Reddit reviews Karl Marx: Selected Writings, 2nd Edition

For people who appear new to communism I've tended to recommend the following. They're all basic, short, fairly uncontroversial amongst Marxists, and available for free on the web.

Principles of Communism - Engels
Outlines basic concepts.

Communist Manifesto - Marx and Engels
You've already read it.

State and Revolution - Lenin
Explains the basic ideas of... well, the state and the revolution. I'd say this was probably the book I found most useful in my early days.

Wage Labour and Capital - Marx and Engels
A basic introduction to Marxist economics.

Beyond that, I found McLellan's 'Marx: Selected Writings' to be really good. It's the only Selected Writings book I've read so I can't compare it to others, but I'd definately recommend it if you want to go straight to the source and see what Marx thought on a wide variety of topics (which is something I'd doubly recommend before jumping into a lot of 'what I think Marx said' books from others).

David McLellan's commentary/anthology, The Thought of Karl Marx is arguably the best short one volume approach to Marx.

> This text provides the basic elements necessary for a grasp of the range and complexity of Marx's ideas. The first half of the book is a chronological account of Marx's ideas with a miniumum of biographical and historical detail. The second half is thematic and provides a concise summary of Marx's position, and extracts from his key texts on alienation, historical materialism, labour, class, the party, the state, revolution and future Communist society.

McLellan also wrote the most widely read biography of Karl Marx, and an all-you-need anthology.