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The portable Karl Marx

by Karl Marx, Eugene Kamenka

This anthology collects major writings by Karl Marx, including The Communist Manifesto and selections from Capital. Biographical documents, letters, and a chronology provide historical context for his life and philosophical development.

Accession 9780140150964 ISBN 9780140150964 Publisher Penguin Classics

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spine_text: THE VIKING PORTABLE LIBRARY KARL MARX ISBN 0 14 015.096 X

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Topics and Themes

1. **Capitalism, Labour & Political Economy**
The book draws extensively from *Capital*, the *Grundrisse*, and the *Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844*, all of which dissect how capitalism organises labour, produces value, and concentrates wealth. Marx's labour theory of value — the idea that workers' output is the source of all economic value — sits at the heart of his critique.

The central question is: who owns the means of production, and what does that ownership do to human beings and society?

Connect to books about: political economy, labour theory, economic history, the history of capitalism, wage labour.

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2. **Alienation & the Human Condition**
The *Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844* introduce Marx's concept of alienation: that under capitalism, the worker is estranged from the product of their labour, from the act of working itself, and ultimately from their own humanity. This is not merely an economic complaint but a profound philosophical one.

The book asks: what does it mean to be fully human, and how do economic systems prevent or enable that?

Connect to books about: existentialism, humanism, phenomenology, alienation in modern life, psychology of work.

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3. **Class Struggle & Social Revolution**
The *Communist Manifesto* — included here in full — declares that all history is the history of class struggles. Marx traces how ruling and subordinate classes have always stood in tension, and argues this contradiction inevitably drives social transformation, from feudalism to capitalism to socialism.

Connect to books about: social movements, revolutionary theory, the sociology of inequality, the history of socialism and communism.

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4. **Historical Materialism & the Philosophy of History**
Across *The German Ideology*, the *Theses on Feuerbach*, and the *Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte*, Marx develops the view that material and economic conditions — not ideas or great men — are the true engine of history. Events like Napoleon III's coup become case studies in how class interests shape political outcomes.

Connect to books about: historiography, philosophy of history, materialism, structuralism, historical sociology.

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5. **The State, Power & Political Ideology**
Marx consistently argues that the state is not a neutral arbiter but an instrument of class power, and that dominant ideas in any era reflect the interests of the dominant class. Works like *On the Jewish Question* push beyond liberalism's promises to expose the limits of formal political emancipation.

Connect to books about: political philosophy, theories of the state, ideology, anarchism, democracy and its critics.

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6. **Alienation from Religion & Secular Humanism**
From his early writings, Marx frames religion as "the opium of the people" — a symptom of real suffering and a mechanism that displaces human energy away from transforming the world. His critique is not hostile mockery but a call to redirect human self-realisation from heaven to earth.

Connect to books about: secularism, the sociology of religion, Feuerbach, Enlightenment philosophy, humanism.

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7. **Intellectual Biography & the Life of Ideas**
Kamenka's editorial approach is distinctive: through letters, reminiscences, police reports, and personal documents, the volume presents Marx as a full human being — student, husband, father, polemicist — not just a set of doctrines. The man and the ideas are shown to be inseparable.

Connect to books about: intellectual biography, the history of ideas, 19th-century European radicalism, the relationship between life and thought.

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8. **Socialism, Communism & Utopian Thought**
The book traces Marx's vision of a post-capitalist society: a stateless, classless order reached through the overthrow of existing conditions. It also includes his polemics against rival socialist traditions, showing how Marxism defined itself against utopian socialism, anarchism, and reformism.

Connect to books about: utopian thought, the history of socialist movements, anarchism, democratic socialism, political idealism.

The portable Karl Marx

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