Marx's Dream

Marx's Dream
Author: Tom Rockmore
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2018-06-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 022655466X

Two centuries after his birth, Karl Marx is read almost solely through the lens of Marxism, his works examined for how they fit into the doctrine that was developed from them after his death. With Marx’s Dream, Tom Rockmore offers a much-needed alternative view, distinguishing rigorously between Marx and Marxism. Rockmore breaks with the Marxist view of Marx in three key ways. First, he shows that the concern with the relation of theory to practice—reflected in Marx’s famous claim that philosophers only interpret the world, while the point is to change it—arose as early as Socrates, and has been central to philosophy in its best moments. Second, he seeks to free Marx from his unsolicited Marxist embrace in order to consider his theory on its own merits. And, crucially, Rockmore relies on the normal standards of philosophical debate, without the special pleading to which Marxist accounts too often resort. Marx’s failures as a thinker, Rockmore shows, lie less in his diagnosis of industrial capitalism’s problems than in the suggested remedies, which are often unsound. ? Only a philosopher of Rockmore’s stature could tackle a project this substantial, and the results are remarkable: a fresh Marx, unencumbered by doctrine and full of insights that remain salient today.

The Proletarian Dream

The Proletarian Dream
Author: Sabine Hake
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2017-09-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110550202

The proletariat never existed—but it had a profound effect on modern German culture and society. As the most radicalized part of the industrial working class, the proletariat embodied the critique of capitalism and the promise of socialism. But as a collective imaginary, the proletariat also inspired the fantasies, desires, and attachments necessary for transforming the working class into a historical subject and an emotional community. This book reconstructs this complicated and contradictory process through the countless treatises, essays, memoirs, novels, poems, songs, plays, paintings, photographs, and films produced in the name of the proletariat. The Proletarian Dream reads these forgotten archives as part of an elusive collective imaginary that modeled what it meant—and even more important, how it felt—to claim the name "proletarian" with pride, hope, and conviction. By emphasizing the formative role of the aesthetic, the eighteen case studies offer a new perspective on working-class culture as a oppositional culture. Such a new perspective is bound to shed new light on the politics of emotion during the main years of working-class mobilizations and as part of more recent populist movements and cultures of resentment. Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures 2018

Socialism Is Evil

Socialism Is Evil
Author: Justin Haskins
Publisher:
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2018
Genre: Socialism
ISBN: 9780999735527

The greatest threat facing the United States today doesn't come from China, Iran, or even Russia; it's the growing number of Americans who believe Karl Marx's socialism provides the best strategy for making our communities safer, healthier, and more prosperous. But the most significant danger posed by socialism isn't that its implementation would lead to greater poverty and fewer property rights, it's that socialism would create numerous moral problems, including the limits it would place on individual liberty and religious freedom. In Socialism Is Evil: The Moral Case Against Marx's Radical Dream, conservative columnist and think tank research fellow Justin Haskins examines the moral perils of Marx's socialism and explains why if socialism were to be imposed in its fullest form, it wouldn't just damage people's freedoms, it would obliterate them. Haskins argues it would be dangerous to attempt to create Marx's utopian socialist world, and even more importantly, that such an attempt would be so highly immoral that it could reasonably be called "evil." In Socialism Is Evil, Haskins makes the moral case against socialism and also describes in detail what socialists believe, the differences between socialism and communism, why Marx's socialism will never be completely adopted, and why even the more moderate European-style socialism, called "democratic socialism" by some, is highly immoral and anti-American. Many socialists are kind, generous people with good intentions, but sometimes, good intentions can create devastating results. Socialism Is Evil briefly tackles some of the most important moral controversies surrounding Marx's socialism, providing supporters of individual liberty with the tools they need to stop the rise of socialism in its tracks.

Why Read Marx Today?

Why Read Marx Today?
Author: Jonathan Wolff
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2003-08-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191622311

'All too often, Karl Marx has been regarded as a demon or a deity - or a busted flush. This fresh, provocative, and hugely enjoyable book explains why, for all his shortcomings, his critique of modern society remains forcefully relevant even in the twenty-first century.' Francis Wheen, author of Karl Marx In recent years we could be forgiven for assuming that Marx has nothing left to say to us. Marxist regimes have failed miserably, and with them, it seemed, all reason to take Marx seriously. The fall of the Berlin Wall had enormous symbolic resonance: it was taken to be the fall of Marx as well as of Marxist politics and economics. This timely book argues that we can detach Marx the critic of current society from Marx the prophet of future society, and that he remains the most impressive critic we have of liberal, capitalist, bourgeois society. It also shows that the value of the 'great thinkers' does not depend on their views being true, but on other features such as their originality, insight, and systematic vision. On this account too Marx still richly deserves to be read.

Etudes

Etudes
Author: John Marx
Publisher:
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2019-09
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781943532421

John Marx's watercolors, first published in the Architectural Review, are a captivating example of an architect's way of thinking. Subtle and quiet they are nonetheless compelling works in how they tackle a sense of place, of inhabiting space and time all the while resonating with the core of one's inner being. There is an existential quality to these watercolors that is rare to be found in this medium. Something akin to the psychologically piercing observational quality of artists like De Chirico or Hopper. As architects strive to communicate their ideas, it is interesting to explore the world of Marx's watercolors as an example of a humane approach to conveying emotional meaning in relation to our environment. Marx's subject matter read like "built landscapes" heightening the role of the manmade yet wholly in balance with the natural world. This is a message and sentiment that is perhaps more important than ever to relay to audiences.

Marx's Resurrection of Aristotle

Marx's Resurrection of Aristotle
Author: Norman Levine
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2021-01-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030570355

This book seeks to show how Karl Marx’s vision of communism was a continuation of Aristotle’s classical humanist philosophy. Challenging the Engelsian distortion of Marx, it presents a negation of previous interpretations of Marx which present him in materialist terms. Engels proposed a picture of the highest stage of communist society as an economic egalitarianism, a vision which became an axiom of Leninist-Stalinist-Soviet Communism. By contrast, here it is shown that Marx embraced the Aristotelian concept of “distributive justice”, of proportionate equality. Spanning the works of Marx, from his university education and doctoral dissertation on the differences between the Democritean and Epicurean philosophy of the atom, to the study of his Rheinische Zeitung period and the persistence of classical humanism in Marx’s defense of the freedom of the press, Levine skillfully reveals the gravitational pull between Marx and Aristotle. Showing how classical humanism is the dominant ethos in the communism of Marx, the book includes chapters on: Hegel as a transition point between Aristotle and Marx The links between Marx’s theory of labor and Aristotle’s idea of the constitutive subject located in The Politics How the local methodologies of Aristotle and Hegel provided Marx with the social methodologies by which to interpret the functioning of capitalism Marx's Resurrection of Aristotle is the culmination of Norman Levine's life-long work to establish the correct placement of Marx and Marx’s communism within the classical humanist tradition.

Marx’s Wager

Marx’s Wager
Author: Thomas Kemple
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2022-10-13
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031080653

Marx's masterpiece Capital (Das Kapital) ignored or misread as well as selectively and creatively interpreted by the generation of social scientists that came after him. Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel attempt to supplement what they call ‘historical materialism’ or to engage in debates about ‘socialism’ through their readings of The Communist Manifesto and occasional Capital. Although these and other classical sociologists did not have access to most of Marx’s published and unpublished works as we do today, each is concerned with revising and refining Marx’s unfinished critique of political economy. Despite their differences with Marx and with one another, they share his concern with how empirically detailed and scientifically valid knowledge of the social world may inform historical struggles for a more human world. This commitment can be called ‘Faustian’, after the title character of the poet J. W. von Goethe’s tragic epic of modernity, insofar as Marx and the classical sociologists hope to translate theory into practice while making a pact or wager with the diabolical social, political, and economic forces of the modern world.

Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture

Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture
Author: Cary Nelson
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 756
Release: 1988
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780252014017

This title provides a picture of the state of Marxist thinking. It aims to provoke a debate that will be of interest to those concerned with the status and development of Marxism and also to theorists in all fields of the human sciences.

Book of Dreams

Book of Dreams
Author: Jack Kerouac
Publisher: City Lights Books
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2001-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780872863804

"In the Book of Dreams I just continue the same story but in the dreams I had of the real-life characters I always write about." Excerpt: WALKING THROUGH SLUM SUBURBS of Mexico City I'm stopped by smiling threesome of cats who've disengaged themselves from the general fairly crowded evening street of brown lights, coke stands, tortillas-Unmistakably going to steal my bag-I struggled a little, gave up-Begin communicating with them my distress and in fact do so well they end up just stealing parts of my stuff…. We walk off leaving the bag with someone-arm in arm like a gang to the downtown lights of Letran, across a field- Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) was a principal actor in the Beat Generation, a companion of Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady in that great adventure. His books include On the Roa, The Dharma Bums, Mexico City Blues, Lonesome Traveler, Scattered Poems, Visions of Cody, Pomes All Sizes, and Scripture of the Golden Eternity.

Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution Vol IV

Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution Vol IV
Author: Hal Draper
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 398
Release: 1990
Genre: History
ISBN: 0853457972

Much of Karl Marx's most important work came out of his critique of other thinkers, including many socialists who differed significantly in their conceptions of socialism. The fourth volume in Hal Draper's series looks at these critiques to illuminate what Marx's socialism was, as well as what it was not. Some of these debates are well-known elements in Marx's work, such as his writings on the anarchists Proudhon and Bakunin. Others are less familiar, such as the writings on "Bismarckian socialism" and "Boulangism," but promise to become better known and understood with Draper's exposition. He also discusses the more general ideological tendencies of "utopian" and "sentimental" socialisms, which took various forms and were ingredients in many different socialist movements.