Marx in Motion

Marx in Motion
Author: Thomas Nail
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2020
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197526470

"Socialism is back and with it is a renewed interest in Marx's critique of capitalism. After the 2008 financial crash international book sales of Capital exploded for the first time in decades. In a world of rising income inequality, right-wing nationalisms, and global climate change, people are again looking to the father of modern socialism for answers. This book is written to help those returning to Marx today get answers to their pressing questions about the nature of wealth, ecological crisis, gender inequality, colonialism, migration, and the possibility of socialism. Marx, as always, remains our contemporary. This book also offers readers a new perspective on a several major ideas in Marx's work. It argues that Marx, contrary to convention, did not think history was deterministic or that reality could be reduced to classical materialism. Marx was not an anthropocentric humanist nor did he have a labor theory of value. The unique contribution of this book is that it begins with Marx's earliest and most neglected book on ancient naturalism in order to show its lasting methodological effect on his "process materialism" defined by the primacy of motion. This "kinetic Marxism," as I call it, offers us a new way to re-read Capital that bears directly on a number of contemporary issues. This also makes Marx in Motion the first book to offer a new materialist reading of Marx. The result of all this is a fresh new view on the important theories of primitive accumulation, metabolism, value, fetishism, dialectics, and the possibility of a kinetic communism for the 21st century"--

Marx in Motion

Marx in Motion
Author: Thomas Nail
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2020-07-17
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0197526500

Karl Marx is the most historically foundational and systematic critic of capitalism to date, and the years since the 2008 financial crisis have witnessed a rebirth of his popular appeal. In a world of rising income inequality, right-wing nationalisms, and global climate change, people are again looking to the father of modern socialism for answers. As this book argues, every era since Marx's death has reinvented him to fit its needs. There is not one Marx forever and for all time. There are a thousand Marxes. As Thomas Nail contends, one of the most significant contributions of Marx's work is that it treats theory itself as a historical practice. Reading Marx is not just an interpretative activity but a creative one. As our historical conditions change, so do the kinds of questions we pose and the kinds of answers we find in Marx's writing. This book is a return to the writings of Karl Marx, including his under-appreciated dissertation, through the lens of the pressing philosophical and political problems of our time: ecological crisis, gender inequality, colonialism, and global mobility. However, the aim of this book is not to make Marxism relevant by "applying" it to contemporary issues. Instead, Marx in Motion, the first new materialist interpretation of Marx's work, treats Capital as if it were already a response to the present. Thomas Nail argues that Marx was a new materialist avant la lettre. He argues that Marx did not believe history was determined, or that matter was passive, or that humans were separate or superior to nature. Marx did not even have a labor theory of value. Marxists argue that new materialists lack a sufficient political and economic theory, and new materialists argue that Marx's materialism is human-centric and mechanistic. This book aims to solve both problems by proposing a new materialist Marxism.

Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason

Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason
Author: David Harvey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2018
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0190691484

Prologue -- The visualisation of capital as value in motion -- Capital, the book -- Money as the representation of value -- Anti-value: the theory of devaluation -- Prices without values -- The question of technology -- The space and time of value -- The production of value regimes -- The madness of economic reason -- Coda

Being and Motion

Being and Motion
Author: Thomas Nail
Publisher:
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2019
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190908904

More than at any other time in human history, we live in an age defined by movement and mobility; and yet, we lack a unifying theory which takes this seriously as a starting point for philosophy. The history of philosophy has systematically explained movement as derived from something else that does not move: space, eternity, force, and time. Why, when movement has always been central to human societies, did a philosophy based on movement never take hold? This book finally overturns this long-standing metaphysical tradition by placing movement at the heart of philosophy. In doing so, Being and Motion provides a completely new understanding of the most fundamental categories of ontology from a movement-oriented perspective: quality, quantity, relation, modality, and others. It also provides the first history of the philosophy of motion, from early prehistoric mythologies up to contemporary ontologies. Through its systematic ontology of movement, Being and Motion provides a path-breaking historical ontology of our present.

Love and Capital

Love and Capital
Author: Mary Gabriel
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2011-09-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 031619137X

Brilliantly researched and wonderfully written, Love and Capital reveals the rarely glimpsed and heartbreakingly human side of the man whose works would redefine the world after his death. Drawing upon previously unpublished material, acclaimed biographer Mary Gabriel tells the story of Karl and Jenny Marx's marriage. Through it, we see Karl as never before: a devoted father and husband, a prankster who loved a party, a dreadful procrastinator, freeloader, and man of wild enthusiasms -- one of which would almost destroy his marriage. Through years of desperate struggle, Jenny's love for Karl would be tested again and again as she waited for him to finish his masterpiece, Capital. An epic narrative that stretches over decades to recount Karl and Jenny's story against the backdrop of Europe's Nineteenth Century, Love andCapital is a surprising and magisterial account of romance and revolution -- and of one of the great love stories of all time.

The Social Thought of Karl Marx

The Social Thought of Karl Marx
Author: Justin P. Holt
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2014-06-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1483316076

Part of the SAGE Social Thinkers series, this brief and clearly-written book provides a concise introduction to the work, life, and influences of Karl Marx, one of the most revered, reviled, and misunderstood figures in modern history. The book serves as an excellent introduction to the full range of Marx’s major themes—alienation, economics, social class, capitalism, communism, materialism, environmental sustainability—and considers the extent to which they are relevant today. It is ideal for use as a self-contained volume or in conjunction with other sociological theory textbooks.

Circling Marx: Essays 1980-2020

Circling Marx: Essays 1980-2020
Author: Peter Beilharz
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2020-12-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9004443975

Marx circles us, and we him. These essays approach Marx through three circles – the source; the legacy into the twentieth century; and the developments since the postwar boom. This work represents a lifetime’s engagement with Marx and his legacy.

The Revolutionary Philosophy of Marxism

The Revolutionary Philosophy of Marxism
Author: Karl Marx
Publisher: Marxist Books
Total Pages: 552
Release: 2018-11-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

A Selection of Writings on Dialectical Materialism by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Plekhanov, and Luxemburg, and Alan Woods. Edited by John Peterson with an Introduction by Alan Woods. On the bicentennial of his birth, Karl Marx’s ideas are more relevant than ever. While he is perhaps best known for his writings on economics and history, anyone who wishes to have a fully rounded understanding of his method must strive to master dialectical materialism, which itself resulted from an assiduous study and critique of Hegel. Dialectical materialism is the logic of motion, development, and change. By embracing contradiction instead of trying to write it out of reality, dialectics allows Marxists to approach processes as they really are, not as we would like them to be. In this way we can understand and explain the essential class interests at stake in our fight against capitalist exploitation and oppression. At every decisive turning point in history, scientific socialists must go back to basics. Marxist theory represents the synthesized experience, historical memory, and guide to action of the working class. The Revolutionary Philosophy of Marxism aims to arm the new generation of revolutionary socialists with these essential ideas.

Das Kapital

Das Kapital
Author: Karl Marx
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2012-03-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1596987995

One of the most notorious works of modern times, as well as one of the most influential, Capital is an incisive critique of private property and the social relations it generates. Living in exile in England, where this work was largely written, Marx drew on a wide-ranging knowledge of its society to support his analysis and generate fresh insights. Arguing that capitalism would create an ever-increasing division in wealth and welfare, he predicted its abolition and replacement by a system with common ownership of the means of production. Capital rapidly acquired readership among the leaders of social democratic parties, particularly in Russia and Germany, and ultimately throughout the world, to become a work described by Marx's friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels as 'the Bible of the Working Class'.

The Figure of the Migrant

The Figure of the Migrant
Author: Thomas Nail
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2015-09-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0804796688

This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time. Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.