Jon Elster

In the preface the author outlines his view of the philosophy of science which, he says, underlies the essays of this book. It's an interesting set of ideas which covers the social sciences and biology and even touches a little bit upon the physical sciences. But these essays have been written independently of each other and this greatly reduces the overall coherence of the book. The guiding philosophical ideas presented in the preface are completely lost for long stretches of the book when show more the author delves into game theory. But it is nevertheless a pleasure to read an author who exhibits such a wide range of learning across different disciplines and distills the key part of complex arguments into a clear conclusion. I particularly liked the argument that there is no place for functional explanation in the social sciences. The author provides a nice formalization of the criteria that a true functional explanation would have to meet. show less

The theory part of Marx. Most people don't go past Das Kapital or The Communist Manifesto, but this book takes writings from Marx's theoretical work, and presents its in lieu of its importance. The readings form this have popped up numerous times in my study in political theory and history.

A very dry discussion of social order based on rational choice theory and some other theories whose names I can't recollect. I suppose there might be some truth beneath all this theorizing, but in general the abstract nature of the arguments turned my interest off. I can only recommend this book to social theory enthusiasts.

This volume contains a selection of Karl Marx's most important writings, organized thematically under eight headings: methodology, alienation, economics, exploitation, historical materialism, classes, politics, and ideology. Jon Elster provides a brief introduction to each selection to explain its context and its place in Marx's argument. The volume is designed as a companion to Elster's An Introduction to Karl Marx and the thematic structure of each book is the same. But the Reader can also show more stand on its own and offers the student a substantial and revealingly organized selection of the crucial texts needed to understand and assess Marx's views. show less