Marx and Marxism, Gregory Claeys
Marx and Marxism, Gregory Claeys
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Marx and Marxism

Author: Gregory Claeys

Narrator: Michael Gould

Unabridged: 13 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/24/2018


Synopsis

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.

About Gregory Claeys

Gregory Claeys is Professor Emeritus of history at the University of London. He is the author of nine books, including Marx and Marxism. He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, and co-editor of The Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Political Thought.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Morgan

This book reads like a Mr. Toads wild ride featuring: the bullet point basics of Marxist thinking and theory, mini biographies of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Min, and more, as well as post-it note histories of Marxist revolutions, Marxist states, and the myriad atrocities, including mass murder......more

An excellent primer on Marx and Marxism upto about the second international. (After that the coverage is so cursory I'm not sure why it was included at all.) I'm no expert on Marx but I know enough to appreciate that writing simply, concisely and accurately about him is an extraordinary feat and Cla......more

Goodreads review by Justin

This is not the way I would have written the book, but I found it fascinating for that very reason: Claeys is poor on the philosophy (i.e., on my specialty) and fascinated by the positive programs put forward by the various socialists and Marxists (his specialty is utopianism, where mine is critique......more