The Philosophy of Marx

Providing a lucid and accessible introduction to Marx, complete with pedagogical boxes, a chronology and guides to further reading, Etienne Balibar makes the most difficult areas of his philosophy easy to understand. One of the most influential French philosophers to have emerged from the 1960s, Balibar brings a lifetime of study and expertise to create a brilliantly concise portrait of Marx that will initiate the student and intrigue the scholar.

He examines all the key areas of Marx's writings, including his early works, The Communist Manifesto, The German Ideology and Capital, explaining their wider historical and theoretical context. Making clear such concepts as class struggle, ideology, humanism, progress, determinism, commodity fetishism and the state, Balibar includes brief yet incisive biographical studies of key Marxists such as Althusser, Gramsci, Engels and Lenin.

The Philosophy of Marx will become the standard guide to Marx's thought.

The only guide to Marx that the student and scholar will need.

Étienne Balibar is a French Marxist philosopher and the most celebrated student of Louis Althusser. He is also one of the leading exponents of French Marxist philosophy and the author of Spinoza and Politics, The Philosophy of Marx and co-author of Race, Nation and Class and Reading Capital.