Following the demise of Marxism, Allan Megill performs a painstakingly careful autopsy of the remains. The cause of death turns out to be Marx's unwarranted faith in the embeddedness of reason in human affairs, a premise that thwarted his appreciation of the virtues of politics and the market. And yet for all its faults, Marxism left a valuable legacy—organs that can, as it were, be harvested for future use—that this erudite, fair-minded, and closely argued study works hard to preserve.
I believe Megill has given us something of real worth here. In particular his readings of the significance and origin of the early work is excellent; his attempts to unravel the ontological, epistemological, and methodological underpinnings of Marx's work as a whole are particularly illuminating; and I can't think of a better account of the materialist basis of 'historical materialism.' Above all, one simply revels in the academic and intellectual quality on offer here: scholarship, thought, and engagment of a rare kind. Megill has, as Wittgenstein put it, gone 'the bloody hard way,' and it shows.
Modern Intellectual History
Original and erudite—a novel approach to the meaning and significance of Marx's views on modern society.
I would like to teach a course with Allan Megill. This thought occurred to me already when reading the second page of his book. By the time I had finished the book, I concluded that it would have to be a year-long course. For Megill's meticulously researched, densely packed analysis addresses so many important issues in Marx's work, and raises so many more for intellectual history, that it would take that long to do them justice. Because his [Megill's] book raises so many essential issues concerning historiology, Marx's complex thought, and its contemporary relevance, it deserves to be considered in much greater breadth and depth than I could do here. If it gets the attention it deserves (which in this era that has buried Marx in an unmarked grave, is not a foregone conclusion), then Megill will have realized his goal of starting what could be a very valuable debate.
History and Theory - Joseph Fracchia
Megill's analysis is based on the highest level of scholarly erudition....there is no doubt that in terms of both scholarly references to original materials and thorough guidance to secondary literature, Megill's work is invaluable. ...There is much of value in Megill's book; it deserves the serious attention of anyone interested in Marx, either as a theorist of human history or as a critic of the modern capitalist world.
Political Studies Review - James L. Hyland
The most careful and scholarly reassessment now available.. .. It shows an extraordinarily thorough command of the enormous literature on Marx. Proceeding by asking a series of cogent questions about Marx's basic assumptions, theoretical procedures, and historical contexts, Megill offers a rigorous postmortem. He shows why Marxism had to fail and why aspects of it are worth resuscitating. It will be the touchstone for serious future study of Marxist theory.
It is a pleasure to turn to Allan Megill's Karl Marx . Allan Megill shows things—this being the mark of the true scholar. Megill's argument is one that is going to have to be confronted, and met. It provokes and challenges the reader. It also bristles with thought, or, more precisely, with thinking. Megill gets an almost alarming number of things right.
One simply revels in the academic and intellectual quality on offer here: scholarship, thought, and engagement of a rare kind.
Contemporary Political Theory
Meticulously developed thesis.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Intellectual historian Allan Megill's Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason holds the distinction of being the first English-language book that uses the new MEGA as its principle source. This erudite study is that rare commodity, a serious and well-informed yet strongly critical exploration of Marx's thought.... One of the merits of a truly scholarly work like this one is that the author presents his arguments and evidence, as well as the acknowledgments of counterarguments and counterevidence, so judiciously that even readers with opposing standpoints can find support within the text with their arguments against those of the author....In the Preface he indicates that he may write a sequel focusing on Capital . That would be a happy development indeed.
Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason is a distinctively modern—post Communist and post Marxist—assessment of what is living and what is dead in the thought of Karl Marx, a virtual report card on Marx's philosophy and social theory, scrupulously formulated, thoroughly researched, and argued from an explicit position in the historical present. Hide-bound Marxist-socialists (like myself) will find Megill's assessments challenging if not to say disconcerting. On Megill's view, Marx the rationalist philosopher is, as they say, 'history.'
Intellectual historian Allan Megill's Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason holds the distinction of being the first English-language book that uses the new MEGA as its principle source. This erudite study is that rare commodity, a serious and well-informed yet strongly critical exploration of Marx's thought.... One of the merits of a truly scholarly work like this one is that the author presents his arguments and evidence, as well as the acknowledgments of counterarguments and counterevidence, so judiciously that even readers with opposing standpoints can find support within the text with their arguments against those of the author....In the Preface he indicates that he may write a sequel focusing on Capital. That would be a happy development indeed.
May 2005 Contemporary Sociology
Megill's analysis is based on the highest level of scholarly erudition....there is no doubt that in terms of both scholarly references to original materials and thorough guidance to secondary literature, Megill's work is invaluable. ...There is much of value in Megill's book; it deserves the serious attention of anyone interested in Marx, either as a theorist of human history or as a critic of the modern capitalist world.--James L. Hyland "Political Studies Review "
Meticulously developed thesis.
Journal Of The History Of The Behavioral Science
