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.

Why Read Marx Today?

Why Read Marx Today?
Author: Jonathan Wolff
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 144
Release: 2002-08-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191539317

'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.

Why Read Marx Today?

Why Read Marx Today?
Author: Jonathan Wolff
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2003
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780192805058

This fresh and 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. Wolff connects Marx's main ideas with wider concerns about culture and society while guiding the reader accessibly through Marx's notoriously difficult writings, and reinstates Marx as an important critic of current society, and not just a figure of historical interest. For these reasons, and more, Wolff shows us why Marx still richly deserves to be read.

Critiquing Capitalism Today

Critiquing Capitalism Today
Author: Frederick Harry Pitts
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018-08-24
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9783319873602

This book critically introduces two compelling contemporary schools of Marxian thought: the New Reading of Marx of Michael Heinrich and Werner Bonefeld, and the postoperaismo of Antonio Negri. Each stake novel claims on Marx’s value theory, the first revisiting key categories of the critique of political economy through Frankfurt School critical theory, the second calling the law of value into crisis with reference to Marx’s rediscovered ‘Fragment on Machines’. Today, ‘postcapitalist’ conceptualisations of a changing workplace excite interest in postoperaist projections of a crisis of measurability sparked by so-called immaterial labour. Using the New Reading of Marx to question this prospectus, Critiquing Capitalism Today clarifies complex debates for newcomers to these cutting-edge currents of critical thought, looking anew at value, money, labour, class and crisis.

How To Read Marx

How To Read Marx
Author: Peter Osborne
Publisher: Granta Books
Total Pages:
Release: 2014-04-03
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1783780533

Emphasizing the Romantic heritage and modernist legacy of Karl Marx's writings, Peter Osborne presents Marx's thought as a developing investigation into what it means, concretely, for humans to be practical historical beings. Drawing upon passages from a wide range of Marx's writings, and showing the links between them, Osborne refutes the myth of Marx as a reductively economistic thinker. What Marx meant by 'materialism', 'communism' and the 'critique of political economy' was much richer and more original, philosophically, than is generally recognized. With the renewed globalization of capitalism since 1989, Osborne argues, Marx's analyses of the consequences of commodification are more relevant today than ever before. Extracts are taken from the full breadth of Marx's writings, from his student Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy, via the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and The Communist Manifesto to Capital.

How to Read Marx's Capital

How to Read Marx's Capital
Author: Michael Heinrich
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2021-08-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1583678964

An accessible companion to Karl Marx's essential Capital With the recent revival of Karl Marx's theory, a general interest in reading Capital has also increased. But Capital—Marx’s foundational nineteenth-century work on political economy—is by no means considered an easily understood text. Central concepts, such as abstract labor, the value-form, or the fetishism of commodities, can seem opaque to us as first-time readers, and the prospect of comprehending Marx’s thought can be truly daunting. Until, that is, we pick up Michael Heinrich’s How to Read Marx's Capital. Paragraph by paragraph, Heinrich provides extensive commentary and lucid explanations of questions and quandaries that arise when encountering Marx’s original text. Suddenly, such seemingly gnarly chapters as “The Labor Process and the Valorization Process” and “Money or the Circulation of Capital” become refreshingly clear, as Heinrich explains just what we need to keep in mind when reading such a complex text. Deploying multiple appendices referring to other pertinent writings by Marx, Heinrich reveals what is relevant about Capital, and why we need to engage with it today. How to Read Marx's Capital provides an illuminating and indispensable guide to sorting through cultural detritus of a world whose political and economic systems are simultaneously imploding and exploding.

Adventures in Marxism

Adventures in Marxism
Author: Marshall Berman
Publisher: Verso
Total Pages: 292
Release: 1999
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781859843093

Citing a lifelong engagement with Marxism, critic and writer Marshall Berman reveals the movement's positive points and suggests a new beginning for Marxism may be on the horizon with its recent 150th anniversary attention.

Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life

Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life
Author: Jonathan Sperber
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 687
Release: 2013-03-11
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0871404672

This major biography fundamentally reshapes our understanding of a towering historical figure.

Understanding Marxism

Understanding Marxism
Author: Richard D. Wolff
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2018-11-26
Genre: Capitalism
ISBN: 0359467024

Why should we pay attention to the great social critics like Marx? Americans, especially now, confront serious questions and evidences that our capitalist system is in trouble. It clearly serves the 1% far, far better than what it is doing to the vast mass of the people. Marx was a social critic for whom capitalism was not the end of human history. It was just the latest phase and badly needed the transition to something better. We offer this essay now because of the power and usefulness today of Marx's criticism of the capitalist economic system. eBook: https: //bit.ly/2K6iI8

Marx for Today

Marx for Today
Author: Marcello Musto
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-09-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1135700478

Since the onset of global crisis in recent years, academics and economic theorists from various political and cultural backgrounds have been drawn to Marx's analysis of the inherent instability of capitalism. The rediscovery of Marx is based on his continuing capacity to explain the present. In the context of what some commentators have described as a "Marx renaissance", the aim of this book is to make a close study of Marx's principal writings in relation to the major problems of our own society, and to show why and how some of his theories constitute a precious tool for the understanding and critique of the world in the early twenty-first century. The book brings together varied reflections on the Marxian oeuvre, drawing on different perspectives and fields, and argues its case in two different parts. The first will encompass such diverse areas and themes as political thought, economics, nationalism, ethnicity, post-capitalist society, freedom, democracy, emancipation, and alienation, showing in each case how Marx has still today an invaluable contribution to make. The second presents a complete and rigorous account of the dissemination and the reception of Marx’s work throughout the world in the last decade. Both parts make a significant contribution to the current research on Marx and Marxisms. This book was originally published as a special issue of Socialism and Democracy.