In the first, the laboriously entitled “Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, Liedman has quite a bit on religion as the opium of the people (and curiously seems to think that Marx’s remarks come after, rather than before, Britain’s opium wars in China), but almost nothing on the striking proclamation of the emancipatory power of the proletariat with which the article ends. Take, for example, the articles that Marx wrote for the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher. This is particularly true of Marx’s more political writings. But it does sometimes involve an unbalanced account. This is, in a way, quite engaging as it clearly reflects his own interests and predilections. More importantly, the length and depth of Liedman’s discussion of Marx’s writings is very eclectic. The French translation of Capital, though much revised in parts by himself, was not “his own” it was done by Joseph Roy. Liedman is also dismissive of John Bellamy Foster’s account of Marx’s ecology, though it is not clear quite what his grounds are.Īlmost inevitably, there are some mistakes: Marx did not die “at his desk”: he died in an armchair. It is a pity that he has not managed to include discussion of the material in Marx’s notebooks on the environment as described in the splendid recent study by Saito (2017). Liedman is also good on the different approaches of Marx and Engels to the natural sciences. He even devotes four pages to Marx’s close friend and fellow campaigner the renowned inorganic chemist Carl Schorlemmer. Basing himself on material recently published in the MEGA, he shows how widely read Marx was in the natural sciences. Occasionally it is frustrating to find Liedman a bit too “hands-off”: he outlines, for example, Marx’s reasons for thinking that the rate of profit will fall but gives us no indication of what he himself thinks of this or any indication of where one might go to find further discussion.Īnother area where Liedman is helpful is his lengthy account of Marx’s researches during the last decade of his life. And it is very useful to have an account of recent German scholarship incorporated into the discussion – work by Heinrich and Kliman being well-covered. Liedman is particularly good on the transformation problem. The same goes for his chapter on Capital. His treatment of the General Introduction to the Grundrisse is as thorough and as accurate as the difficult content allows – though he is too kind to Marx on Greek art. All this is excellently conveyed – though why Liedman thinks that such an enterprise was impossible while the Soviet Union was still in existence (as he claims on his first page) is mystifying.įrom this perspective, Liedman gives pride of place to the Grundrisse, Capital, and the “late” Marx of the 1870s. One great merit of Liedman’s book is its emphasis on how unfinished is Marx’s work – how, from the 1840s until and including his last decade, he was constantly and continuously evolving, modifying, refining his approach to economy and society. As I shall try to show below, Liedman’s book is the reverse: he is weak on Marx’s politics, but insightful on the later Marx’s researches into political economy in the broadest sense. Liedman’s view is, I think, correct though rather harshly expressed: Stedman-Jones is excellent on Marx’s politics but less so on Marx’s achievements as an empirical researcher and thinker, particularly in the last decade of his life. He has also added a Preface in which he rather defensively answers the question of why we need another large biography after the sweeping 2016 one by Gareth Stedman-Jones(2017). The author has, he tells us, updated it for the English translation. A truly excellent book.” (George C.This big (756pp) book was originally published in Swedish in 2015 under the more sensible title of “Karl Marx: A Biography”. “Addressing both the political dimensions of Marx’s work-notably in Capital, which is often neglected from this perspective-and the significance of his contributions through the critique of political economy, this volume brings together internationally renowned figures in Marx scholarship for genuine dialog and rich, well-informed debates. Comprehensive and incisive, it is an outstanding contribution to its field.” (David McLellan, Professor of Political Theory, University of Kent, UK)
“The book offers an open-minded, informative and thought-provoking collection of contributions that inspires in-depth discussions not only of past Marxian and Marxist legacies, but also of how we learn from them to act upon our present and future world.” (Janaína de Faria, LSE Review of Books, .uk, December 1, 2020) “An excellent collection which showcases a lot of the latest scholarship on Marx and his legacy.
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