This collection includes texts by Henryk Grossman that are primarily concerned with economic theory: monographs, articles, essays, letters and manuscript material. Many have never been published in English before, some in any language. The first in four volumes of Grossman’s works, it provides the basis for a deeper understanding of Grossman’s contributions to Marxist economic theory and critique of bourgeois economics. Rick Kuhn’s introduction explains the contexts in which the texts were written and establishes their contemporary relevance.

This volume contains Marxist economist Henryk Grossman’s valuable political texts written when he was a leader of a revolutionary organisation of Jewish workers, then a member of the Communist Workers Party of Poland and later a Marxist academic.

A classic work in the Marxist canon on political economy

Henryk Grossman's substantial essays highlight vital but still neglected aspects of Marx's economic theory

The rise of capitalism to global dominance is still largely associated – by both laypeople and Marxist historians – with the industrial capitalism that made its decisive breakthrough in 18th century Britain. Jairus Banaji’s new work reaches back centuries and traverses vast distances to argue that this leap was preceded by a long era of distinct “commercial capitalism”, which reorganised labor and production on a world scale to a degree hitherto rarely appreciated. Rather than a picture centred solely on Europe, we enter a diverse and vibrant world. Banaji reveals the cantons of Muslim merchants trading in Guangzhou since the eighth century, the 3,000 European traders recorded in Alexandria in 1216, the Genoese, Venetians and Spanish Jews battling for commercial dominance of Constantinople and later Istanbul. We are left with a rich and global portrait of a world constantly in motion, tied together and increasingly dominated by a pre-industrial capitalism. The rise of Europe to world domination, in this view, has nothing to do with any unique genius, but rather a distinct fusion of commercial capitalism with state power.

A must-read polemic about why the 'recovery' from the 2007-08 crash mostly benefited the 1%, and how democratic socialism can save us from a new crash and climate catastrophe. For decades, it has been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. In the decade leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, booming banks, rising house prices and cheap consumer goods propped up living standards in the rich world. Thirty years of rocketing debt and financial wizardry had masked the deep underlying fragility of finance-led growth, and in 2008 we were forced to pay up. The decade since has witnessed all kinds of morbid symptoms, as all around the rich world, wages and productivity are stagnant, inequality is rising, and ecological systems are collapsing. Stolen is a history of finance-led growth and a guide as to how we might escape it. We've sat back as financial capitalism has stolen our economies, our environment and even the future itself. Now, we have an opportunity to change course. What happens next is up to us.

Henryk Grossman is a name most socialists or students of political and social theory - let alone the mass of working people around the world - have probably never heard of. Yet Grossman, a Polish Jew born in 1881, deserves recognition as the most sophisticated defender of Karl Marx's theory of capitalism's inevitable collapse. With capitalism sinking into its deepest ever crisis, Grossman's neglected work must be revisited and popularised. Is capitalism entering its final breakdown?

Winner of the 2011 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize. The essays collected here straddle four decades of work in both historiography and Marxist theory, combining source-based historical work in a wide range of languages with sophisticated discussion of Marx's categories. Key themes include the distinctions that are crucial to restoring complexity to the Marxist notion of a 'mode of production'; the emergence of medieval relations of production; the origins of capitalism; the dichotomy between free and unfree labour; and essays in agrarian history that range widely from Byzantine Egypt to 19th-century colonialism. The essays demonstrate the importance of reintegrating theory with history and of bringing history back into historical materialism. An introductory chapter ties the collection together and shows how historical materialists can develop an alternative to Marx's 'Asiatic mode of production'.

The first comprehensive English-language Grossman biography

In Polish Marxism after Luxemburg, Jan Toporowski and leading experts offer a unique and insightful overview of Polish political economic ideas since the early 20th century, building an introduction to some key themes and figurehead political economists.