It’s hard enough finding time to read a light-hearted novel, let alone works in economics & philosophy, but as the contradictions in the prevailing mode of production continue to make themselves apparent, study is more important than ever.
In that spirit, we’ve taken a few dozen or so of the most important Marxist texts and organized them by their approximate read time. When you find yourself with a few minutes to kill waiting in line or a whole half-hour free before a doctor’s visit, consult this list:
Under 5 minute reads
Guidelines for Myself
Zhou Enlai
Women’s Day
Alexandra Kollontai
Where Do Correct Ideas Come From?
Mao Zedong
Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties: Chapter 4 of the Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
Preface to the German Ideology
Karl Marx
On the Question of Dialectics
V.I. Lenin
Wage Labour & Capital: What are wages?
Karl Marx
Twelve Recommendations
Hồ Chí Minh
Combat Liberalism
Mao Zedong
The Materialist Basis of Education
Lena Morrow Lewis
Theses on Feuerbach
Karl Marx
The Foundations of Leninism: Style in Work
J. V. Stalin
5 – 15 minute reads
Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism – Marx, Karl, was born…
V.I. Lenin
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism
V.I. Lenin
On Authority
Frederick Engels
How to be a Good Leader
Zhou Enlai
Wage Labour & Capital: By what is the price of a commodity determined?
Karl Marx
Proletarians and Communists: Chapter 2 of the Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
Socialist and Communist Literature: Chapter 3 of the Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific • Chapter 2: Dialectics
Frederick Engels
Dialectical Materialism
Mao Zedong
The Vocabulary of Neoliberal Diplomacy in Today’s New Cold War
Michael Hudson
Origins of the Family, Private Property & the State: The Family
Frederick Engels
15 – 30 minute reads
The Preamble to the Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
Bourgeois and Proletarians: Chapter 1 of the Communist Manifesto
Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
Karl Marx: A Brief Biographical Sketch With an Exposition of Marxism – The Marxist Doctrine
V.I. Lenin
On Practice
Mao Zedong
Condition of the Working Class in England, Introduction
Frederick Engels
The Principles of Communism
Frederick Engels
The State and Revolution: Class Society and the State
V.I. Lenin
The State and Revolution: The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State
V.I. Lenin
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific • Chapter 1: Utopian Socialism
Frederic Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific • Chapter 3: Historical Materialism
Frederic Engels
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: Concentration of production & monopolies
V.I. Lenin
30 – 45 minute reads
Dialectical and Historical Materialism
J. V. Stalin
The German Ideology • Idealism and Materialism
Karl Marx
Dialectical Logic • Part 1: From the History of Dialectics, Spinoza –Thought as an Attribute of Substance
Evald Ilyenkov
The Negro Nation
Harry Haywood
Dialectics of Nature, Introduction
Frederick Engels
What is to be done? • Dogmatism and “freedom of criticism”
V.I. Lenin
History & Class Consciousness: Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat
Georg Lukacs
1 hour and up reads
On Contradiction
Mao Zedong
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Mao Zedong
Capital, Vol I • Chapter 1: The two factors of a commodity: use-value and value
Karl Marx
Capital, Vol II • Chapter 1: The Circuit of Money Capital
Karl Marx
