Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion

Description

This towering intellectual biography allows us to understand both the greatness and the illusion that lie at the heart of an extraordinary man As the nineteenth century unfolded, its inhabitants debated an unparalleled range of economic, political, religious and intellectual challenges. One of the most distinctive and arresting contributions to this debate was made by Karl Marx, the son of a Jewish convert in the Rhineland and a man whose entire life was devoted to making sense of the puzzles and paradoxes of the nineteenth century world. It was an era dominated by new ideas about God, human capacities, empires and political systems - and above all, the shape of the future. In a world where so many things were changing so fast, would the coming age belong to those enthralled by the revolutionary events and ideas which had brought this world into being, or to those who feared and loathed it?

Gareth Stedman Jones is currently Professor of the History of Ideas at Queen Mary, University of London. He is a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge and taught at the university for many years, becoming Professor of Political Science in 1997. He is the author of Outcast London, Languages of Class and An End to Poverty? as well as being the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of The Communist Manifesto.

Exhaustive and staggeringly well-researched -- Oliver Bullough * The Observer * Vast, dense and intellectually formidable -- Dominic Sandbrook * The Sunday Times * Rich and deeply researched -- John Gray * Literary Review * Superb ... so long as we persist in our tendency to hive off the study of economics from politics, philosophy and journalism, Marx will remain the outstanding example of how to overcome the fragmentation of modern social thought and think about the world as a whole for the sake of its betterment. And this book will be an admirable guide to how he did it. * Financial Times * An intellectual history of impeccable scholarship... the book is superb... for those interested in Marx's thinking, Stedman Jones's book is a treat * The Telegraph * There is no better guide to Marx than Gareth Stedman Jones * Economist * 'A deeply original and illuminating account of Marx's journey through the intellectual history of the nineteenth century. Stedman Jones explores the friendships, affinities, rivalries and hatreds that shaped Marx's life with elegance and analytical brilliance. He anchors his narrative in a startlingly textured account of the society and politics of Marx's era. Most important of all, he brings to life the thoughts of a plethora of other writers, showing how Marx's engagements with the thoughts of others enabled him to navigate a course that often had little or nothing to do with the Marxism of the twentieth century. A profound reappraisal and a gripping read.' -- Christopher Clark (author of The Sleepwalkers)