What to read after Karl Marx?

"The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx sits atop a larger body of work which forms Marx's philosophy. Beyond the manifesto, Marx has been extremely influential in the areas of philosophy, psychology, ethics, aesthetics as well as the more obvious areas such as political economy. "The Communist Manifesto" is a consequence, then, of a much more complex philosophical analysis of his times. Readers continue to be amazed at how clearly Marx wrote and what an effective piece of propaganda "The Communist Manifesto" was and still is. Reading through Marx's ideas, it is fascinating to know that some of the major platforms he promoted included the abolition of child labor, the creation of a progressive income tax, and free education. The modern notion of Communism stems more from Stalin and Lenin than Marx, who wrote at a time when the only democratic country in Europe was France. England, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire all had limited franchises and Russia was an autocracy. One of the major reforms Karl Marx battled for was the introduction of democracy. It was his belief that the implementation of his program would flow from that. Communism as a modern political phenomena dates from 1917 when splinter Social Democrats followed Russia's lead and developed small conspiratorial parties who were committed to the seizure of power by force. Stalinism is an offshoot of this system and is a form of state terror aimed at ensuring the survival of unpopular anti democratic regimes. Reading through "The Communist Manifesto," one can see a system which was not only an effective for mobilizing political movements, but came to influence intellectual debate for the next century.