Karl Marx

The anti-capitalist revolution in the west - Amadeo Bordiga

In this concise1953 programmatic text presented at the Genoa Meeting of the International Communist Party, Amadeo Bordiga sets forth a series of theses outlining the perspectives for revolution in the post-war world, and emphasizes that it will have to take place in the West, because of its more advanced capitalism, rather than in the less developed capitalism of Russia, based on Marx’s theory of the increasing productivity of labor and the falling rate of profit, and refers to the absence of a “communist party in the U.S. [with] an integral revolutionary program”, despite the maturity of the objective conditions there, as a “major historical problem”.

The historical "invariance" of Marxism - Amadeo Bordiga

In these 26 theses presented at the Milan Meeting of the International Communist Party in 1952, Amadeo Bordiga sets forth his conception of the “invariance” of Marxism, utilizing colorful examples from the histories of religion, mythology, ideology and science as well as the class struggle, denouncing “modernizers” (he says they are worse than Stalinists) “weasel assumptions”, “foolish clichés”, “bourgeois prejudices”, “aberrations”, and “nonsense”, and everything that stands opposed to the “common doctrine of the party, uniform, monolithic, and invariable, to which we are all subordinated and bound, putting an end to all chattering and know-it-all discussions”.

The theorization of historical experiences - Agustín Guillamón

Submitted by Alias Recluse on Nov 28 2013 15:22

A critique of Roi Ferreiro’s critique of Andrés Devesa’s essay on the Spanish civil war and revolution, in which Guillamon derides Ferreiro for idealism and the use of elitist jargon, and for his failure to “perceive that the battle for revolutionary history is not just a bookish, theoretical and abstract question, but another battlefield in the class war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat”.

The revolutionary program of communist society eliminates all forms of ownership of land, the instruments of production and the products of labor - Partito Comunista Internazionale (Amadeo Bordiga)

In this 1957 text drafted for the Partito Comunista Internazionale, Amadeo Bordiga, with his usual acerbic wit, restates some of the “invariant” principles of Marxism, denounces the idea that communism means collective or individual “property” or “ownership”—terms he subjects to historical analysis as transitory juridical forms—argues in favor of social usufruct as the concept most adequate for the future classless society, ridicules the “metaphysical and idealist” error of the “immediatists” who hold that “socialism is a struggle for the individual liberation of the worker” and, just to rub it in, condemns drinkers and smokers as “usufructuary traitors” against the health of the species.

Observations on The Communist Manifesto - Raoul Vaneigem

The Communist Manifesto

Some thoughts by Raoul Vaneigem published in 1994 as a postface to The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

A contribution to the critique of political economy - Karl Marx

First published in 1859, the book is mainly an analysis of capitalism, achieved by critiquing the writings of the leading theoretical exponents of capitalism at that time: these were the political economists, nowadays often referred to as the classical economists; Adam Smith (1723–90) and David Ricardo (1772–1823) are the foremost representatives of the genre. Much of the Critique was later incorporated by Marx into his magnum opus, Capital (Volume I), published in 1867.

Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy - Karl Marx

Written during the winter of 1857-8, the "Grundrisse" was considered by Marx to be the first scientific elaboration of communist theory.

Theories of surplus-value - Karl Marx

Divided into three parts, this lengthy work reviews classic economic analyses of labor and value (Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and others), focusing on the concept of "surplus value"—the difference between the full value of a worker's labor and the wages received for this labor.

Letters of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 1842-1895

An epub collecting the letters of Marx and Engels from 1842 to 1895. Letters taken from marxists.org.

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" in Marx and Engels - Hal Draper

Good article from 1987 explaining that the use of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" in German by Marx and Engels is not the same as the English word "dictatorship" and does not conflict with democracy.