We are indebted to Linda Hedrick for the following Guest Editorial....
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Several years ago, on a visit to London, I fell in love with the old British Museum Reading Room. The British Library (which had been part of the British Museum up until 1972) had been recently built but I couldn’t resist the vibes of the original. I shifted from seat to seat, hoping that I would pick up, by the little-known process of “derriere osmosis,” some glint of inspiration from Rudyard Kipling, H. G. Wells, Oscar Wilde, George Orwell, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, or any of the other great authors who had once labored there. For some reason I became fixated on Marx, so either we shared seats or the time had come for me to acquaint myself with his work.
Far from the evil pinko commie whom McCarthyists and their descendants fear, Marx was a historian and theorist who examined social organizations. Both he and Sigmund Freud asserted that philosophy’s goal was to understand and overcome social structures which dominated and oppressed people. While Freud believed that sexual energy motivated human behavior, Marx saw human history as a series of struggles between classes. To him, historical materialism (a theory dealing with the distribution of resources, production and gain) was the driving force.
According to Marx, as society develops more complex modes of production it becomes stratified. Therefore the social class into which a person is born dictates one’s views, or ideology.
Marxism today has been influenced by many thinkers. There are basically two versions of Marxism – traditional Marxists, sometimes pejoratively referred to as vulgar Marxists, and post- or neo-Marxists. The former tend to think it is possible to get past ideology, the latter think ideology is so much a part of us that its effects cannot be overcome. I am grossly oversimplifying the entire field...so on to a list of books that explain Marxism much better than I can.
The German Ideology, including Theses on Feuerbach (Great Books in Philosophy series) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels was written prior to Marx’s Communist Manifesto. The edition cited includes Marx’s criticism of Feuerbach, which was found after Marx’s death and published by Engels in 1888, and another work of Marx, Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy, also published posthumously. This edition is an excellent title with which to begin understanding Marxism.
The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels is available in a 150th anniversary edition, or with additional, smaller works by Marx. The Verso anniversary edition (published in 1998) offers an excellent introduction by historian Eric Hobsbawm. Although it may seem dated, this is an important classic, regardless of one’s philosophical or political leanings.
George Novack’s An Introduction to the Logic of Marxism is a great intro to understanding Marxism, especially as it explains the development of both formal and dialectical logic beginning with the classical Greeks. Novack was, in his own words from 1976, “a radical intellectual of 1930s vintage who remains active as an unrepentant Marxist and full-time professional in the revolutionary movement.” He was also a colleague and defender of Leon Trotsky.
Paul D’Amato is the managing editor of the International Socialist Review. His book The Meaning of Marxism is a clear and concise explanation of Marxist thought. If you want a straightforward explanation of Marxism, this one does so intelligently and dismisses the distorted ideas that have arisen about Marxism, including the notion that Marxism is passé.
There are so many other important Marxists whose work should be included in a library on the subject - way too many to list! However, if you are eager to explore Marxist thought in more depth, the next two books should help you do so.
Louis Althusser is regarded as the founder of structuralist Marxism, and his book For Marx examines the work of early and late Marx, and other writers influential to and influenced by Marx. This group of essays is often considered a seminal work on Marxism. Influenced by Lacan, Althusser in turn influenced many other writers, such as Derrida. His other works have been influential as well.
Fredric Jameson is a contemporary Marxist, who affirms the relevance of Marx’s theories. His book Marxism and Form addresses the works of major European Marxist theorists, from Adorno to Sartre. Jameson is the prodigious author of some 24 books, covering everything from classical Greek thought to sci-fi, and he has had an enormous influence on postmodern studies in China.
So much has been written, and continues to be written, that you could easily spend all your money collecting books about Marxist thought. The above-mentioned books represent a good start....
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