Marx/Engels Texts

[Caj]

I was wondering what works by Marx or Engels are worth reading? I am currently reading The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and have already read The Communist Manifesto. The other texts I am somewhat familiar with by Marx and Engels that I may plan to read are Grundrisse, The German Ideology, Capital (vol. 1-3), Capital vol. 4 (i.e. Theories of Surplus Value), The Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844, and The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Of those, which would you say are most essential to an understanding of Marxism? Also, are there any other texts by Marx or Engels that are significant to Marxist theory that I didn't mention and should consider reading?

[RedSunsZenith]

Capital vol. 1 significantly increased my understanding of Marxist theory.

[Aurora]

All those are available online at www.marxists.org btw

tbh pretty much everything they wrote is worth reading i'd say, Critique of the Gotha Program is a great pamphlet. Ive heard Wage Labour and Capital and Value, Price, Profit are good to read before you start Capital. But really start reading about topics you interested in, if you not much interested in economics atm it's just going to put you off if you try and force your way through economic works.
If you get stuck on any words or concepts marxists.org has an encyclopedia which is pretty good.

[Uncle Rob]

I was wondering what works by Marx or Engels are worth reading? I am currently reading The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and have already read The Communist Manifesto. The other texts I am somewhat familiar with by Marx and Engels that I may plan to read are Grundrisse, The German Ideology, Capital (vol. 1-3), Capital vol. 4 (i.e. Theories of Surplus Value), The Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844, and The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. Of those, which would you say are most essential to an understanding of Marxism? Also, are there any other texts by Marx or Engels that are significant to Marxist theory that I didn't mention and should consider reading?

I wouldn't suggest reading Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts considering at the time they were written Marx's views wern't fully developed. The list I provide below are what I consider to be the essential works of Marx and Engels.


Communist Manifesto (M&E)
Capital vol 1-3 (M&E)
Wage-Labour and Capital (M)
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (M)
Wages, Price and Profit (M)
Critique of the Gotha Programme (M)
The German Ideology (M)
The Civil War in France (M)
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (E)
Ludwig Feuerbach (E)
The Poverty Of Philosophy (M)
Origin of the Family (E)
Anti-Duhring (E)
Thesis on Feuerbach (M)
If you can find it "Marx/Engels Selected Correspondence"

[A Revolutionary Tool]

To add to what uncle rob listed I'd say "The Role of Force in History" by Engels. It's never really considered an essential work but I read it just for amusement and remember taking away a few important ideals with a greater understanding. If I could only remember what those ideas were...

[ZeroNowhere]

I wouldn't suggest reading Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts considering at the time they were written Marx's views wern't fully developed.

They mostly were, and certainly they weren't less developed than in the Theses on Feuerbach or even The German Ideology by any significant degree. The only problem is that the 1844 manuscripts were written to a large degree in a language accessible to the Hegelians and Feuerbachians of the time, which one probably won't understand in full if one simply dives into the text without any prior experience of Marx and Engels (Feuerbach, Plato and such also help here), and hence if one reads them first it's doubtful if one will learn that much from them, and likely that one will misread them, as is shown for example in the widespread dismissal of the works by various Marxists as a text of the 'young Marx' as opposed to the 'old Marx' or whatever.

In any case, I think that most of the published theoretical works, as well as a few unpublished ones (Capital volumes 2, 3 and 4, The German Ideology, Dialectics of Nature and the notes on it, the 1844 manuscripts, and even the Grundrisse to some degree) are more or less essential. Really, 'Marxism' is a pretty broad field, so really you're best off reading texts dealing with subjects you feel most curious about or unsure about at a given time, and then making notes on it and trying to figure things out.

[RedTrackWorker]

The Critique of the Gotha Programme (as a poster above said) is the main one missing in my opinion, otherwise a good overview of the main texts it seems to me.

[Sixiang]

I was wondering what works by Marx or Engels are worth reading?

All of them. Seriously, read every single thing by them that you can get your hands on. Because they wrote about so many different topics and subjects, there isn't really a single book that encompasses their entire line of thinking. Uncle Rob's list is a good on, but don't stop there.

[AnonymousOne]

Read some Proudhon. It's some pretty good stuff, and will help you get a better feel for the revolutionary thought during that time. I'd start with "What Is Property?: or, An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government" which can also be found on www.marxists.org