Marx: A Radical Critique

by Alan Carter

Alan Carter's libertarian communist critique of Marxism as an ideology developed by a rising "managerial-technical" class that would replace the bourgeoisie as a new ruling class without altering in any fundamental way the exploitation of the proletariat. Carter attacks historical materialism, Marxist economics, Marxist sociology, Marx's theory of the state, and Marxist-Leninist politics (which he identifies as the form of politics advocated by Marx himself).

Genres: Politics

301 pages, Unknown Binding

First published March 1, 1988

About the author

[NB: several authors are named 'Alan Carter'; this is the British professor of moral & environmental philosophy].

Reviews

[Allison · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book is a difficult but insightful read, especially if you’re a marxist. difficult because the quality of Carter’s analysis of Marx is unnervingly inconsistent. he makes a lot of interpretive mistakes you come to expect from uncharitable readings of Marx, and much of the book feels very much like a hate-read. nonetheless, the remainder warrants five stars

edit: after digging deeper into Marx i changed my rating from 5 to 1 stars bc i realized that it’s actually not insightful, Carter is just unfathomably stupid & got everything he knows about Marx from G.A. Cohen & ,, idk probably like peter singer or something. yeahhh it’s that bad lmao

[Princess · Rating 1 out of 5]

Possibly the worst "critique" of Marx ever written; derived almost exclusively from stereotypical misreadings of Marx by self-proclaimed "Marxists" which anyone who has cracked open Capital or the Grundrisse or even The German Ideology (Marx at his worst) would know are bullshit. Carter uses the easiest stereotypes and misunderstandings as invented by Orthodox Marxists and Marxist-Leninists to construct a "critique" that both isn't radical (it's actually fairly liberal, inconsistent, and much of his "criticisms" would just preclude the possibility of *ANY* radical politics *AT ALL*), and really isn't even a critique. I've had friends defend this as "Well, it fails as a critique of Marx, but it's a really good critique of Marx-ists!" Except, no, it isn't, it's a really bad and embarrassing critique of Marxists. When your "critique" is outclassed by vulgar materialist philosophies and Social Democracy, that bodes very poorly for the strength of it when contending with Marx's actually views. It would be quite intriguing to take this work and do a criticism of it that essentially goes in a page-by-page, sentence-by-sentence format to criticize it, but that is something I simply disbelieve anybody would have the patience for, let alone the time. Don't waste time reading this.