Reinhard Bendix's comments comments on "Notes for Talks about Karl Marx" (original) (raw)
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Here are some fairly comprehensive notes for a two-week discussion of early Marx. Starting with "On the Jewish Question" and the "Theses on Feuerbach," we then move on to a close reading of the "Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844." Finally, we close out by looking at the Communist Manifesto, which we can hopefully approach with added theoretical sophistication, given what's come before.
Review Essay on Karl Marx (2013)
writes Jonathan Sperber in this splendid new biography, was -a true and loyal friend, but a vehement and hateful enemy.‖ To be in his small circle was to feel part of something historic, but also to be exposed to constant critical scrutiny. Once he feared for his political reputation, Marx let no politesse hold him back. One close colleague, Karl Liebknecht, remembered Marx as -the most accessible of men … cheerful and amiable in personal relations.‖ It was as well, perhaps, that Liebknecht remained unaware of Marx's sniping remarks about him in private letters. Marx's closest friendship was with Friedrich Engels, a man many found to be extremely off-putting in person: strongheaded, rather vain and arrogant. It may be that his buddy relationship with Engels's licensed Marx to ditch responsible leadership and blow off steam, and their mutual correspondence is certainly full of unedifying abuse of almost everyone they knew. But it is Marx's ability to inspire loyalty and awed respect that comes through most clearly from the recollections of those who knew him.
Another Marx Early Manuscripts to the International (Introduction)
2018
the project of a ‘second’ MEGA , designed to reproduce all the writings of the two thinkers together with an extensive critical apparatus, got under way in 1975 in East Germany. Following the fall of the Berlin wall, however, this too was interrupted. A diffi cult period of reorganization ensued, in which new editorial principles were developed and approved, and the publication of MEGA2 recommenced only in 1998. Since then twenty- six volumes have appeared in print – others are in the course of preparation – containing new versions of certain of Marx’s works; all the preparatory manuscripts of Capital; correspondence from important periods of his life including a number of letters received; and approximately two hundred notebooks. ! e latter contain excerpts from books that Marx read over the years and the refl ections to which they gave rise. ! ey constitute his critical theoretical workshop, indicating the complex itinerary he followed in the development of his thought and the sources on which he drew in working out his own ideas. these priceless materials – many of which are available only in German and therefore intended for small circles of researchers – show us an author very different from the one that numerous critics or self- styled followers presented for such a long time. Indeed, the new textual acquisitions in MEGA 2 make it possible to say that, of the classics of political and philosophical thought, Marx is the author whose profi le has changed the most in recent years. The political landscape following the implosion of the Soviet Union has helped to free Marx from the role of fi gurehead of the state apparatus that was accorded to him there. Research advances, together with the changed political conditions, therefore suggest that the renewal in the interpretation of Marx’s thought is a phenomenon destined to continue.
Frontier, 2021
Marx's late thought is the subject of Marcello Musto's recently published The Last Years of Karl Marx. There, Musto masterfully weaves together rich biographical detail and a sophisticated engagement with Marx's mature, oftentimes self-questioning writing. Jacobin contributing editor Nicolas Allen spoke with Musto about the complexities of studying Marx's final years of life, and about why some of Marx's late doubts and misgivings are in fact more useful for people today than some of his more confident early assertions. Excerpts:] Nicolas Allen: The "late Marx" that you write about, roughly covering the final three years of his life in the 1880s, is often treated as an afterthought for Marxists and Marx scholars. Apart from the fact that Marx didn't publish any major works in his final years, why do you think the period has received considerably less attention? Marcello Musto: All the intellectual biographies of Marx published to this day have paid very little attention to the last decade of his life, usually devoting no more than a few pages to his activity after the winding up of the International Working Men's Association in 1872. Not by chance, these scholars nearly always use the generic title "the last decade" for these (very short) parts of their books. Two of Marx's best-known writings-the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and The German Ideology (1845-46), both very far from being completed-were published in 1932 and started to circulate only in the second half of the 1940s. As World War II gave way to a sense of profound anguish resulting from the barbarities of Nazism, in a climate where philosophies like existentialism gained popularity, the theme of the condition of the individual in society acquired great prominence and created perfect conditions for a growing interest in Marx's philosophical ideas, such as alienation and species-being. The biographies of Marx published in
Some critical comments are marked with incredulous '[sic]' (p. 20 n. 65). The saintly Highet would never denigrate a detractor (p. 54); on the other hand, his opposition (no doubt inspired by his mentor Bowra) to Dodds's lectures is not mentioned (see D.A. Russell, in: Rediscovering E.R. Dodds, p. 280). At pp. 21-3, W.M. Calder III's view that Highet was 'jealous of the greater scholar', namely Kurt von Fritz, is reviewed. The charges are (a) jealousy and (b) anti-German sentiment; they are rebuffed by assertions that Highet was never jealous of anybody, that his humane scholarship was something no German ever understood, and that, if he had anti-German sentiment, in spite of owning a Pauly-Wissowa (and, curiously, writing about a 'young classicist Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf' [p. 23]surely an error for someone more than 50 years his senior), this was because of his war service and knowledge of Nazi atrocities (see also p. 10). This will not do: Highet can have had thoughts to which B. was not privy (even thoughts he regretted)no biographer has perfect access; he can also have thought about 'Germans' as a group differently to individuals (or even been able to distinguish 'Germans' from 'Nazis'). The desire to exculpate Highet from anything close to a bad thought is not reasoned or balanced assessment. Highet's work should not be forgotten. The problem is that works of adulation like this are likely to encourage the opposite response. A more balanced assessment of Highet's work would include situating books like The Classical Tradition (1949) amid contemporary debates about canonicity, 'the West' and whiteness; a history of (reactions to) biographical criticism; an account of 'popular Classics' in its various guises; the role of German and British émigrés in the American academy; Classic(ist)s and the Vietnam war, and a good deal besides. B.'s work will have pride of place in such a project for its rich documentary material, forming a link to Highet himself.
Book Review: Karl Marx and his place in history
The great achievement of Jonathan Sperber's absorbing biography of Karl Marx is to debunk the complementary images of Marx as a bogyman of the Right whose ideas are responsible for the horrors of Stalinism, Maoism, Pol Pot etc, and as an icon of the Left who laid bare the inner workings of the capitalist economic system, foretold the workers' millennium and, like Moses leading the Israelites to the promised land, gave them the political weapons with which to achieve it. On the contrary, Sperber demonstrates convincingly that Marx was a man of his time – another ambitious systems builder, whose vision of politics was anchored in the French Revolution of 1789 and whose understanding of the economy was limited to the turbulent industrial expansion of early nineteenth century Britain. It has often been said that Marxism grew from a fusion of German (Hegelian) philosophy, French socialism and English political economy. Sperber shows that insofar as this analysis is true these influences were as much a source of weakness as of strength, accounting for both Marx's insights and blind spots, as well as the failure of nearly all his schemes and predictions. Far from being a prophet with words of wisdom for our own time (as some public figures rashly claimed at the time of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09), Marx should be understood " as a figure from a past historical epoch, one increasingly distant from our own age: the age of the French Revolution, of Hegel's philosophy, of the early years of English industrialization and the political economy stemming from it. " In Sperber's view, Marx is " more usefully understood as a backward-looking figure, who took the circumstances of the first half of the nineteenth century and projected them into the future, than as a surefooted and foresighted interpreter of historical trends. " What makes this case especially convincing is the endless number of unsuccessful attempts " to bring Marx up to date " : the positivist Marxism promoted by Frederick Engels, quickly followed by Leninism, Stalinism, existentialist Marxism, Frankfurt Marxism, humanistic Marxism, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung thought, structuralism, Althusser's " scientific " Marxism, and many others. The fact that it the first attempt to bring him up to date was made so soon after his death goes to show how rapidly his ideas lost relevance. The abundance of such efforts only serves to emphasise the rootedness of Marx's thought in the period of the French and Industrial Revolutions, and the absence of any fundamental scientific discovery that could be the basis for future development and research. The most far-fetched effort to refashion or re-invent him for the late twentieth century was to associate his ideas with post-modernist relativism and multiculturalism, as though he was the champion of preserving local customs against modernisation. Quite the reverse: Marx was fervent believer in progress, modernity and science, regarded traditional cultures as primitive and backward, and had no time at all for the romantic primitivism that passes for so much Left thought today. Far from defending them against the encroachments of globalizing capital (Lenin's imperialism), he rejoiced in European colonization of underdeveloped regions and looked forward to the day when they would be completely absorbed into
Reading and Misreading Marx : A Review of a Review
Economic & Political Weekly, 2019
A response to "The Other Marx" (Murzban Jal, EPW, 26 January 2019), a review of the book Marx at the Margins:On Nat Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (2010) by Kevin Anderson.