Alan Ryan captures both the philosophical complexities and the practical limits of the political thought of Karl Marx, a man whose revolutionary ideas held sway over not just the lives of millions living in Communist countries but also a generation of academics and intellectuals. Ryan examines Marx’s writing, not within the framework of Lenin or Tolstoy, but within its own time, tracing its Hegelian roots and providing a sterling explication and critique of his theories of alienation, class struggle, and revolution. Placing Marx into the framework of everyday politics is never easy, but this one volume provides the clearest, most accessible introduction to Marx’s theories in recent years.Excerpted here are The Communist Manifesto, The Eighteenth Brumaire Louis Napoleon, Critique of the Gotha Programme, and Civil War in France.