What Chris said. And, if you're looking for the text of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, try Lucio Colletti's Early Writings, from Penguin, which also contains such good things as a superior translation of Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right and some excellent excerpts from Marx's notebook commentaries on the political economy of James Mill. (And if you need to look something up and don't have a printed copy at hand, don't forget the quite remarkable Marxists Internet Archive (at http://www.marxists.org.)

posted by markell at 2:45 pm (EST) on Feb 14, 2007

Depends what you're interested in. I quite like the 3-volume Penguin Classics series of political writings (called "The Revolutions of 1848", "Surveys from Exile" and "The First International and After", if memory serves), which are nicely put together. And when you say "Collected Works", which edition do you mean? (The "Collected Works" usually refers to the 50-volume edition, but if you'd read those, then you wouldn't need further recommendations.) If you've read through the McLellan selections, it is quite good to supplement them with an old 1- or 2-volume Moscow edition of Marx Engels Selected Works, partly because those editions tend to reprint in full the texts from which McLellan excerpts, and it really is worth reading The 18th Brumaire, Civil War in France, etc. in full. Oh, and the first volume of Capital is, of course, essential.

posted by chrisbrooke at 1:05 pm (EST) on Feb 14, 2007

Don't worry about finding a place to keep them. There's always room for another bookshelf, that's what I say!

posted by markell at 10:08 am (EST) on Feb 12, 2007