emphasizing the romantic heritage and modernist legacy of karl marxs writings, peter osborne presents marxs thought as a developing investigation into what it means, concretely, for humans to be practical historical beings. drawing upon passages from a wide range of marxs writings, and showing the links between them, osborne refutes the myth of marx as a reductively economistic thinker. what marx meant by materialism, communism and the critique of political economy was much richer and more original, philosophically, than is generally recognized. with the renewed globalization of capitalism since 1989, osborne argues, marxs analyses of the consequences of commodification are more relevant today than ever before. extracts are taken from the full breadth of marxs writings, from his student notebooks on epicurean philosophy, via the economic and philosophical manuscripts and the communist manifesto to capital.editorial: granta books children"s