Marxism - The Critical Project Of Karl Marx, Doctrinal Marxism, Doctrinal Marxism To 1914, After 1914: Leninism And Marxism-leninism
ideas curiosity understanding hook
Few sets of ideas are richer and more conflicted than those that have been put forward under the heading of Marxism. Marxism's founder, the German philosopher Karl Marx (1818–1883), had a wide-ranging curiosity about many aspects of humankind and a stamina matching his curiosity. But as the American philosopher Sidney Hook pointed out in his article on Marxism in the 1973 edition of the Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Marxism is more than simply "the ideas of Karl Marx" (vol. 3, p. 146); it also includes a vast array of thinking that took its point of departure from Marx. Indeed, Hook suggested that what Marx (and his friend, Friedrich Engels [1820–1895]) really meant is "by far not as significant as what they have been taken to mean" (p. 147). However, it seems clear that an understanding of both the original and the derived ideas is needed for an adequate understanding of Marxism.
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Marx fits within a wider group of Western thinkers who, beginning in the seventeenth century, offered new, secularized answers to the old questions, What is the good life for human beings? and, How is that life to be attained? In part, Marx was a laughing heir of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment—a thinker far more optimistic about human prospects than almost all his predecessors. Yet th…
During the 1880s and 1890s Marxism became doctrine in many European labor and working-class political organizations. Its scientism accorded with the spirit of the age. Its prediction that capitalism cannot escape economic crisis seemed congruent with the so-called Great Depression of 1873–1896. Marxism spread through the German Social Democratic Party after the chancellor, Otto von Bismarck…
Leszek Kolakowski has referred to 1889–1914, the period of the second Socialist International, as "the golden age" of Marxism. The Socialist International was an organization, founded at a congress in Paris in 1889, that aimed to encourage cooperation among the socialist parties of the different European countries. Admittedly, in this period Marxism began to acquire something …
The rise of Leninism dramatically changed the complexion of Marxism. As Neil Harding has argued, Marxism in its guise as "a theory and practice of revolutionary transformation" was virtually dead by 1914 (p. 114). Although many Marxists still made use of revolutionary rhetoric, the advance of political democracy, economic improvement, and the failure of class polarization to occur mi…
A large body of Marxian writing and reflection lies beyond the framework of doctrinal Marxism. Until World War II almost all of this "independent Marxism"—as we might call it—emerged within the framework of, or at least in close dialogue with, doctrinal Marxism. After World War II, this changed, for much Marxian reflection was carried out in essential independence from …
Lenin, V. I. The Lenin Anthology. Edited by Robert C. Tucker. New York: Norton, 1975. Possibly the best one-volume anthology. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. Collected Works. 50 vols. New York: International Publishers, 1975–2004. Imperfectly edited and omits some manuscript writings, but indispensable for English-readers. ——. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA)…
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