Intent on letting the reader experience the pleasure and intellectual stimulation in reading classic authors, the How to Read series will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. Emphasizing the Romantic heritage and modernist legacy of Karl Marxβs writings, Peter Osborne presents Marxβs thought as a developing investigation into what it means, concretely, for humans to be practical historical beings. Drawing on passages from a wide range of Marxβs writings, and showing the links among them, Osborne refutes the myth of Marx as a reductively economistic thinker. What Marx meant by βmaterialism,β βcommunism,β and the βcritique of political economyβ was much richer and more original, philosophically, than is generally recognized. With the renewed globalization of capitalism since 1989, Osborne argues, Marxβs analyses of the consequences of commodification are more relevant today than ever before. Extracts are taken from the full breadth of Marxβs writings, including Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy, the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and The Communist Manifesto to Capital.