The Last Years of Karl Marx: A new reading group

An Intellectual Biography by Marcello Musto

an eight-week reading and discussion group with The Capital Studies Group of The MEP

In the last years of his life, Karl Marx expanded his research in new directions—studying recent anthropological discoveries, analyzing communal forms of ownership in pre-capitalist societies, supporting the populist movement in Russia, and expressing critiques of colonial oppression in India, Ireland, Algeria, and Egypt. Between 1881 and 1883, he also traveled beyond Europe for the first and only time. Focusing on these last years of Marx’s life, this book dispels two key misrepresentations of his work: that Marx ceased to write late in life, and that he was a Eurocentric and economic thinker fixated on class conflict alone.

With The Last Years of Karl Marx, Marcello Musto claims a renewed relevance for the late work of Marx, highlighting unpublished or previously neglected writings, many of which remain unavailable in English. Readers are invited to reconsider Marx’s critique of European colonialism, his ideas on non-Western societies, and his theories on the possibility of revolution in non-capitalist countries. From Marx’s late manuscripts, notebooks, and letters emerge an author markedly different from the one represented by many of his contemporary critics and followers alike.

MARCELLO MUSTO is Associate Professor of Sociology at York University. His most recent books are Another Marx: Early Manuscripts to the International (2018) and, as editor, The Marx Revival: Key Concepts and New Critical Interpretations (2020).

All events and classes at The MEP are sliding scale. In addition, no one is every denied participation because of inability to pay. If you are unable to contribute to offset our costs at this time, please write to info@marxedproject to receive codes for entrance to this session or any other activity you would like to attend.

The special book and class offers are for US and Puerto Rico only as the books are sent via Media Mail with the US Post Office.