Another Marx: Early Manuscripts to the International

by Marcello Musto

Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Marx was regarded as a thinker doomed to oblivion about whom everything had already been said and written. However, the international economic crisis of 2008 favoured a return to his analysis of capitalism, and recently published volumes of the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA²) have provided researchers with new texts that underline the gulf between Marx's critical theory and the dogmatism of many twentieth-century Marxisms. This work reconstructs with great textual and historical rigour, but in a form accessible to those encountering Marx for the first time, a number of little noted, or often misunderstood, stages in his intellectual biography. The book is divided into three parts. The first – 'Intellectual Influences and Early Writings' – investigates the formation of the young Marx and the composition of his Parisian manuscripts of 1844. The second – 'The Critique of Political Economy' – focuses on the genesis of Marx's magnum opus, beginning with his studies of political economy in the early 1850s and following his labours through to all the preparatory manuscripts for Capital. The third – 'Political Militancy' – presents an insightful history of the International Working Men's Association and of the role that Marx played in that organization. The volume offers a close and innovative examination of Marx's ideas on post-Hegelian philosophy, alienated labour, the materialist conception of history, research methods, the theory of surplus-value, working-class self-emancipation, political organization and revolutionary theory. From this emerges “another Marx”, a thinker very different from the one depicted by so many of his critics and ostensible disciples.

269 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 3, 2018

About the author

Marcello Musto is Professor of Sociology at York University (Toronto – Canada) and is acknowledged globally as one of the authors who has made significant contributions to the revival of Marx studies over the last decade. His major writings comprise four single-authored books, eleven edited volumes, and more than 50 journal articles and books chapters. Among his authored books there are Another Marx: Early Manuscripts to the International (Bloomsbury, 2018); and The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography (Stanford University Press, 2020); while his edited volumes include Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later (Bloomsbury, 2014); Marx’s Capital after 150 Years: Critique and Alternative to Capitalism, (Routledge, 2019); The Marx Revival: Key Concepts and New Interpretations (Cambridge University Press, 2020); and Karl Marx’s Writings on Alienation (Palgrave, 2021).

Reviews

[C. Varn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent exploration of Marx's biography as a context for his intellectual development. It is very useful and relies on a lot of MEGA-2 letter material. Musto is also fair to Marx's opponents in the International giving a defense of a few Bakunin's points while siding, ultimately, with Marx. This volume also makes clear that Marx's letters do have him being an immiseration thesis proponent in the 1850s but this becomes less and less important of his thought by the international. This book also confirms some of the information in Hal Draper's intellectual biographies of Marx which new letter material. That said, it doesn't really have a clear thesis as to what Marx was and how the Marx constructed by Soviet Marxologists was wrong but does complicate any easy picture that emerges from the theoretical debates of the 1950s-1980s. It also does not engage in as thorough revisionism of Marx's ideas as say, Michael Henrich, another scholar working with MEGA-2 material.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's... a good book, but unclear to me what exactly the "take" is, or like the main argument, or anything like that. I guess it works just as a collection of essays on "under-discussed" aspects of Marx's writings, but yeah imo it's mainly something to read to augment a full-on book like "Marx at the Margins" or something.