Why Read Marx Today

Download or read book Why Read Marx Today? written by Jonathan Wolff and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2003-08-28 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: '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.

Download or read book Critiquing Capitalism Today written by Frederick Harry Pitts and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2018-08-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book How to Read Marx's Capital written by Michael Heinrich and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2021-08-23 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book How To Read Marx written by Peter Osborne and published by Granta Books. This book was released on 2014-04-03 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life written by Jonathan Sperber and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-03-11 with total page 687 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This major biography fundamentally reshapes our understanding of a towering historical figure.

Download or read book Marx Today written by J. Sitton and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides, in one volume, primary sources by Marx and critical commentary which relates Marxism to contemporary social and political topics. It includes six brief works by Marx and ten articles by scholars, sympathetic to, but critical of, Marxism. For example, the author includes the classic essay by Heidi Hartmann which criticizes Marxism for misunderstanding gender oppression, "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism." No previous anthology of Marx has combined both brief works by Marx and multiple critical essays elaborating on his themes or engaging the shortcomings of his arguments.

Download or read book An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital written by Michael Heinrich and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global economic crisis and recession that began in 2008 had at least one unexpected outcome: a surge in sales of Karl Marx's Capital. Although mainstream economists and commentators once dismissed Marx's work as outmoded and flawed, some are begrudgingly acknowledging an analysis that sees capitalism as inherently unstable. And of course, there are those, like Michael Heinrich, who have seen the value of Marx all along, and are in a unique position to explain the intricacies of Marx's thought. Heinrich's modern interpretation of Capital is now available to English-speaking readers for the first time. It has gone through nine editions in Germany, is the standard work for Marxist study groups, and is used widely in German universities. The author systematically covers all three volumes of Capital and explains all the basic aspects of Marx's critique of capitalism in a way that is clear and concise. He provides background information on the intellectual and political milieu in which Marx worked, and looks at crucial issues beyond the scope of Capital, such as class struggle, the relationship between capital and the state, accusations of historical determinism, and Marx's understanding of communism. Uniquely, Heinrich emphasizes the monetary character of Marx's work, in addition to the traditional emphasis on the labor theory of value, this highlighting the relevance of Capital to the age of financial explosions and implosions.