatively sane in a completely nutso era. Relatively. And to underscore my qualifications, I would ask the reader to take a gander at my sample title below. I rest my case.

David's book list on absurdity

David P. Murphy Why did David love this book?

From 1932-33, Groucho and Chico (two of my role models) appeared on a radio show aired on NBC. It was about a shady law firm (Groucho is Waldorf T. Flywheel – a fine lawyerly name) and you can imagine how that goes. This book contains the scripts of about two dozen episodes, I think. If you’re a Marx Brothers fan, this is a ton of fun. And if you’re not, then I must believe you’re some variety of filthy lout and I would ask you to stand away from me. 

By Michael Barson (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is a collection of radio scripts of the comedy series starring Groucho, Waldorf and Chico Marx which ran for six months from November 1932. They have recently been discovered and are published here for the first time.


Book cover of Not By Fact Alone: Essays on the Writing and Reading of History

Eileen Ka-May Cheng Author Of Historiography: An Introductory Guide

From my list on showing history is not just a record of facts.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a professor of history at Sarah Lawrence College and the author of The Plain and Noble Garb of Truth: Nationalism and Impartiality in American Historical Writing, 1784-1860. What has always fascinated me about history is how differently it can be interpreted by different people, even when looking at the exact same subject. While I write and teach on a variety of topics, ranging from the American Revolution to historiography, all of my courses and research deal in some way with the conflicts over how to represent the past that have divided both historians and the general public throughout the long history of history as a subject. 

Eileen's book list on showing history is not just a record of facts

Eileen Ka-May Cheng Why did Eileen love this book?

A collection of essays about “classic” works of history by (mostly) European historians ranging from Edward Gibbon to Jacob Burckhardt, Clive’s book brings these works to life even for readers unfamiliar with them. Clive’s short but rich essays on these historians provide a wonderful introduction to both their writings and to the study of historiography more generally, showing the value of these classic texts as works of literature and as gateways into the worlds of their authors.

By John Clive,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Not By Fact Alone as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this collection of essays, the author demonstrates that while reading the great historians of the past, such as Gibbon, de Tocqueville, Carlyle, Macaulay, Michelet, Halevy, Marx and Burckhardt, is part of a complete education, history can also be great literature.


Book cover of Marx's Das Kapital: A Biography

Michael Roberts Author Of The Long Depression: Marxism and the Global Crisis of Capitalism

From my list on love and capitalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

Marxian Economics and its relevance to a better world and socialism has been my passion since I became an adult. My expertise in this subject, such as it is, has been sharpened by the study of Marx and Engels’ great works, but also by the efforts of so many others since; some of whom are included in my five best books. But above all, it is the knowledge that in this world of nearly 8 billion people, most do not have a happy and fulfilling life but face daily toil and struggle to live (and die). Humanity has the power and technology to do better; we just need to organise our social and governmental structures to achieve it.

Michael's book list on love and capitalism

Michael Roberts Why did Michael love this book?

Francis Wheen is a witty journalist who has written a short but revealing biography of Karl Marx. And in this book, he explains in no more than 100 pages, how Marx came to write his masterpiece, Das Kapital. He shows why Marx’s great treatise deserves to be read and understood.

By Francis Wheen,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Marx's Das Kapital as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In vivid detail, Francis Wheen tells the story of Das Kapital and Karl Marx’s twenty-year struggle to complete his unfinished masterpiece. Born in a two-room flat in London’s Soho amid political squabbles and personal tragedy, the first volume of Das Kapital was published in 1867, to muted praise. But after Marx’s death, the book went on to influence thinkers, writers, and revolutionaries, from George Bernard Shaw to V. I. Lenin, changing the direction of twentieth-century history. Wheen’s captivating, accessible book shows that, far from being a dry economic treatise, Das Kapital is like a vast Gothic novel whose heroes are…


Book cover of Spartacus

Martin M. Winkler Author Of Arminius the Liberator: Myth and Ideology

From my list on ideological and popular uses of ancient Rome.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am Professor of Classics at George Mason University. I learned about ancient Romans and Greeks in my native Germany, when I attended a humanist high school, possibly the oldest in the country. (It was founded during the reign of Charlemagne, as the eastern half of the Roman Empire was still flourishing.) My mother once informed me that I betrayed my passion for stories long before I could read because I enthusiastically used to tear pages out of books. In my teens I became fascinated with stories told in moving images. I have been a bibliophile and, em, cinemaniac ever since and have pursued both my obsessions in my publications.

Martin's book list on ideological and popular uses of ancient Rome

Martin M. Winkler Why did Martin love this book?

Fast ran afoul of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and was sent to prison for contempt of Congress.

To him, as to Karl Marx and others, the gladiator Spartacus, who led history’s best-known slave revolt (73 to 71 B.C.), symbolized the proletariat’s revolution against capitalist oppressors and depraved imperialists.

Despite some dubious history and one distasteful distortion concerning the Romans’ exploitation of slaves, Fast’s 1951 novel is a stirring tale, intended “so that the dream of Spartacus may come to be in our own time.”

When no publisher would touch his book, Fast had it printed and distributed on his own.

The screenplay for Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation was by Dalton Trumbo, another HUAC victim. His screen credits for Spartacus and, a little earlier, for Exodus ended the blacklist.

By Howard Fast,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Spartacus as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The best-selling novel about a slave revolt in ancient Rome and the basis for the popular motion picture.


Book cover of Dialectics of the Concrete: A Study on Problems of Man and World

Peter Hudis Author Of Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism

From my list on envisioning alternatives to capitalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since before I was a teenager, I have been painfully aware of two things: the society I am living in is an extremely racist one, and capitalism fosters egotism, greed, selfishness, and a degradation of what is best in life. Ever since then I have been pursuing the goal of envisioning, and in some way advancing, an alternative to both (which in my view are related). I have suggested these five books because they have given me much inspiration for pursuing this goal, difficult as it surely is. I hope they will prove to be for you as well.

Peter's book list on envisioning alternatives to capitalism

Peter Hudis Why did Peter love this book?

This remarkable study, first published in Czechoslovakia in 1964 and translated into English in the 1970s, is one of the most profound studies of the Hegelian and Phenomenological dimensions of Marx’s work ever written.

It argues that daily life in capitalist modernity takes the alienated form of a “world of the pseudo-concrete,” in which possibilities for self-development and purposeful creation that is integral to humanity become radically suppressed. If you want to understand why the world is not as you wish it to be, read this book.

By Karel Kosik,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dialectics of the Concrete as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Kosik writes that the history of a text is in a certain sense the history of its interpretations. In the fifteen years that have passed since the first (Czech) edition of his Dialectics of the Concrete, this book has been widely read and interpreted throughout Europe, in diverse centers of scholarship as well as in private studies. A faithful English language edition is long overdue. This publication of KosIk's work will surely provoke a range of new interpretations. For its theme is the characterization of science and of rationality in the context of the social roots of science and the…


Book cover of Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism

Zeno Leoni Author Of A New Cold War

From my list on US-China competition in a changing international order.

Why am I passionate about this?

In the early days of my PhD degree at King’s College London, my research focused very much on developing a Marxist theory of International Relations. From this, I have learned invaluable knowledge that informs my post-PhD writings. These focus more on the study of US-China relations in the context of a changing world order. I have always been passionate about these subjects in so far as they allow me to make sense of the big picture. 

Zeno's book list on US-China competition in a changing international order

Zeno Leoni Why did Zeno love this book?

Better than superficial realist accounts, Lenin’s pamphlet on imperialism represents the finest analysis for explaining inter-state rivalries between great powers. In this book–which deeply informed my very first monograph, American Grand Strategy from Obama to Trump: Imperialism After Bush and China’s Hegemonic Challenge (Cham: Palgrave, 2021)–he traces the origins of the start of WWI back to (profit-driven) capitalism and the inherent need for governments, intertwined with major industrial and financial combines, to open up new economic opportunities using all the tools that states have, including negotiating trade deals, territorial conquest, and war.

This pamphlet is nowadays essential for understanding why the US and China are in a strategic competition, especially when looking at how the respective governments, in cooperation with their industrial champions in the Internet sector are vying for influence.

By Vladimir Ilich Lenin,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

2011 Reprint of 1934 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism", by Lenin, describes the function of financial capital in generating profits from imperial colonialism, as the final stage of capitalist development to ensure greater profits. The essay is a synthesis of Lenin's modifications and developments of economic theories that Karl Marx formulated in "Das Kapital". Lenin's book greatly influenced the Core-Periphery model of global capitalist development, as well as World-systems theory and Dependency theory.


Book cover of Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution

Peter Hudis Author Of Marx's Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism

From my list on envisioning alternatives to capitalism.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since before I was a teenager, I have been painfully aware of two things: the society I am living in is an extremely racist one, and capitalism fosters egotism, greed, selfishness, and a degradation of what is best in life. Ever since then I have been pursuing the goal of envisioning, and in some way advancing, an alternative to both (which in my view are related). I have suggested these five books because they have given me much inspiration for pursuing this goal, difficult as it surely is. I hope they will prove to be for you as well.

Peter's book list on envisioning alternatives to capitalism

Peter Hudis Why did Peter love this book?

This wide-ranging work, first published in 1981, has three outstanding features:

It consists of one of the most sensitive explorations of Rosa Luxemburg, showing that her work as a fervent advocate of socialism and democracy had a feminist dimension.

It connects Marx’s critique of alienation and dehumanized social relations to the perspectives and demands of modern feminism.

It also contained the first detailed discussion in English of Marx’s last decade (1872-83), when he turned to a study of Indigenous peoples in the Americas as well as communal formations in Russia, Asia, and Africa in searching for pathways to socialism that could by-pass the horrors of capitalist industrialization.

It argues that Marx’s critique of capital went further than economics in being part and parcel of the development of a philosophy of revolution.

By Raya Dunayevskaya,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Rosa Luxemburg, Women's Liberation, and Marx's Philosophy of Revolution as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


In this important and wide-ranging critique of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) Raya Dunayevskaya examines the life, political thought, and action of one of the most critical revolutionary figures of our time. Dunayevskaya sheds new light on the questions of socialist democracy after the revolution, disclosing both the unprobed feminist dimension of Rosa Luxemburg and the previously unrecognized new moments in Marx's last decade concerning the role of women and the peasantry. As the founder of Marxist-Humanism in the United States, Dunayevskaya (1910-87) was an internationally respected writer, philosopher, and revolutionary. This new and expanded edition includes two previously unpublished articles by…


Book cover of Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem

Julie Anderson Author Of Opera

From Julie's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author History nut Europhile Artist London lover

Julie's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Julie Anderson Why did Julie love this book?

I read this book when it was first published back in 1995, but I re-read it this year. Ackroyd sets his tales in London, whether modern or historic (sometimes, like in Hawksmoor, both), and this one is set in the Victorian era.

We are in the pre-Jack the Ripper East End, where there is a series of gruesome killings by the almost supernatural "Limehouse Golem" while, at the same time, Elizabeth Cree (a music hall performer) is on trial for killing her husband. Inspector Kildare has to deal with both.

Kildare is a wonderfully drawn character, world-weary but half-enamored of Ms Cree. Bill Nighy was a superb choice of actor in the film.

The dark and dangerous streets of Limehouse give way to the naptha and greasepaint of the music hall, as Dan Leno (a real person) is drawn into the case, as are Karl Marx and George Gissing. Leno…

By Peter Ackroyd,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NOW AN UNMISSABLE FILM STARRING BILL NIGHY, DOUGLAS BOOTH AND OLIVIA COOKE.

'Mesmerising, macabre and totally brilliant' Daily Mail

Before the Ripper, fear had another name.

London, 1880. A series of gruesome murders attributed to the mysterious 'Limehouse Golem' strikes fear into the heart of the capital. Inspector John Kildare must track down this brutal serial killer in the damp, dark alleyways of riverside London. But how does Dan Leno, music hall star extraordinaire, find himself implicated in this crime spree, and what does Elizabeth Cree, on trial for the murder of her husband, have to hide?

Peter Ackroyd brings…


Book cover of Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies
Book cover of Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution
Book cover of Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel: The Marx Brothers' Lost Radio Show

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