Marx and Marxism

by Gregory Claeys

Overview

A new biography of Karl Marx, tracing the life of this titanic figure and the legacy of his work

Karl Marx remains the most influential and controversial political thinker in history. He died quietly in 1883 and a mere eleven mourners attended his funeral, but a year later he was being hailed as "the Prophet himself" whose name and writings would "endure through the ages." He has been viewed as a philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, even a literary craftsman. But who was Marx? What informed his critiques of modern society? And how are we to understand his legacy?

In Marx and Marxism, Gregory Claeys, a leading historian of socialism, offers a wide-ranging, accessible account of Marx's ideas and their development, from the nineteenth century through the Russian Revolution to the present. After the collapse of the Soviet Union his reputation seemed utterly eclipsed, but now a new generation is reading and discovering Marx in the wake of the recurrent financial crises, growing social inequality, and an increasing sense of the injustice and destructiveness of capitalism. Both his critique of capitalism and his vision of the future speak across the centuries to our times, even if the questions he poses are more difficult to answer than ever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781568588971
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	04/24/2018
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Gregory Claeys is Professor of History at Royal Holloway, University of London. Previously he taught at the University of Hannover, Germany, and Washington University, St Louis. He has written nine books, focusing on the history of radicalism, socialism and utopianism, and edited some fifty volumes of primary sources and essays.

Table of Contents

Many Marxes 1

Part 1 Marx

Chapter 1 The Young Karl 7

Chapter 2 Marx's Conversion to Communism 25

Chapter 3 The 'Paris Manuscripts', Alienation and Humanism 37

Chapter 4 The German Ideology, History and Production 51

Chapter 5 Socialism, the Revolutions of 1848 and The Communist Manifesto 73

Chapter 6 Exile, 1850s-1880s 87

Chapter 7 Political Economy 98

Chapter 8 The International (1864-1872) and the Paris Commune (1871) 122

Chapter 9 Marx's Mature System 132

Chapter 10 The Problem of Engels 142

Chapter 11 Utopia 150

Chapter 12 Concluding Marx 158

Part 2 Marxism

Introduction: Conversion 169

Chapter 1 Marxism and Social Democracy, 1883-1918: The Revisionist Debate 173

Chapter 2 Lenin and the Russian Revolution: 'Bread, Peace, Land' 188

Chapter 3 Bolshevik Leaders: Bukharin, Trotsky, Stalin 223

Chapter 4 After Stalin, 1953-1968 246

Chapter 5 Western European Marxism, 1920-1968, and Beyond 252

Chapter 6 Other Marxisms 272

Marxism for the Twenty-First Century 293

Acknowledgements 307

Notes 309

Index 359