Announcing a release of an English translation of Marta Harnecker’s Los conceptos fundamentales del materialismo histórico, or The Elementary Concepts of Historical Materialism in English. This book has a history as a very important part of the education of Marxists in Latin America.

This is a project I’ve been working on for some months for political education in East Bay DSA, and is now in a “done enough” state to share more broadly.

The book is a nice primer on some of the fundamental concepts of Marxism (as the title promises). Each chapter ends with review and discussion questions, so it’s well-suited to pedagogical applications. It is sometimes a bit rigid and deterministic, but I think it is a great starting point for someone interested in the science of how to change the world for the better.

I used an English translation that was originally published in some Marxist magazines (I believe “Theoretical Review” and possibly “Radical History Review” in the 70s).

This version features

• nicely typeset PDF and EPUB versions of the text, complete with footnotes and links
• links to English language versions of cited texts when possible, and citations updated to refer to the page numbers of popular English edition of texts when possible
• a translation of the previously untranslated appendix on surplus value
• a swanky new cover illustration by yours truly

There is also have a partial translation of the chapter on “Transition” from the 1984 version of the book, which should be complete soon.

Please submit any errors encountered as issues on GitHub.