for context i originally sent this in a reply to this list of suggested readings for Marxism,. Alaskaball suggested i post it by itself as well so its more noticeable.

Interesting looking books (tho I have a bit of a vendetta against the prominence of young (and often unpublished/unfinished/wrong!) marx over old marx so im mildly annoyed by the lack of Capital), I'd like to add some more that touch on similar themes (and also stuff that is (to me at least) glaringly absent from this article written by a white settler in Treaty 7 territory (saying this as a white settler in Treaty 6 territory)). This isn't meant to be insulting or attacking Jacobson, afaik she does good work and I've heard good things about Alberta Advantage; it is simply me pointing out some theory that needs to be better known in order to get a better analysis of Capitalism towards the goal of ending it, along with (settler) colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism, ableism and every other form of oppression.

18th Brumaire isn't as problem riddled as the German Ideology articles (bc it is a work Marx was actually satisfied with and published), but I still think Capital is better to read (my autism and love of Marx will not allow me to leave this unsaid). Read Harvey's companion with it (he is good at Making the notoriously difficult first three chapters somewhat less horrible by bringing concrete stuff into the abstractions marx is setting up). But seriously read Capital. Marx worked for 30+ years on the damned thing and half his kids died in poverty during the research and then it went basically unnoticed and no one frigging read it its very sad. Marx worked very hard to make it as direct and complete as a work he could, and many of his theoretical positions there are different from earlier ones in large ways (especially bc Capital is the book he spent 2 decades painstakingly researching, 18th brumaire is before most of that.)

Also in addition (srsly read Capital it’s an amazing book absolutely god tier literally the greatest thing i’ve ever read) to Capital, if one is interesting in seeing how Marx analysed 'current events' a better source imo would be his Newspaper articles. Some of the ones in the Rheinisch Zeitung have theoretical importance, but the most interesting ones imo are his New York Tribune correspondence. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware there isn't actually a good compilation (the one I do know of is from the 70s and doesn't include some of the important later articles (like the ones where marx becomes increasingly anti-imperialism) from what I've heard) of particularly insightful articles, and Marx wrote a lot of them. Earlier ones have more issues than later ones, but the New York Tribune articles are where you will find him doing the most theorising wrt race, imperialism, colonialism, contemporary politics and the like.

One example of earlier ones having issues is the 1853 article about India where Marx argues (in spite of all the attrocities and brutalities he documents) that British Imperialism in India is a progressive force (in the sense that Marx both views history as linear and he believes moving from India's former mode of production to capitalism is good because of this). By 1857(iirc, could be off by a year or two) Marx argues essentially the opposite point; Capitalism has been a regressive force in India, destroying their productive forces. In Capital, he transforms this point into the basis for the theory of the development of underdevelopment in imperialized states. All the articles (as well as almost everything else Marx and Engels wrote) can be found in the MECW which can be found on libgen (all 50 volumes are there afaik). Newspaper articles (and some other stuff) are volumes 12-23.