Marx's undeveloped ideas about how society presents a misleading appearance which distorts its members' understanding of it have been the subject of many conflicting interpretations. In this book John Torrance takes a fresh, un-Marxist approach to Marx's texts and shows that a more precise, coherent and cogent sociology of ideas can be extracted from them than is generally allowed. The implications of this for twentieth-century capitalism and for recent debates about Marx's conceptions of justice, morality and the history of social science are explored. The author argues that Marx's theory of ideas is sufficiently independent of other parts of his thought to provide a critique and explanation of those defects in his own understanding of capitalism which allowed Marxism itself to become, by his own definition, an ideology.

Since the latest crisis of capitalism broke out in 2008, Marx has been back in fashion, and sometimes it seems that his ideas have never been as topical, or as commanding of respect and interest, as they are today. This edited collection arises from one of the largest international conferences dedicated to the bicentenary of Marx’s birth. The volume contains 16 chapters authored by globally renowned scholars and is divided into two parts: I) On the Critique of Politics; II) On the Critique of Political Economy. These contributions, from multiple academic disciplines, offer diverse perspectives on why Marx is still so relevant for our times and make this book a source of great appeal for both expert scholars of Marx as well as students and general readers who are approaching his theories for the first time.

This book offers a complete presentation of the most important themes of Marx’s thought, following the development of Marx’s theory from the beginning to his death and offering a reconstruction and analysis that covers the whole of Marx’s life and works. Each chapter presents one of the central topics of Marx’s reflection: the confrontation with the Hegelian theory of the State (1843); the critique of political liberalism in the “On the Jewish Question”; the discovery of Political Economy in the Manuscripts of 1844; the new theory of history developed in The German Ideology; the political theory and the revolution of 1848; the critique of political economy from the Grundrisse to Capital; and the political thought of the last Marx (the Paris Commune and the critique of the German Social Democratic Party).Stefano Petrucciani is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy.

An accessible introduction to the author of Capital and coauthor of The Communist Manifesto, with a focus on his relevance in today’s world. Few thinkers have been declared irrelevant and out-of-date with such frequency as Karl Marx. Hardly a decade has gone by since his death in which establishment critics have not announced the death of his theory. And yet, despite their best efforts to bury him, Marx’s specter continues to haunt his detractors more than a century after his passing. As the boom and bust cycle of global capitalism continues to widen inequality around the world, a new generation is discovering that the problems Marx addressed in his time are remarkably similar to those of our own. In this engaging and accessible introduction, Alex Callinicos demonstrates that Marx’s ideas hold an enduring relevance for today’s activists fighting against poverty, oppression, environmental destruction, and the numerous other injustices of the capitalist system.

In this third volume of his definitive study of Karl Marx's political thought, Hal Draper examines how Marx, and Marxism, have dealt with the issue of dictatorship in relation to the revolutionary use of force and repression, particularly as this debate has centered on the use of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat." Writing with his usual wit and perception, Draper strips away the layers of misinterpretation and misinformation that have accumulated over the years to show what Marx and Engels themselves really meant by the term.

First published in 1978, this book rapidly established itself as a classic of modern Marxism. Cohen's masterful application of advanced philosophical techniques in an uncompromising defense of historical materialism commanded widespread admiration. In the ensuing twenty years, the book has served as a flagship of a powerful intellectual movement--analytical Marxism. In this expanded edition, Cohen offers his own account of the history, and the further promise, of analytical Marxism. He also expresses reservations about traditional historical materialism, in the light of which he reconstructs the theory, and he studies the implications for historical materialism of the demise of the Soviet Union.

This introductory text is a critical theory toolkit on how to how to make use of Karl Marx’s ideas in media, communication, and cultural studies. Karl Marx’s ideas remain of crucial relevance, and in this short, student-friendly book, leading expert Christian Fuchs introduces Marx to the reader by discussing 15 of his key concepts and showing how they matter for understanding the digital and communicative capitalism that shapes human life in twenty-first century society. Key concepts covered include: the dialectic, materialism, commodities, capital, capitalism, labour, surplus-value, the working class, alienation, means of communication, the general intellect, ideology, socialism, communism, and class struggles. Students taking courses in Media, Culture and Society; Communication Theory; Media Economics; Political Communication; and Cultural Studies will find Fuchs' concise introduction an essential guide to Marx.

Much of Karl Marx's most important work came out of his critique of other thinkers, including many socialists who differed significantly in their conceptions of socialism. The fourth volume in Hal Draper's series looks at these critiques to illuminate what Marx's socialism was, as well as what it was not. Some of these debates are well-known elements in Marx's work, such as his writings on the anarchists Proudhon and Bakunin. Others are less familiar, such as the writings on "Bismarckian socialism" and "Boulangism," but promise to become better known and understood with Draper's exposition. He also discusses the more general ideological tendencies of "utopian" and "sentimental" socialisms, which took various forms and were ingredients in many different socialist movements.

Marxism as an intellectual movement has been one of the most important and fertile contributions to twentieth-century thought. No social theory or political philosophy today can be taken seriously unless it enters a dialogue, not just with the legacy of Marx, but also with the innovations and questions that spring from the movement that his work sparked, Marxism. Marx provided a revolutionary set of ideas about freedom, politics and society. As social and political conditions changed and new intellectual challenges to Marx's social philosophy arose, the Marxist theorists sought to update his social theory, rectify the sociological positions of historical materialism and respond to philosophical challenges with a Marxist reply. This book provides an accessible introduction to Marxism by explaining each of the key concepts of Marxist politics and social theory. The book is organized into three parts, which explore the successive waves of change within Marxist theory and places these in historical context, while the whole provides a clear and comprehensive account of Marxism as an intellectual system.

A clear and compact guide to Marx’s road to Das Kapital Ernest Mandel traces the development of Marx’s economic ideas from the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts to the completion of the Grundrisse. In a series of crystalline chapters, he provides an overview of subjects central to Marxist economic theory. Mandel focuses on Marx’s concept of alienation, which gained much currency among Marxists in the twentieth century, and traces the development of debates surrounding the labour theory of value, and Marx’s writings on communism and “crisis.” These discussions remain pertinent today, and these texts vital to all those who wish to interpret and to change the world.