>>2547119I like the attempt at a super thoro reading list, but this one has some serious flaws. Here is my by no means exhaustive critique:
* The Holy Family in tier 1. Da fuq? This is the single most esoteric work by Marx and Engels I have read. There's some interesting stuff in there about the 1789 French Revolution etc., but most of the book was written for a select circle of 1840s philosophy postgrads. Seriously, just try reading chapter 1.
* The Jewish Question is actually readable, but likewise does not belong in tier 1
* Theses on Feuerbach is good but really needs a companion piece to make any sense to beginners. I recommend what Engels wrote for that purpose:
Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Put it after
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Engels thought that those two were good enough to preclude publishing The German Ideology and The Holy Family.
* Move Wage Labour and Capital and Value, Price and Profit to Tier 1; move Marx's 1844 manuscripts to Tier 3 or scrap (important but written in Hegelese)
Utopian Socialism:
* I'm not well versed in this subject, but I know for sure that Adam Smith and David Ricardo do not belong there.
Orthodox Marxism:
Here is something I am well versed on. Immediately the Plekhanov piece in tier 1 stands out to me - I haven't read it, but I don't get the impression it was a canonical work at all? Maybe not even in Russia, but certainly not in the rest of the world.
* Why so much Daniel DeLeon? Again a figure I've neglected, but the fact that his name is mispelled "DeLion" doesn't bode well.
Your Kautsky selection could be a lot better:
* Tier 1 really deserves
The Historic Accomplishment of Karl Marx. It's damn good on its own merits, but IMO it's also the perfect introduction to how Second International era "orthodoxy" approached political strategy and programmatic unity (contra today's "vanguard parties"). Also, it's the original source of the "German philosophy, English economics, and French socialism" dictum that's typically attributed to Lenin.
* Next to the actual Erfurt Program, add Kautsky's wildly popular semi-official commentary on it: published in English as
The Class Struggle. The translation is a bit weak, but it remains a good agitational introduction to Marxian economics and is an overlooked foundational text on the concept of the "lumpenproletiat".
* Foundations of Christianity is a fun read, but if you want something that teaches you something about Orthodox Marxism, I'd sub it in for
The Social Revolution, another wildly popular work for its time that provides the canonical view of what a socialist revolution and the socialization of industry would look like. This is another work with a shoddy translation; the later 1903 translation is superior tho.
* For Rosa Luxemburg, I'd dump The Accumulation of Capital (another work which is well known but extremely difficult to read) and sub it in for
The Socialist Crisis in France, an engaging work about revolutionary strategy and the need to reject coalition with pro-capitalist parties. Her pamphlet
The Mass Strike should also be here somewhere, although there she becomes less orthodox (maybe for a "mass action left" reading list?)
* Finally, we need some Wilhelm Liekbnecht in here somewhere - a huge, huge, huge influence on Orthodox Marxist political strategy who has sadly been overshadowed by his martyred son. I happen to think that this lecture is one of the fastest possible overviews of SPD political strategy for tier 1:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-w/1896/06/essex-lecture.html* Secondly, we need his
No Compromise, No Political Trading in here somewhere. This is another semi-canonical work (to which Lenin wrote a forward) which I know made a MASSIVE impact on the Socialist Party of America:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-w/1899/nocomp/index.htm* Thirdly, I happen to like the
Voices of Revolt collection of his speeches, which are both a good intro to how Orthodox Marxists worked in parliament and just rousing propaganda in their own right. Another pick for tier 1. See:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/liebknecht-w/revolt/index.htmlWew, I wrote a lot more that I expected. Hope this helps