Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective

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There may still be disagreement about the threat to human survival posed by society's environmental impacts, but no one can doubt that individual eco-systems and the global biosphere are both increasingly shaped by human production and consumption. This book shows that Marx's treatment of natural conditions possesses an inner logic, coherence, and analytical power which has not been previously recognized. The power of Marx's approach stems from his consistent treatment of human production in terms of the mutual constitution of its social form and material content. While recognizing that production is structured by historically developed relations among producers, Marx also insists that production as a social and material process is shaped and constrained by natural conditions, including the natural condition of human bodily existence. Paul Burkett shows that it is Marx's overriding concern with human emancipation that impels him to approach nature from the standpoint of materialist history, sociology, and critical political economy.

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This book shows that Marx's treatment of natural conditions possesses an inner logic, coherence, and analytical power which has not been previously recognized. The power of Marx's approach stems from his consistent treatment of human production in terms of the mutual constitution of its social form and material content.

While recognizing that production is structured by historically developed relations among producers, Marx also insists that production as a social and material process is shaped and constrained by natural conditions, including the natural condition of human bodily existence.

Paul Burkett shows that it is Marx's overriding concern with human emancipation that impels him to approach nature from the standpoint of materialist history, sociology, and critical political economy.

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Lacks political basis

The Human Side of Citizen Marx .

Let us now praise famous ragamuffins!

Top Marx

Disappointing, and deeply so

Karl Marx: A Life
Francis Wheen
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 039304923X

Amazon.com

Karl Marx, whose influence on modern times has been compared to that of Jesus Christ, spent most of his lifetime in obscurity. Penniless, exiled in London, estranged from relations, and on the run from most of the police forces of Europe, his ambitions as a revolutionary were frequently thwarted, and his major writings on politics and economics remained unpublished (in some cases until after the Second World War). He has not lacked biographers, but even the most distinguished have been more interested in the evolution of his ideas than any other aspect of his life. Francis Wheen's fresh, lively, and moving biography of Marx considers the whole man--brain, beard, and the rest of his body. Unencumbered by ideological point scoring, this is a very readable, humorous, and sympathetic account. Wheen has an ear for juicy gossip and an eye for original detail. Marx comes across as a hell-raising bohemian, an intellectual bully, and a perceptive critic of capitalist chaos, but also a family man of Victorian conformity (personally vetting his daughters' suitors), Victorian ailments (carbuncles above all), and Victorian weaknesses (notably alcohol, tobacco, and, on occasion, his housekeeper). But there is great pathos, too, as Marx witnessed the deaths of four of his six children. For those readers who feel Marxism has given Marx a bad name, this is a rewarding and enlightening book. --Miles Taylor, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

Paradox and passion were the animating spirits of Karl Marx's life, which often reads like a novel by Laurence Sterne or George Eliot. "Imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, and Hegel fused into one person," said a contemporary, "and you have Dr. Marx." In this stunning book, the first major biography of Marx since the end of the Cold War, Francis Wheen gives us not a socialist ogre but a fascinating, ultimately humane man. Marx's marriage to Jenny von Westphalen, whose devotion was tested by decades of poverty and exile, is as affecting a love story offered by history, while his friendship with Friedrich Engels is by turns hilarious and inspiring. Wheen does not, however, shy away from Marx's work. Was he, as his detractors have claimed, a self-hating Jew? What did Marx really mean by his famous line, "Religion is the opiate of the masses"? Is Capital deserving of the ridicule with which modern-day economists have dismissed it? Marx lived both at the center and on the fringes of his age. He also changed the world. With Karl Marx, Francis Wheen has written a hugely entertaining biography of one of history's most unforgettable players.

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Lacks political basis.......2007-01-19

Wheen tries to follow a current fashion and divorce the man and the politics. This is often done to Marxists because authors don't want to show what the theory of Marxism is. In the his introduction to Trotsky's autobiography, Joeseph Hanson makes a statement that could very well apply to Marx, too. "To make a truthful film of Trotsky requires taking him as a political figure, but not the kind characteristic of the bourgeois world of today. He was of a different kind-commited, like a great artist, to presenting a faithful reflection of his times, or, moe accurately, a scientist who has become convinced that the main problem facing mankind is to change the framework of our times, to end the agonizing epoch of warring classes and to replace it with a society built on the foundation of a rationally planned economy. He could be pictured truthfully as a tribune and fighter preoccupyed with constructing the organization required to win socialism on a world scale. To make a film of Trotsky in which all this is cast aside is like presenting Pierre and Marie Curie without their drive to discover the secret of radioactivity or the drudgery of fracinating huge amonts of pitchblende in order to isolate the mysterious substances, polonium and radium; or a "drama" of Loius Pasteur without his passionate interest in bacteriology and the painstaking laboratory work he engaged in against the advice of well-meaning friends who sought to persuade him not to waste his valuable time on chimerical and insoluble problems."
Marx's writing on the Civil War In France and others show that he was indeed interested and active in the politics of his time. The Communst Manifesto actually grew out of his work with the international. Any revolutionary will tell you: It's not about the men, it's about the IDEAS. Revolutions, down-swings, life of a revolutionary revolves around the smell of a fresh print. The man and the idea become bound together flesh and blood, and to seperate Marx from his ideas is to cut off his greatness, leaving a messy bookworm in Soho, London.

The Human Side of Citizen Marx . .......2006-09-20

If you want the best inside look of the man,Karl Marx, this is it.There are no weighty theories or politicial axioms edified in this cornerstone book.One book-example given is of Marx's young daughter,Eleanor,giving him a personal quiz.What is your favorite colour? (Answer-)Red! What is your favorite past-time? (Answer-)Book-Worming! etc.etc.
Years later,after Eleanor got into a tense arguement with her husband ,she committed suicide.Gray-haired Marx ,the rebarbative rebel and Mary Burns the Irish red-head firebrand, had a son together,who later become an auto mechanic. -Yet,Marx was a sinecure thinker,thanks to Engles.Marx rather liked to play the part of the agent provocateur.He miasmatically smoked black cigars ,lazily reading the afternoon London newspapers,on his Soho couch. He was an arm-chair philosopher,and not an active participant in storming the governmental offices of repression.This book is the best personal portrait of a very complex and mysterious historical thinker .An excellent biograghy !

Let us now praise famous ragamuffins!.......2002-12-24

As the reader below observed, this book was a chilling read. Marx was a very strange fellow and this reading this book felt like surveying the scene of a car accident. It hurts to continue but one finds themselves so intrigued that they can hardly stop. For my part, I disagree thoroughly with just about every idea Marx had. Still, I thought it refreshing to read a biography of the man that objectively treated Marx as human first, ragamuffin later; Unlike the brief essay on him in Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals," which is meant only to slam Marx and infuriate the reader.

I took half a star away for the a-little-less-than-constant humor (or so the author thought.) At first it was mildly amusing, probably do to its gauche inapropriateness. After the first few chapters though, it became a nuisance. How about this one? "Like another Marx, Karl did not want to belong to any club that would have him as a member." PUKE!!

The other half star is deducted for a suggestion the author makes about three-quarters through, when discussing Das Kapital. He suggests that Marx did not mean Kapital to be a work of science, but a work of ART (he means this literally, not figuratively.) His evidence? Marx refered to Kapital as his "work of art" (my guess, this is metaphor). Also, the author argues, if Marx had already summed up the themes of Kapital in a speech a few years earlier (he did), then why did he write a 1000 page tome espousing the same ideas (he did). Honestly, with flimsy evidence like that, this claim looks utterly ridiculous - not to mention likely insulting to any Marxist or person who takes Marx seriously as a thinker. Enough to cost half a star.

Otherwise, this book is an unbiased, humanistic read that plays just like a novel. Marx, of course, is a far superior character than any author could ever devise and in the end, my bet is that whether you love or hate him, you will find yourselves modifying your opinion to ambivalence as Marx (the person, not the manifesto) is much too complicated to love or hate.

Top Marx.......2002-11-16

I would not have imagined that a biography of Karl Marx could be such an entertaining and interesting read. This was. Much more has been written about the 'ism' than the man. This is a fascinating insight into his life, his poverty, his exile, his contradictions as well as his thinking.

What was most noticeable was the remarkable loyalty of Engels - friend, ghost-writer and benefactor - who even became a stranger in a strange land (Capitalism) to help finance publication of Marx's ideas, often in the face of staggering procrastination by the latter.

This is a very readable account of the life and carbunkles of one of the last century's most influential figures.

Disappointing, and deeply so.......2002-10-08

Let's write a book about Karl Marx which wants to talk about the Man, rather than simply about the Ideas. Sounds great, right? Except that in Wheen's hands, the relationship of the life to the ideas and the ideas to the life are brutally banalized.

The opportunity to write a good biography obviously presented itself, but what we have instead is some charming personal biography by a man who does not grasp the smallest part of Marx's ideas nor any meaningful engagement with Marx's political activity.

This book is so lame on the theoretical level that one would think that Wheen spent too much time reading old Stalinist schoolbooks on Marx, avoiding any actual scholarly work, such as Debord, C.J. Arthur, the journals Common Sense and Capital and Class, the work of Lukacs, Korsch, Adorno, Horkheimer, Rubin, etc. Wheen's treatment of the politics is less than worthless and mars his obviously generous sentiment towards Marx the man because Wheen simply cannot grapple with Marx as a whole human being.

Instead, we are treated to tawdry discussions of Marx's 'psychologically induced illnesses' every time deadlines came due. And these are tawdry not for being uninteresting, but because we never get a sense of the juxtaposition between Marx the researcher (who happily spent a great deal of time in the London Library system) and Marx the writer who did not simply hate deadlines, but who struggled with the content and style of each line he wrote. We never get any sense of why Marx might be the single most influential thinker of the last 150 years.

I gave it two stars because I do not see Wheen as intentionally malicious, but as merely incompetent. In a world where malicious intent and lack of scholarly scruple towards Marx seems welcome, this is not the worst book ever written on the man, but certainly not one worth reading.

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Great Book for Sociology Theory Students

Living Theory: The Application of Classical Social Theory to Contemporary Life (2nd Edition)
Charles E. Hurst
Manufacturer: Allyn & Bacon
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Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

This book is provocative and current in the issues it addresses. Although the book presents substantial information on the core content of classical social theories, its focus is on the application of theoretical arguments to social distance and separation in the U.S. Hurst chose Marx, Durkheim, Simmel, and Weber as classical representatives. Readers will be interested in social theory if they can understand its relevance to what's happening in society today. This engaging new book does just that! Living Theory analyzes major features of modern society from the classical theory point of view, and suggests how postmodern qualities might be accounted for by this theory. Chapters focus on specific issues such as the conflict between the rights of individuals and their obligations to society, the Internet's influence on transforming private lives into public information, gated communities and racial ghettos, political corruption, treating individuals as commodities in the world of beauty, entertainment and medicine, and the growing discrepancies in economic resources between individuals and groups. For anyone interested in classical social theory and social problems.

Customer Reviews:

Great Book for Sociology Theory Students.......2003-08-04

This books is great for anyone who is taking an introduction to sociological theory course. Although I never ended up using the book for my paper, my group members did and said it was extremely helpful. Most professors ask students to apply classical theory to today, and this book is meant to facilitate just that! It's short and has a great index to find what you are looking for!

Karl Marx: The Story of His Life (Routledge Library Editions-Economics, 33)

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Karl Marx: The Story of His Life (Routledge Library Editions-Economics, 33)
Franz Mehring
Manufacturer: Routledge
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Binding: Hardcover

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First published in 1936

Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle With Modernity

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On the Origins of Dangerous Frauds

Ordeal of Civility: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss, and the Jewish Struggle With Modernity
John Murray Cuddihy
Manufacturer: Beacon Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0807036099

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On the Origins of Dangerous Frauds.......2003-12-16

The ordeal referred to in the title is the difficulty which Jews had, during and following their emancipation, with acquiring and practicing the civility, politeness and decorum of the greater Western culture into which they were trying to enter. Having formerly lived in villages, surrounded by family, friends and familiars, they were shocked to discover an urban life where just about everyone they met were strangers not only to them, but to each other. This required them to learn the stylized manners of an Emily Post (the part about Einstein encountering her book is hilarious), adopt polite speech, give up bargaining for fixed prices, and acquire the art of eating without crumbs gushing all over. This, according to Cuddihy, caused such a strain on their psyche, that they produced the "geniuses" displayed in the title in some sort of perverted, self-conscious retaliation.

This incredible thesis is made with all the seriousness of a professor, in the turgid prose of a good man, made nearly unintelligible by his contact with a Doctoral program of a major American university. I don't know whether the thesis is really true, but he puts up an astonishing amount of evidence for it.

The style of the book reads as if it was out of the middle of the 19th century, rather than three quarters of the way through the twentieth, peppered as it is by untranslated quotes and words from French, Latin, German and Yiddish, as well of those recently coined by the pseudo-scientists and deconstructionists who infest every university department of English today. References to hundreds of obscure works abound, and an intimate knowledge of the intellectual curiosities of the early twentieth century is required.

Book Description

First published over fifty years ago, Isaiah Berlin's compelling portrait of the father of socialism has long been considered a classic of modern scholarship and the best short account written of Marx's life and thought. It provides a penetrating, lucid, and comprehensive introduction to Marx as theorist of the socialist revolution, illuminating his personality and ideas, and concentrating on those which have historically formed the central core of Marxism as a theory and practice. Berlin goes on to present an account of Marx's life as one of the most influential and incendiary social philosophers of the twentieth century and depicts the social and political atmosphere in which Marx wrote. This edition includes a new introduction by Alan Ryan which traces the place of Berlin's Marx from its pre-World War II publication to the present, and elucidates why Berlin's portrait, in the midst of voluminous writings about Marx, remains the classic account of the personal and political side of this monumental figure.

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Interesting philosophy, but little biographical details.......2007-07-30

Because of the way my brain is wired, I take a lot more interest in the historical than I do in the philosophical. Even though Marx spent a good chunk of his life sequestered away in the reading room of the London Library, I still find the narrative details of his life fascinating: his banishment from one country to another, his participation in the 1848 revolutions, the numerous petty squabbles he had with other 19th century revolutionaries, his involvement in the politics of the International, and his last great fight against Bakunin.

It's always a struggle to find a good biography that focuses on the historical instead of on the philosophical. And after reading Isaiah Berlin's take on Marx's life, I am beginning to appreciate how good the biography by Francis Wheen was that I read this past summer.

Isaiah Berlin does a good job of summarizing Marx's life in under 300 pages, but most of the book lingers on Marx's philosophical development, with whole long chapters devoted to topics such as "The Young Hegelians" and "Historical Materialism." I would have preferred more emphasis on the narrative sections, but when reading a biography of a philosopher, I suppose it is hard to get away from the philosophy.

One thing Berlin does which I thought was very interesting was that he emphasized the paradoxes in Marx's legend. For example Marx lived during the age of romantic revolutions in which popular revolutionary figures like Herzen, Mazzini, Blanqui, and Lassalle commanded almost religious like followings. Marx spent most of his life in obscurity in the London library, and yet today his name is still known by almost everyone on the planet. Marx's central thesis, that historical material conditions and not ideas influence history, has been undercut by its very success.

Or how the German and Austrian communists, who followed Marx's advice about organizing from the bottom up, were eventually overwhelmed by the fascists, where as the Bolsheviks, who committed the most un-Marxist act of a revolutionary coup, was the first (and for a time the only) successful Marxist revolution.

Bakunin, as seems to be the case with any biography vaguely sympathetic towards Marx, comes off a bit badly here. I suppose that's to be expected. (When I was in my big anarchist phase at College, I used to read biography's about Bakunin in which Marx came off badly.)

There is no denying that Bakunin had his flaws. Anyone who has read any piece of analysis by Bakunin knows he didn't have the brilliance of Marx's pinky. He was a romantic without a clear ideology, and he didn't share Marx's horror for Revolutions that went off half-cocked with no chance of succeeding. And, as every biography of Marx makes clear, he was an anti-Semite.

And yet, he was right (well, not about the anti-Semite part). But history has shown all of Bakunin's criticisms of Marx to be true. And, to his credit, Isaiah Berlin does include some of Bakunin's extended quotations:
"We believe power corrupts those who wield it as much as those who are forced to obey it. Under its influence, some become greedy and ambitious tyrants, exploiting society in their own interest, or in that of their class, while others are turned into abject slaves. Intellectuals, positivists, doctrinaires, all those who put science before life...defend the idea of the state and its authority as being the only possible salvation of society-quite logically, since from their false premises that thought comes before life, that only abstract theory can form the starting-point of social practice...they draw the inevitable conclusion that since such theoretical knowledge is at present possessed by very few, these few must be put in control of social life, not only to inspire, but to direct all popular movements, and that no sooner is the revolution over than a new social organization must be at once be set up; not a free association of popular bodies...working in accordance with the needs and instincts of the people but a centralized dictatorial power concentrated in the hands of this academic minority, as if they really expressed the popular will....The difference between such revolutionary dictatorship and the modern State is only one of external trappings. In substance both are a tyranny of the minority over the majority in the name of the people-in the name of the stupidity of the many and the superior wisdom of the few-and so they are equally reactionary, devising to secure political and economic privilege to the ruling minority, and the...enslavement of the masses, to destroy the present order only to erect their own rigid dictatorship on its ruins."

Berlin gives a surprisingly hostile account of the Paris Commune, which he appears to have based completely off the Bourgesious press. And he also advances the interesting idea that Marx actually opposed the Paris Commune because it was more along the lines of Bakunin's revolutionary ideology, but once it was clear the Commune was going to fall, Marx embraced it for the cynical reasons of the desire to link his name with the most infamous revolution in Europe at the time. Berlin is the first writer I have come across who claims this, and well it certainly is not an impossible conclusion, it would be nice if he gave some more evidence for it.

Not quite best autobiography but worth reading.......2006-09-30

David McLellan's Karl Marx: A Biography is a better standard biography. McLellan had access to much more material about Marx's life than did Berlin and he brings it all together in a satisifying package.

Berlin's book, however, provides a superb discussion of the philosophical background to Marx's work. Because of that Berlin's book is extremely valuable.

Readers of Berlin's book must be aware that his interpretation of Marx's social theory is colored by Berlin's anti-communist beliefs. Although many today reject that a close tie existed between Marx's social theory and the USSR, Berlin assumed that such a link existed when he looked at things in the late 1930s. As a result, a tone of worry and concern suffuses Berlin's discussion of many of Marx's ideas and Berlin tends to paint Marx as more of a potential authoritarian than did later biographers.

Despite that, Berlin's book is well worth a read.

A classic account of Marx.......2005-03-09

Rereading the fourth edition of this classic short intellectual biography of Marx, one finds it as interesting as on the first occasion, and the result is a crisp portrait of one of the most misunderstood figures of philosphical history. Marx lived in what was not only a rapidly changing social environment,but one in which the social ideologies of modernity where themselves undergoing shifts of paradigm. From the electric world of the now almost unimaginable period of the Hegelian tide, via Feuerbach and the Left Hegelians, we pass to the age of post-Comptean positivism, and the post-Darwinian world view. This divide is reflected in Marx's philosophic development itself, one of the reasons he is almost never properly understood. Berlin's deft account proceeds through this obscurities with a sure touch.

IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS.......2003-07-18

Isaiah Berlin's biography of Karl Marx is as erudite as it is compelling. Taking one of the more controversial and laborious men of the twentieth century as his subject matter, Berlin weaves the intricate and sometimes confounding thoughts of his subject into a patterned and complex whole.

Karl Marx is treated fairly in this book--neither with sycophantic adulation nor with profound cynicism typical of other treatments of Marx and his philosophy. Perhaps because of the political consequences of Marx's ideas, the negative overview's of his life have emphasized his tempermental side, the irony of being funded by an aristocratic Engels, or the silliness of his labour theory of value premise (shared by David Ricardo). Meanwhile, on the other side, there are writings on the life of Marx that stick to his genius, his profound impact on the world, and further entrench his cult status.

It is this latter part that I found most interesting in Berlin's work--the exploration of Marx's temper tantrums with anyone who should deviate from Marx's conception of how things must be. Proudhon, for instance, is castigated by Marx. So, too, is Feuerbach and the Young Hegelians (Berlin muses about whether or not this has to do with the mighty influence these have had on Marx's own thought and Marx's desire to be seen as a wholly original thinker). Bakunin does not escape public ridicule when they differ on the value of the State as a mechanism to be used by the proletariat. Bakunin, of course, did not believe in hierarchical orderings of any kind--whether in capitalist industry, or in the socialist state--and issued proclamations and gave speeches to that effect, explicitly cautioning people about the possibility of the government violating the freedom it was supposed to secure. Marx was not impressed, and consequently mocked him openly. Engels was perhaps the only man to escape the eventual polemical wrath of Marx, saving himself from such a fate possibly because he simply agreed with whatever Marx said, and indulged him in most everything else.

Still, what comes across most forcefully is the life of a man steeped in ideas, and interested in the fundamental, radical underpinnings of society as a whole. Marx is often enough considered a genius of the highest calibre, with impeccable literary credentials to back it up. It is this attention to minute detail, and his incredible analysis of society (or rather, the historical 'movement', if you will, of human relationships which reciprocally interact with the concrete, material conditions of their existence) that makes this praise seem a bit understated.

This singular fact--Marx as a man of ideas, and the fact of the practical consequences of his ideas--is touched upon in a self-conscious bit of irony by Berlin. For Marx explained that it isn't ideas that do anything, really, but are, instead, the consequences of material conditions, these conditions being fundamental. And yet it was the writings of Marx that sparked several revolutions and formed the primary cause of the one in Russia which stuck around for a while (no one is here implying a monistic view of history... the lessons Marx tried to teach are not entirely lost on me).

What we're left with is an incredibly vivid picture of Marx, the man (not the myth, or the legend; although a little bit of both is tossed in for spice). Berlin does a masterful job, so anyone picking this book up should find it entirely enjoyable.

PURE AND PROPER INTELLECTUAL HISTORY.......2002-11-21

Let me say that if you are looking for a biography of Marx's life you had better look elsewhere. There are no long chapters about his school days, his relations with his Sisters, Mother or Father. You will not find detailed references to every argument Marx had or every aspect of his squallid and, at times, extremely personally irresponsible lifestyle. You must look elsewhere for those details.

This book is about ideas and the struggle between ideas. It is about Marx emersed in the ideas of his time and how those ideas shaped his thinking, whether changing his ideas, borrowing or regjecting them outright Berlin has a wonderful, at times unique grasp of the issues and the ideas of the times that Marx lived.

Starting with a broad description of the Rational-Empiricist debate and the Hegelian reaction to empiricism, Berlin describes Marx as a unique German Hybrid of British Empiricism married to a searching German Hegelian spirit, dissatisified with the traditional historical interpertations offered by Hegel and his German offshoots, the Young Hegelians.

Along the way Marx comes across a uniques set of millenarian and social theorists of his time; Proudhom, Bakunin, Engels, Lasalle, Feuerbach and others, whom all, even though perhaps disliking Marx personally, respected his argument style, his learning, and his deep insight into the problems of the time.

I would not classify this as a beginning book on Marx. There is a lot of ground covered here and if one does not have at least a thumbnail sketch understanding of the times, the social and political issues, then there will be a chance that the author will loose some of his readership. Berlin's prose has been described variously as dense and hard to understand. It may be for some readers. But Berlin is not excessively wordy (it is a slender volume), but he does have the ability to cover a lot of ideas and currents in a single sentence. It is this juggling and keeping in mind of a lot of ideas and concepts in a single sentence that may necessitate one to reread certain sentences, or at least know the concepts to which he is referring.

If you do have general outline of the ideas of the age then you will love this book. I sat down thinking that this was my "serious reading." I fully expected it to be a labourious process to get through this book. Instead I was profoundly surprised by the breath and depth Berlin covers in his lucid prose.

I found it hard to put the book down.

There is no analysis of whether Marx was right or wrong. Of how his ideas become to become the bible of the oppressed on the earth or how it eventually was transmogrified in some cases to justify the mass killing of those who stood in the way of historical materialism. This is a book of ideas, and as such the ideas discussed of Marx, his contemporaries, and his intellectual primogeniteurs are a ripping good read.

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KARL MARX: HIS LIFE AND THOUGHT
D. McLellan
Manufacturer: Easton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HDKLGI

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A tragedy of theory

The Definitive Intellectual Biography Of Marx!

Karl Marx: His Life and Thought
David McLellan
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Customer Reviews:

A tragedy of theory.......2004-04-18

Although there have been more recent biographies of Marx this one still endures with its combination of simple narrative spiced with acute observations and comment. The lives and work of Marx and Engels constitutes one the great tales of world history and one is surprised noone has seen the Hollywood movie (seriously) in the extraordinary period leading up to 1848, and beyond. In fact, this early period, clearer to us now, shows a side of Marx and his thinking that was not properly understood as the Communist tragedy unfolded on the basis of the later Marxism, whose theoretical constructs bore the seeds of great confusion. Sometimes this is pinned on Engels and the crystallization of doctrine that arose in the time of Kautsky and Bernstein. But the problems finally stand at Marx's doorstep and looking at his life as a whole one sees the incoherence of his basic project, mixing Hegel and economic theory, catching up with him. The obsessive endless 'extra study in depth', writer's block and nervous delay, the inability to complete Capital, are a puzzle of the later Marx after the brilliant period of the forties and the Left Hegelians. It is therefore frustrating to see how his contribution has been effectively lost, and nearly impossible to get straight. It is worth remembering that at the time of Marx's starting point the American political system looked like it would never be able to abolish slavery, and that without the intervention of the left economic society as we know it now would never have happened. And as the post-Communist era has dawned we can see exactly what happens as the pigheaded rightwing bougreoisie gets free reign without opposition in the neo-liberalism running amok that we see in the American system. So the future of this corpus of Marx remains always in the background as a wild card of social theory, and unfortunately the dangers of bad theories leading to opposite results.

The Definitive Intellectual Biography Of Marx!.......2004-02-25

Karl Marx's contribution to modern social thought is so immense it is now difficult to understand the profound degree to which much of what he thought and wrote has been almost totally discredited and discounted. This is not to deny the fact that his social theory is indeed quite essentially flawed, but rather to suggest that given the relative proportions of his contribution to sociology, economics, and cultural critique, one tends to throw out the baby with the bath water in summarily rejecting all that this intellectual genius had to offer regarding the nature of modern capitalistic society. No book does a better job of presenting the broad sweep of Marx's remarkable critical contributions than this wonderful and quite comprehensive biography of Marx by renowned psychologist and academic David McLellan.

With painstaking care and meticulus attention to detail, McLellan places Marx's life in context, showing how the multitude of social, cultural, and economic issues that formed him and scarred him early in life carried with them a most urgent message regarding the nature of modern society. Growing up a secular Jew in Germany, the phenomenally gifted young academic found himself barred from teaching based both on virulent anti-Semitism within the academic community and the fact that he was indeed correctly perceived as a radical thinker and political dissident from the beginning in the truculent and suffocating political environment within the society itself. Yet there was no denying either his intellectual brilliance or his charismatic abilities to fan the flames of political discontent almost everywhere he went over his sixty some years. The son of a comfortable Jewish professional who had adopted the Protestant faith for secular convenience, Marx found himself set adrift within currents that his own proclivities toward radical social, economic, and political analysis forced him to often flee one step ahead of arresting authorities.

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A man for the times? The experience of defeat.......2003-05-05

This is one of the most useful and interesting of the Marx biographies and shows us another Marx, behind the man of fiction who was a later invention. Christopher Hill in _The Experience of Defeat_ details a host of figures in the English Civil War, from the Levellers to the Fifth Monarchists, who were written out of history, and who had to live with failed revolutionary lifetimes. We forget the actual experience of Marx, the experience of defeat after 1848, and his persistence nonetheless without illusions documenting the capitalism of his time and era. After the grotesquerie of the twentieth century Communists it is significant to remember this other Marx.
This is surely the experience of the current left, and one might expect it to end as forgotten as the defeated figures from Munzer onward--save that the right will not rest, and will reinvent slavery or worse if left to their devices, while the current left fantasies a series of leftist fictions, among them about Marx.
It might help to look at the failure of Marxist theory, the experience of defeat, behind the unique brilliance of Marx, and at least know the history, starting with Marx's challenge to Hegel's philosophy of right. This work shows the problems that Marx experienced in his theoretical struggles, and shows, for example, the inability of Marx to complete his life's project, Capital. This aspect of the book is compelling, and often quietly filtered out. Marxists have rarely known what they are talking about, but, like the Levellers, will always accompany the definition of modernism.
Very acute biography.

Karl Marx: A Christian appreciation of his life and thought (Aslan lion book)

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Karl Marx: A Christian appreciation of his life and thought (Aslan lion book)
David Lyon
Manufacturer: Lion Publishing [etc.]
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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