Marx: A Very Short Introduction, page 1
Marx: A Very Short Introduction
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Marx A Very Short Introduction
Peter Singer
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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© Peter Singer 1980
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First published 1980 as an Oxford University Press paperback
Reissued 1996
First published as a Very Short Introduction 2000
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without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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ISBN 13: 978–0–19–285405–6
ISBN 10: 0–19–285405–4
9 10
Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in Great Britain by
TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
List of Illustrations
1 A Life and its Impact
2 The Young Hegelian
3 From God to Money
5 The First Marxism
6 Alienation as a Theory of History
7 The Goal of History
8 Economics
9 Communism
10 An Assessment
Note on Sources
Further Reading
Index
Preface
There are many books on Marx, but a good brief introduction to his thought is still hard to find. Marx wrote at such enormous length, on so many different subjects, that it is not easy to see his ideas as a whole. I believe that there is a central idea, a vision of the world, which unifies all of Marx’s thought and explains what would otherwise be puzzling features of it. In this book I try to say, in terms comprehensible to those with little or no previous knowledge of Marx’s writings, what this central vision is. If I have succeeded, I need no further excuse for having added yet another book to the already abundant literature on Marx and Marxism.
For biographical details of Marx’s life, I am especially indebted to David McLellan’s fine work, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (Macmillan, London, 1973). My view of Marx’s conception of history was affected by G.A. Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979), although I do not accept all the conclusions of that challenging study. Gerald Cohen sent me detailed comments on the draft of this book, enabling me to correct several errors. Robert Heilbroner, Renata Singer, and Marilyn Weltz also made helpful comments on the draft, for which I am grateful.
In the interest of clear prose I have occasionally made minor amendments to the translations of Marx’s works from which I have quoted.
Finally, were it not for an invitation to take part in this series from Keith Thomas, the general editor of the series, and Henry Hardy, of Oxford University Press, I would never have attempted to write this book; and were it not for a period of leave granted me by Monash University, I would never have written it.
Peter Singer
Washington, DC, June 1979
Abbreviations
References in the text to Marx’s writings are generally given by an abbreviation of the title, followed by a page reference. Unless otherwise indicated below, these page references are to David McLellan (ed.), Karl Marx: Selected Writings (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977).
B
‘On Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy’
C I
Capital, Volume I (Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1961)
C III
Capital, Volume III
CM
Communist Manifesto
D
Doctoral thesis
EB
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
EPM
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
G
Grundrisse (translated M. Nicolaus, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973)
GI
The German Ideology
GP
‘Critique of the Gotha Program’
I
‘Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction’
J
‘On the Jewish Question’
M
‘On James Mill’ (notebook)
MC
Letters and miscellaneous writings cited in David McLellan, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (Macmillan, London, 1973)
P
Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
PP
The Poverty of Philosophy
R
Correspondence with Ruge of 1843
T
‘Theses on Feuerbach’
WLC
Wage Labour and Capital
WPP
‘Wages, Price and Profit’ (in K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1951)
List of Illustrations
1 Karl Marx (1818–83) 2
2 Lithograph showing the young Marx (1836) at a drinking club of Trier students at the University of Bonn
Courtesy of the International
Institute of Social History,
Amsterdam
3 The exterior of 41 Maitland Park Road, Haverstock Hill, London, where Marx spent the last fifteen years of his life
Courtesy of Hulton Getty
4 Marx with his eldest daughter, Jenny, in 1870
Courtesy of Hulton Getty
5 G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831)
6 Marx in 1836, aged 18.
Detail from the lithograph on p. 4
Courtesy of the International
Institute of Social History,
Amsterdam
7 Ludwig Feuerbach
(1804–72)
Courtesy of the Mary Evans Picture
Library
8 Friedrich Engels
(1820–95) 45
9 English factories in the mid-nineteenth century: men and women at work in the Patent Renewable Stocking Factory at Tewkesbury in 1860
Courtesy of the Mary Evans Picture
Library
10 David Ricardo (1772–1823)
Courtesy of Hulton Getty
11 The round reading room of the old British Library, opened in 1842, where Marx worked on Das Kapital
Courtesy of Hulton Getty
12 Cover of the first German edition of Das Kapital, vol. 1
Courtesy of AKG London
13 Marx’s grave at Highgate Cemetery in London
Courtesy of Hulton Getty
14 Joseph Stalin (1879–1953)
Courtesy of Hulton Getty
15 Military tanks passing a mural of key communist figures in a 1974 parade in Havana, Cuba, marking the anniversary of the Revolution
Courtesy of Miroslav Zaji/Corbis
The publisher and the author apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list. If contacted they will be pleased to rectify these at the earliest opportunity.
