Was Marx himself a ‘Marxist’? What is ‘dialectical materialism’ or the ‘superstructure’? Did Lenin and Stalin betray Marx and his ideas?

Along with Freud and Darwin, Karl Marx was among the most influential thinkers of the late 19th century. Yet Marx inspired not only revolutions in people’s minds, but colossal political upheavals, radically transforming the lives of many millions of people and the geopolitical map of the entire world.

Introducing Marxism provides a fundamental account of Marx’s original philosophy, its roots in 19th-century European thinkers like Hegel, and his radical economic and social criticism of capitalism. It assesses Marxism’s Russian disciples, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, who forged a ruthless, dogmatic Communism, and the alternative Marxist approaches of Gramsci, the Frankfurt School of critical theory and the structuralist Marxism of Althusser in the 1960s.

Rupert Woodfin and Oscar Zarate’s brilliant graphic guide explores the life, history, philosophy and politics of this most divisive of thinkers, and argues that Marxism remains a powerful set of ideas even today.