Series: ten socialist classics

SocialistWorker.org writers introduce 10 of the most important writings by leading thinkers in the revolutionary socialist tradition.
  • Karl Marx and Frederick Engels provided an overall theory to help explain history, how to fight for justice today and the possibility of a better future. March 21, 2008

  • Frederick Engels' pamphlet provided a popular account of the origin of socialist ideas and the Marxist view of history. April 11, 2008

  • Frederick Engels provides a materialist analysis of the rise of class society and, with it, the roots of women's oppression. May 12, 2008

  • The modern Marxist theory of the state owes its existence to the 1871 struggle of the Paris Communards, who taught people that workers can run society. June 9, 2008

  • Rosa Luxemburg's book, written after the 1905 revolution in Russia, shows how "economic" issues can be the catalyst for "political" demands. June 13, 2008

  • Rosa Luxemburg’s book was the first major work to take up a critical issue that divided the socialist movement—and does still to this day. July 8, 2008

  • Lenin's classic work takes up the nature of the capitalist state and the question of how workers' power can be organized. July 22, 2008

  • All too often, accounts of Lenin’s 1902 booklet What Is to Be Done? remove it from its political and historical context. September 29, 2008

  • Lenin showed how colonial expansion and imperialist rivalry were rooted in profound changes in the nature of capitalism. December 2, 2008

  • Leon Trotsky's theory explained how the working-class struggle for socialism could develop in countries that were economically backward. July 15, 2009