The post-crash era, political polarisation and tech revolution have revived big ideas. Marxism is pivotal to leftwing thought, so here are some books to help understand it

The global financial crisis of 2008 was the catalyst for a number of trends whose endpoints remain uncertain. One is a continuing crisis of the economic system: previous growth levels have never recovered, particularly in Europe, while wages have stagnated and living standards fallen. Home ownership is declining in both Britain and the United States, with labour markets everywhere increasingly precarious.

Another factor is the reemergence of political polarisation. In 2011, Time magazine’s Person of the Year was “The Protester”. While dissent was primarily limited to the streets for several years – including the Arab spring and the Occupy movement – it would ultimately underpin the rise of politicians whose radicalism and popular appeal were previously unimaginable. Step forward Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders.

In the background was a revolution in technology and media consumption. Over the last decade, more than 1bn iPhones have been sold, while a project started in a Harvard dorm – Facebook – is now the world’s most successful media company. Those changes, fused with a transformed political environment, have signalled the return of big ideas – and in unexpected ways. While on the right we’ve seen the rise of the online “manosphere” and the “alt-right”, on the left there has been the unexpected revival of a thinker whose legacy endures even after 150 years: Karl Marx.

In a world increasingly short on answers, Marx’s work always implores us to challenge our own assumptions

For a generation of activists and academics their first real engagement with Capital, was via the freely available video lectures of David Harvey’s course at City University of New York. As an additional primer, Harvey wrote his Companion to Marx’s Capital in 2010. A touchstone text for newcomers to Marxist thought, it is the intellectual basis for the more radical elements of left movements in the UK and US.

If Harvey is a good way to become acquainted with Marxist economics, Francis Wheen’s Karl Marx allows the reader to situate his output within the context of 19th-century Europe. While far from politically sympathetic, the biography is informative and light, humanising a figure diminished for much of the last 100 years.

The Condition of the Working Class in England, written by Friedrich Engels in the early 1840s, is based on personal observations in Manchester, where he was a successful industrialist. It would influence Marx when they finally met in 1844. For a glimpse of the city that would shape Marx’s mental landscape like no other, and which last year erected a statue to his friend and patron, it remains a vital point of reference.

Even when his political conclusions were ignored, or viewed as confounded by events, Marx’s contribution to history remained widely recognised. The German Ideology, at more than 700 pages, is the definitive text. Fortunately, a much shorter version, published by Lawrence & Wishart, will suffice.

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It was because of his historical method that Louis Althusser once wrote of Marx’s similarity to Thales and Galileo. Like them, he had “discovered” a new continent for intellectual exploration. Just as Thales unearthed mathematics and Galileo astronomy, he viewed Marx as responsible for revealing history not as the result of fortune, providence or the deeds of great individuals, but the unfolding of a material process that shapes our actions and is, in turn, shaped by human agency. Much modern historical analysis rests on such conclusions, from the “archeology” of Foucault to the world-systems theory of Immanuel Wallerstein. It is the work of Silvia Federici, particularly her Caliban and the Witch, that is perhaps most rewarding. Examining the witch trials prevalent across much of early modern Europe, her Marxist-feminist approach allows us to better understand the intimate relationship between modern patriarchy, the rise of the nation state and the transition from feudalism to capitalism.

In a world increasingly defined by political chaos, economic volatility and which is short on answers – Marx’s work always implores us to challenge our own assumptions while thinking, and acting, big. He may have been born 200 years ago, but his key insights – a materialist view of history and a grasp of capitalism as an inherently limited system – remain invaluable. And dangerous.

• Aaron Bastani’s Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto will be published by Verso.