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Econophysics[5]:

  1. Sustainable Development Outlook 2019: UN report on economic inequality (Chapter 1) and how to address it (Chapter 4)[3].

  2. Introduction to Political Economy Course (Paul Singer): A quick introductory course on economics.

  3. Philosophy of Econophysics: What econophysics is, from a philosophical perspective[6].

  4. Complexity Economics: What econophysics is, from an economist’s perspective.

  5. Statistical Laws in Complex Systems: On the use of statistical laws in the study of complex systems (Chapter 1).

  6. An Introduction to Agent-Based Modeling: Why to use it and what an agent-based model is (Chapters 0 and 1).

  7. Classical Econophysics: Evolution of value theory (Chapter 6), money and credit (Chapter 11), banking (Chapter 12), profit (Chapter 14), and the issue of economic calculation (Chapter 15)[1].

  8. Monetary Economics from an Econophysics Perspective: A conceptual discussion of some economic aspects of typical econophysics models.

  9. Statistical Mechanics Approach to Econophysics: Encyclopedia entry on econophysics, mainly covering Yakovenko’s model[7].

  10. Social Architecture of Capitalism: Main model of the social architecture of capitalism[2].

  11. The Emergence of the Law of Value in a Dynamic Simple Commodity Economy: Probabilistic approach to the law of value.

  12. Laws of Chaos - A Probabilistic Approach to Political Economy: A probabilistic approach Economy.

  13. How Labor Powers the Global Economy and: A probabilistic approach to labor theory in capitalism.

  14. Some Universal Patterns in Income Distribution: An Econophysics Approach: A work on inequality by one of a influential economist.

Marxism:

I think relatively short and basic readings are “Basic Principles of Communism” and “The Communist Manifesto.” There are also “Wages, Price, and Profit” and “Critique of the Gotha Program,” which I like. The first helps you understand that it’s not about fair wages, and the second helps you understand a basic proposal of how communism would work. They are old, but they give you an idea of what Marx thought. German Ideology, in some editions, can also be interesting, especially the first part, where we can get a comprehensive view of the communist ideal. I like the Expressão Popular edition.

If you want some longer reads, I would go for “Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism: A Primer” by Sison and the book translated by Luna, “The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism.” The first discusses the main components of Marxism at an introductory and relatively modern level. The second focuses on dialectical materialism, also as a follow-up to this book, the same series released a second volume titled “Historical Materialism,” which addresses the topic indicated in the title. Perhaps Singer’s “Introduction to Political Economy” would be interesting to get a foundation in economics. I also read Coggiola’s “Marxist Economic Theory: An Introduction.” I think any of them would work, while the former addresses economics in a more general way, the latter is more focused on Marxist economics.

I don’t read much history, but I found Ellen Wood’s “The Origin of Capitalism” interesting. Knowing how capitalism arose helps to understand what capitalism is. And finally, I have my beloved “Anti-Duhring”. I like the Boitempo version because of a note by Netto. This is considered a milestone in the foundation of Marxism-Leninism. Other short reads to round things off are “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy” and the preface and review (by Engels) for “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”. An interesting complementary book is “Towards a New Socialism” by Cockshott, which proposes how a communist society could be organized.

Finally, this is not a reading suggestion, but the University of São Paulo (USP) offers an interesting course on the theory of history that explores Hegel’s and Marx’s views on the history of humanity, their similarities and differences.

Footnotes

  1. Econophysics really starts at item 3, and if you want to go straight into doing econophysics, it’s item 7. But sometimes you might want to read something related to learn some economics, understand if inequality is a problem, or even something more philosophical about what econophysics is.

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  2. Another well-known report is produced by UBS; data is also available in the World Inequality Database and in Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

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  3. Another interesting paper on the subject is Econophysics for philosophers.

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  4. Chapters 7 and 8 are based on topics explored in the paper Monetary Economics from an Econophysics Perspective. Chapter 9 in the paper The Emergence of the Law of Value in a Dynamic Simple Commodity Economy. Chapter 10 in the books How Labor Powers the Global Economy and Laws of Chaos: A Probabilistic Approach to Political Economy. Chapter 13 in Social Architecture of Capitalism.

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  5. Another paper that also covers the subject in an encyclopedic manner, including the econophysics perspective on money, is Colloquium: Statistical mechanics of money, wealth, and income.

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  6. Other works related to this paper include Inequality in a Model of Capitalist Economy, Agent-Based Models, Macroeconomic Scaling Laws and Sentiment Dynamics, Implicit Microfoundations for Macroeconomics, and Exploring the Social-Architecture Model.

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References
  1. Wright, I. (2008). The Emergence of the Law of Value in a Dynamic Simple Commodity Economy. Review of Political Economy, 20(3), 367–391. 10.1080/09538250701661889
  2. Isaac, A. G. (2018). Exploring the Social-Architecture Model. Eastern Economic Journal, 45(4), 565–589. 10.1057/s41302-018-0114-9
Appendix
Inequality report