彼得·奥斯本（Peter Osborne ），伦敦密德萨斯大学（Middlesex University）的现代欧洲哲学教授，同时还是期刊《激进哲学》（Radical Philosophy）的编辑。他的著作包括《时间的政治》（The Politics of Time）、《文化理论中的哲学》（Philosophy in Cultural Theory ）和《概念艺术》（Conceptual Art）。他还是三卷本《瓦尔特·本雅明：文化理论中的批判性评估》（Walter Benjamin: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory）的编辑。

Intent on letting the reader experience the pleasure and intellectual stimulation in reading classic authors, the How to Read series will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. Emphasizing the Romantic heritage and modernist legacy of Karl Marx’s writings, Peter Osborne presents Marx’s thought as a developing investigation into what it means, concretely, for humans to be practical historical beings.

Drawing on passages from a wide range of Marx’s writings, and showing the links among 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, Marx’s analyses of the consequences of commodification are more relevant today than ever before.

Extracts are taken from the full breadth of Marx’s writings, including Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy , the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts , and The Communist Manifesto to Capital .