Los Angeles Review of Books - October 28th, 2013
KARL MARX’S IDEAS no longer matter. At least, that’s what Jonathan Sperber seems to think. Marx, he thinks, deserves a new biography now for this very reason: this quintessentially 19th-century thinker has been torn from his rightful time.
For admirers, Marx figures as the herald of the future: a theorist of societal transformation in the modern age; the architect of a social theory of capitalism that still works for our contemporary world, especially now that global capitalism seems on the skids and economic crisis is back. For critics, in contrast, he seems the harbinger of totalitarianism, the armchair advocate of class conflict, collective violence, and proletarian dictatorship, whose ideas came to justify the worst horrors perpetrated in the name of socialism by 20th-century revolutionary governments. As two of his earliest biographers, Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen, put this in 1936:
To some he is a fiend, the arch-enemy of
human civilization, and the prince of chaos, while to others he is a
far-seeing and beloved leader, guiding the human race towards a brighter
future. In Russia his teachings are the official doctrines of the
state, while Fascist countries wish them exterminated. In the areas
under the sway of the Chinese Soviets Marx’s portraits appear on the
banknotes, while in Germany they have burned his books.
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