Adventures in Marxism

by Marshall Berman

A new beginning for Marxism might just be on the horizon of a landscape despoiled by Soviet communism and a now wobbling world capitalism. The attention attracted by the 150th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto included laudatory references to Marx in venues as unexpected as The New York Times and The New Yorker . More predictably, the tributes in such publications focused on the strength of Marx as a critic of capital or a powerful wordsmith, rather than as an advocate of communism. But, if Marxism is to enjoy a rebirth in the coming century, appreciation needs to move beyond its value as a critical tool or a literary pleasure. The emancipatory potential of Marxism, its capacity to configure a world beyond the daily grind of selling one’s labor to stay alive, will have to be established anew. No one has made a better start to this task than the esteemed critic and writer Marshall Berman. Berman first read The Communist Manifesto in the same week as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman while at high school. A few years later, now a student at Columbia University, he was handing out copies of Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts , purchased for 50 cents each at the (Soviet) Four Continents Bookstore in New York, as holiday presents for friends and relatives. Here was the beginning of a lifelong engagement with Marxism that, as this volume demonstrates, has been both consistent and refreshing. In these pages are discussions of work on Marx and Marxism by Edmund Wilson, Jerrold Siegel, James Billington, Georg Lukcs, Irving Howe and Isaac Babel. They are brought together in a single embrace by Berman’s spirited appreciation of Marxism as expressive, playful, sometimes even a little vulgar, but always an adventure.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Marshall Berman (born 1940, The Bronx, New York City) is an American philosopher and Marxist Humanist writer. He is currently Distinguished Professor of Political Science at The City College of New York and at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, teaching Political Philosophy and Urbanism.

An alumnus of Columbia University, Berman completed his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1968. He is on the editorial board of Dissent and a regular contributor to The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bennington Review, New Left Review, New Politics and the Village Voice Literary Supplement.

His major work is All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience Of Modernity. His most recent publication is the anthology, New York Calling: From Blackout To Bloomberg, for which he was co-editor, with Brian Berger, and also wrote the introductory essay. In Adventures in Marxism, Berman tells of how while a Columbia University student in 1959, the chance discovery of Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 proved a revelation and inspiration, and became the foundation for all his future work. This personal tone pervades his work, linking historical trends with individual observations and inflections from the situation.


Bibliography

* The Politics of Authenticity: Radical Individualism and the Emergence of Modern Society (1970)

* All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (1982)

* Adventures in Marxism (1999)

* On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square (2006)

* New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg (2007), edited by Marshall Berman and Brian Berger.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's fitting that I finished this book on May Day. Reading it shook off my depression about living in a late capitalist society like Michael Bloomberg's NYC. It only took a Bronx born old-school Jewish Marxist like Berman to remind me why socialism is more than just about the economics; it's a philosophy about life and how to live it authentically.

People are fixated with socialism's alleged obsolescence post-1989 but I'd argue that in our current era of increasingly inequality and commodification (one that makes the 1920s look pale by comparison), it's our current belief that one day we'll be wealthy and comfortable that seems outdated. We're all Willy Loman's, as Berman notes, thinking we'll make that big sale but in reality most of us never will. But fear not. Berman makes a great guide on how to escape this terrible cycle. Join in the adventure.

[Andrew]

It's hard to call Marshall Berman a philosopher or a theorist or anything of that sort-- rather, he was one of the last of the old-school New York belletrists, an heir to Alfred Kazin and Lionel Trilling, whose strengths lay in his memorable phrasing and his ability to paint an image of the city rather than any particular theoretical rigor. Even as he invokes Marx, Benjamin, Lukacs, and Babel, he dances with them rather than puts them under a microscope.

The essays were clearly published over a pretty broad timespan initially, so while they were probably more stunning alone, they tend to repeat a lot of the same points when published as a single unit. But other than a few minor quibbles like that, I generally like Berman's program, as unfashionable and at times embarrassingly starry-eyed as it is.

[Sylvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Unless we know how to recognize people, as they look and feel and experience the world, we'll never be able to help them recognize themselves or change the world. Reading Capital won't help us if we don't also know how to read the signs in the street.

I was reading Harry Holmes' article on what Marxism in struggle means and I had briefly heard of Berman beforehand, but it was from this article and seeing how Holmes describes Marx and Engels and their own lives that really appealed to me.

I'm not sure if I would call myself a Marxist humanist, but it has certainly inspired my own Marxism in many ways. In particular, the humanising of revolutionaries is something that is so important for me. There is something comforting and inspiring about hearing about revolutionaries and how we are descendants of themselves and their own radical struggles and 'traditions' that really hones in what I mean by what it truly means to be a Marxist and how we live our Marxism.

Berman's book begins by describing Marxism as adventures, both in tragic and triumphant forms and establishes his own Marxist humanism as one that 'can help people feel at home in history, even a history that hurts them.' Berman will have passages like this that are really heartfelt, it makes you happy to be a Marxist and how we're (ideally) on these long journeys that never end, 'Marxism has been part of me for all my life. Late in my fifties, I'm still learning and sorting out how.' I was so happy to hear that at the start of this book! The appeal of Marxism for me is that sense of a continuous journey and how we're always learning more and applying it in new situations.

I wasn't expecting this book to be a collection of Berman's essays (mostly reviews), which can result in some repetitive passages. Be prepared to hear a lot of about Marx and his essay on 'alienated labour' as well as what will become a somewhat tedious and jarring anti-communism that stands out from how engaged and knowledgeable Berman is on Marx and his works. Even so, it is thanks to these reviews that I now know about the works of Edmund Wilson, Studs Terkel and James H. Billington. Berman is also very good at articulating his thoughts and criticisms in these reviews too, his way of writing this is both accessible and engaging.

The highlight of the book is of course the (longest) chapter that would eventually become his book All That is Solid Melts Into Air. Even Berman's re-reading of Marx is contextualised in the chapter by introducing the changes and shifts from the decline and loses in the radical organising of the 1960s, something which I think helps in our own disappointing or tragic adventures in Marxism. By analysing Marx's language ('psychically naked, stripped of all religious, aesthetic, moral halos and sentimental veils') and his literary influences (esp. Goethe's Faust), Berman thoroughly explores why we should view Marx as a modernist. It does the job of giving me a preview of the full book and entices me to check it out soon enough.

Immediately after this chapter is Berman's rebuttal to Perry Anderson's review of All That is Solid Melts Into Air, which includes some especially striking passages on the role of the intellectual and further engagements with the people, after numerous anecdotes of people Berman has encountered. This is similar to an earlier chapter on the people in Marx's Capital, the humanising touch of Berman is especially welcome here.

We can contribute visions and ideas that will give people a shock of recognition, recognition of themselves and each other, that will bring their lives together. That is what we can do for solidarity and class-consciousness. But we can't do it, we can't generate ideas that will bind people's lives together, if we lose contact with what those lives are like.

His chapters on Lukács, Babel, Schapiro and Benjamin are probably some of the weaker chapters for me. They're all still good, but I don't think they match the same kind of Marxist humanist interventions that are in this book. It's a mix of either myself being ignorant of the people (Babel and Schapiro) or know enough about them that I don't get too much from these biographical sketches of them from Berman (Lukács and Benjamin). What Berman does excel in though is providing some succinct descriptions of Lukács' concept of 'reification' that helped me in trying to more easily explain it. ('Reification is a poor Latinized equivalent for Verdinglichung, a German word that means "thingification," the process by which a person is transformed into a thing.')

The final chapter ends on a very strong note, Berman excels when he can divulge in Marx's work and to end the book on his review of a new (Verso) edition of the Communist Manifesto was an excellent choice. I love how he describes the issue of people engaging with Marx via secondary sources ('Could it be that Communist education was Talmudic, based on a study of commentaries, with an underlying suspicion of sacred primary texts?') as well as the need for more positive interpretations of culture from Marxists with emerging technologies providing a more global community and further opportunities for this.

Overall, Berman presents Marxism in an accessible manner, but not so much through the basic tenets or key concepts, but more in the ways in which Marxism can bring us meaning and a sense of purpose and more importantly, what we should be doing with our Marxism. I think that is the major takeaway from this book, for Marxists to find those adventures. Even if that means finding people within works of the past (like the people of Capital), or if you are not necessarily convinced by Marxist humanism or Berman's incessant and jarringly simplistic anti-communism.

The value from these descriptions and understandings from Berman alone are worth considering when checking out this book.

[Oğulcan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marksizm üzerine okuduğum en rahat kitaplardan birisiydi. Çok akıcı bir dili var.
Yazarın Marksizm ile tanışmasından sonra üzerine yaptığı okumalardan kesitler paylaşarak yazdığı bir eserdi, ancak bazı makalelerde kopukluk yaşadım.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 1 out of 5]

#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads, #Overrated Books To Roast:

I first picked up Marcus Rediker’s Adventures in Marxism at a time when the romance of theory was beginning to rub against the friction of biography. My youthful fascination with Marx had been nourished on the heady idealism of his manifestos, the fiery rhetoric of class struggle, and the intoxicating promise that history could be understood—perhaps even directed—through the dialectic.

And yet, as I turned the pages, the ghost of Helene Demuth and the scandal of Freddy Demuth hovered at the edge of every argument. The book was less about doctrine and more about the humanity—or hypocrisy—of its central prophet, which is precisely why it lodged itself so deeply into my own intellectual and emotional journey.

For me, Adventures in Marxism was not merely another introduction to the canon; it was an invitation to see Marxism as a living, breathing, conflicted tradition.

Rediker, with his historian’s flair, emphasizes the global reach of Marxist thought: how it coursed through movements, inspired revolutions, and shaped the twentieth century. He situates Marx not just as a thinker but as a node in an ever-expanding web of struggle, connecting the factory floors of Manchester to the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, the barricades of Paris to the anti-imperial uprisings across the globe. It is here that the political dimension of the book resonated most with me: Marxism as not simply an academic doctrine but a set of practices and commitments that have driven men and women to risk, rebel, and reimagine their worlds.

And yet, my reading of Rediker’s book was shadowed by my growing awareness of Marx’s failings as a man. The story of Helene Demuth—the housekeeper whose devotion was met with silence, whose child was effaced by Engels’ convenient lie—cut through the grandiloquence of the theory like a blade.

I could not help but juxtapose Marx’s soaring vision of emancipation with his failure to acknowledge the dignity of the person closest to him, a woman whose exploitation was quiet, domestic, and personal. In that paradox lay my own reckoning with ideology: that even the greatest visions of liberation can collapse when they stumble over the small, everyday ethics of care and recognition.

This is why Adventures in Marxism felt less like a celebration and more like a challenge. Rediker does not shy away from the contradictions, but nor does he allow us to dismiss the intellectual and political vitality of Marxism on biographical grounds alone. The book forced me to grapple with the uncomfortable question: can an idea outgrow its author?

The personal failures of Marx, like those of Gandhi or Heidegger, cannot be excised from history. They live on as stains. But equally, to reject Marxism wholesale on that basis would mean discarding the language of critique that has armed generations against the depredations of capital.

In that tension—between the promise of the theory and the frailty of the man—I found a mirror for my own politics. Adventures in Marxism arrived at a formative moment, when I was beginning to see that fidelity to an idea does not require blind reverence to its author.

To be a Marxist, perhaps, is not to be a disciple of Marx, but to continue the restless interrogation of injustice, even when it implicates Marx himself.

Looking back, the book reads like a rite of passage in my intellectual journey. It introduced me to the breadth and depth of Marxist thought, while simultaneously inoculating me against dogmatism.

It reminded me that history is written not just in revolutions and treatises but in the quiet silences of a household, in the contradictions between rhetoric and practice.

And perhaps that is Rediker’s greatest gift: he lets us see Marxism not as a frozen monument but as an adventure—fraught, messy, full of betrayals and triumphs, and always demanding that we bring ourselves, with all our flaws, into the struggle.

[Alex Birnel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marshall Berman’s "Adventures in Marxism" advances an appreciation for a Marxism that emphasizes human flourishing—a Marxist humanism. The collection gathers Berman’s essays exploring Marx, class, modernism, freedom and liberation, autonomy and constraint, and the radical expressive potential of art. The range of Marxist engagement is wide, as Berman explores Marxism’s tenets and visions through Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the journalistic and ethnographic work of Studs Terkel, the writings of Edmund Wilson, Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Perry Anderson, and Isaac Babel.

Instead of anchoring his Marxism in rigid doctrine, factionalism, or failed “actually existing” socialist projects, Berman’s embrace of Karl Marx is rooted in a belief in Marxism’s finest ethical and revolutionary aspirations. The line that "the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all," taken from the Communist Manifesto, is repeatedly cited throughout the book, reflecting Berman’s commitment to a radical humanism grounded in solidarity, creativity, and liberation.

The longest and most powerful section of the book is devoted to an excerpt from Berman’s most influential text, "All That is Solid Melts Into Air." The title, another line borrowed from the Communist Manifesto, marks Berman’s entry point into a Marxist syncretism with modernism. He rejects the notion that modernity and Marxism are incompatible, instead presenting them as ideas in tension, engaged in a dynamic and co-mingling conversation.

Berman argues that modernity, as we know it, is a bourgeois-forged experience—a maelstrom of volatility and constant change—that demands a class-based account. Because a small class of capitalists possesses the power to throw the world into flux through their productive innovations, modernity and Marxism can be canonized together as ideas in tension. Marxist aspirations of revolution, or the capacity of “humanity to reinvent itself,” are about collectivizing the means to define modernity itself, choosing a future that is either free, liberatory, and self-directed or centralized, concentrated, and cruelly exploitative.

By undergirding modernity's manifestation with a political economy controlled by the few, Berman exposes the power imbalances that shape our world, counterposing class struggle as a means to transform modernity and expand its human potential. This is the first reason this piece resonates as the beating heart of the book: Berman’s insistence that we make the world, and the world makes us, but that the balance of power within this mutuality is deeply uneven. He is effortlessly dialectical about the human subject and history, and this uneven score becomes the tragic tension of modern life.

Elsewhere in the book, Berman quotes Kafka on this imbalance: “In man's struggle against the world, bet on the world.” With this chapter, Berman describes how the forces of capitalist modernity are disproportionate in their power to reduce us—to cogs, to numbers, to workers, to consumers. This violent assimilation and transformation process is presented as a grand narrative of continual stripping and debasement. Once again borrowing from the Manifesto, Berman writes:

“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
Yet, Berman refuses to end this narrative in despair or alienation. Where others see only the crushing weight of capitalist modernity, Berman finds radical potential. He insists that by recognizing our entanglement in this process, we can collectivize the power to define modernity itself. If capitalism has the power to remake the world, so too does collective struggle. This is not merely an economic transformation but a radical reimagining of human possibility, a reinvention of what it means to be free, creative, and fully human.

The second reason this piece is so impactful is Berman’s refusal to romanticize resistance or simplify the path to liberation. He recognizes that modernity is not just a site of oppression but also of radical possibility. By placing class struggle at the center of his analysis, Berman demonstrates that the forces that alienate and exploit us are the same forces that can be harnessed to create new forms of solidarity, culture, and freedom.

Berman’s Marxism is unapologetically dialectical: he sees the contradictions of modernity—its capacity to simultaneously liberate and dominate—not as obstacles but as the engines of historical change. It is precisely within these contradictions that revolutionary potential resides. He argues that the alienation wrought by capitalist modernity compels people not only to confront the harsh realities of their existence but also to imagine new worlds beyond them.

This emphasis on radical imagination sets Berman apart from more deterministic Marxist interpretations. He rejects the notion that history follows an inevitable course or that revolution is a predestined outcome of capitalist crisis. Instead, he emphasizes human agency, creativity, and the capacity for reinvention. In doing so, Berman invites us to see the maelstrom of modernity not just as a source of alienation but as a space of possibility where new solidarities, cultures, and modes of living can be forged.

The third reason lies in Berman’s commitment to Marxism at the level of the street. In his response to Perry Anderson’s review of All That is Solid Melts Into Air, Berman challenges Anderson’s abstraction, arguing that Anderson’s historical time scales and pursuit of “high metaphysical perfection” overlook the lived realities of working-class people. To counter this, Berman provides three vivid anecdotes from his classroom: stories of a steelworker confronting deindustrialization, a Spanish-speaking immigrant girl navigating cultural alienation, and an artist struggling against commodification.

Through these stories, Berman restores the alive character of Marxist potential, illustrating how class struggle is a lived experience filled with contradiction, creativity, and possibility. By grounding Marxism at the level of the street, Berman not only democratizes revolutionary thought but also makes it alive, relevant, and actionable. Where Perry Anderson sees historical foreclosure, Berman sees openness and potential.

As Berman used to say of kids from the Bronx, "They come from ruins, but they are not ruined." This poetic encapsulation captures his vision of historical materialism: a history that is both contingent and constrained. It is contingent because we make history through our actions, choices, and struggles, shaping our world with our autonomy and creativity. Yet it is also constrained because the world we inherit is filled with ruins—structures of power, oppression, and alienation that must be confronted and unmade.

In Berman’s dialectical vision, we come from ruins, but we are not ruined. This is his radical optimism: that even amidst the wreckage of capitalist modernity, there remains the potential for reinvention, liberation, and human flourishing.

This is the enduring power of "Adventures in Marxism"—it invites us not just to critique the world but to reimagine and remake it. It calls for a Marxism that is alive, creative, and emancipatory, grounded in the belief that another modernity is possible, one where freedom and human potential are not the privileges of the few but the birthright of all.

Marshall Berman gives us a vision of Marxism that is not merely about economic justice but about the full liberation of human creativity, expression, and joy. It is a radical invitation to participate in the unfinished project of modernity. I would include it in any list of recommendations on Marxism, in particular to recover Marxism both from its stale and dense theories, as well as from the monsters under its influence in the 20th century. This is Marxism on the park bench, in the characters of great novels, living in the murals of Diego Rivera, scrawled in graffiti on the side of a New York City subway car. It's the tradition told in panache and pastiche with it's malleability and range on full display.

[Dante]

I could take or leave the core essays on Marx himself - inspired bits of writing and certainly insightful but perhaps less necessary in today's Marxological moment - but the vivacity of Berman's prose and optimistic modernism is just very enjoyable reading. A master of 'book review as a perfect medium for talking about whatever you want.'

a slightly longer 'review' here

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really appreciate Berman for implicity reminding us that the point of socialist politics is not only freedom from exploitation and oppression, but ultimately, about what we can do with that freedom. Leisure, love, art; what have you. Not just bread, but also roses. 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep, and 8 hours of What We Will.

A thread throughout Adventures in Marxism is that for all of its emphasis on the collective, socialism, in fact, lifts up the individual’s rights, and unleashes the individual’s creativity. Berman rescues this important point from Marx’s early works. Under capitalism, the individual is prevented from fully developing oneself. Modernization made the individual’s free development possible for everyone, not just the elite. But the capitalist form of modernization obstructs modernism’ best possibilities. At a society-wide level, people’s self-development is restricted by what the market allows. Alternatively, socialism stands for “‘free development,’ development that the self can control” (265).

The market constitutes a sort of modern nihilism, whereby anything that sells becomes morally permitted. “Any imaginable mode of human conduct becomes morally permissible the moment it becomes economically possible, becomes ‘valuable’; anything goes if it pays” (126). The flipside is that that which cannot be sold is not valued.

Art and politics is another related thread. Berman admires Meyer Schapiro, for wanting “art to be a channel for empathy, a parable of pluralism, a way for people (and peoples) to see each others’ ways of seeing, so they can cooperate collectively, constitute a public, and strive together for a fuller future” (234). I’m reminded of George Scialabba’s commentary on how reading literature, as a way to inhabit the experiences of others, can serve to develop understanding of others in society, a precondition for building broad-based politics.

Berman’s admiring words for Schapiro, along with Lionel Trilling, could be used to describe what he accomplishes in his own writing, collected in this book:
“They asserted the dignity of modern art and literature, and fought for recognition of its permanent value; they showed how this art and literature could help us—and also force us—to see into the heart of modern life. That life, they both believed, was animated by contradictory drives, both around and within us, and was at once a thrill and a horror. The writers and artists they loved most were radical critics of their culture, yet expressed its deepest values. In their feeling for cultural contradictions, Schapiro and Trilling both gave a new subtlety and depth to intellectual Marxism” (223).

[Zak Yudhishthu · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection of Berman’s essays has some unifying themes, but at times it can feel scattered. If you’ve read Berman’s book “All that is Solid Melts into Air” — a book that, to me, is transcendent — you will find some considerable redundancies and repetition. And within the essays we also get some repetition; there are a lot of reappearing Marx quotes. I probably could have skipped a couple of the book review essays.

Nevertheless, nobody can dance with a dialectic like Marshall, baby! At many times his prose soars, and he pulls out some incredible ideas and visions. Moments of the book were a little boring, but many other moments were deeply affecting and remind me why I love this author so much.

[Cris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Si bien al principio lo leía como una especie de hagiografía hacia Marx y lo marxista, poco a poco el hecho de hacerme ahondar en otro tipo de literatura y análisis me hizo emborracharme dulcemente en el conocimiento de otros autores y obras... Totalmente recomendable.

[Catalina Olea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Casi lloro con el ensayo sobre G. Lukács.

[Raoul W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent introduction on Marx and his ideas.

[Radhika · Rating 4 out of 5]

one of the most fun books i've read on marxism.

[Mert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Modernite ve Komünist Manifesto bağlamında başarılı analizlerin yer aldığı; Georg Lukacs ve Meyer Schapiro hakkında nadide sayılabilecek iki güzel makale barındıran kitap. Berman'ın makalelerinin bir araya getirilmesi ile oluşturulmuş bir kitap olmasından dolayı genel olarak bir bütünlük sorunu ve tekrara düşme durumu var. Kitabın teorik açıdan Marksizm'e derinlemesine bakabildiğini veya yeni sayılabilecek bir bakış açısı getirdiğini pek söyleyemem ama Berman'ı zaten farklı yapan şey, Marksizm'i ağırlıklı olarak Modernite üzerinden ele alıp kültürel alanda yorumlaması. Özellikle Modernite sorunsalı için Berman'ın Katı Olan Her Şey Buharlaşıyor kitabı daha faydalı bir kaynak gibi duruyor.

[Nativeabuse · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was garbage. It was just a bunch of essays about random stuff vaguely related to marx thrown together. It was mainly reviews of various stuff. Not much else here, and the reviews were not very good at that. It might be of interest to someone interested in Marxist literary theory, but outside of that it won't be of interest to anyone.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt like a one-off, which it is. Random collection of book reviews, articles, a chapter from his D.Phil. at Oxford, etc. etc. It did make me want to read his longer stuff, though.

[Matthew Matheson]

This books helps thinkers get past the myth's of Karl Marx.

[Sam Berner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A breath of fresh air into a rather stale subject. To be read together with "Why Read Marx Today?" and "How to Read Marx".

[Saptarshi · Rating 3 out of 5]

old new lefty blathers on about democracy and individualism. 'murica!