The Last Years of Karl Marx: An Intellectual Biography

by Marcello Musto, Patrick Camiller (Translation)

Gli ultimi anni della vita di Marx sono stati spesso considerati come un periodo durante il quale egli avrebbe appagato la propria curiosità intellettuale e cessato di lavorare. L’analisi di alcuni manoscritti, ancora inediti o poco conosciuti, permette di sfatare questa leggenda e dimostra che egli non solo continuò le sue ricerche, ma le estese anche a nuove discipline. Nel biennio 1881-1882 Marx intraprese uno studio approfondito delle più recenti scoperte nel campo dell’antropologia, della proprietà comune nelle società pre-capitaliste, delle trasformazioni determinatesi in Russia in seguito all’abolizione della servitù e della nascita dello Stato moderno. Inoltre, egli fu attento osservatore dei principali avvenimenti di politica internazionale e le sue lettere testimoniano il suo deciso sostegno alla lotta per la liberazione dell’Irlanda e la ferma opposizione all’oppressione coloniale in India, Egitto e Algeria. Le ricerche dedicate a nuovi conflitti politici, tematiche e aree geografiche, ritenute fondamentali per il proseguimento della sua critica del sistema capitalistico, permisero a Marx di maturare una concezione più aperta alle specificità dei diversi paesi e di considerare un possibile approdo al socialismo diverso da quello precedentemente prefigurato. Questi sviluppi teorici vennero interrotti da una lunga e dolorosa malattia che lo costrinse a vagare tra Inghilterra, Francia, Svizzera e Algeria, alla ricerca del clima più adatto a favorire la guarigione. Il soggiorno di oltre due mesi ad Algeri, l’unico della sua esistenza trascorso lontano dall’Europa, rivestì grande interesse per Marx, poiché gli offrì la possibilità di sviluppare importanti riflessioni sul mondo arabo e contro l’occupazione francese. Dai manoscritti, dai quaderni e dalle lettere di questi anni emerge dunque un uomo molto diverso da quello raffigurato da tanti suoi critici, o presunti seguaci. Dopo essere stato dapprima assimilato al cosiddetto «socialismo reale», e poi frettolosamente messo da parte dopo il 1989, oggi Marx sta conoscendo una significativa riscoperta e questo volume, che ne analizza con grande rigore la biografia intellettuale nel periodo meno esplorato della sua vita, rappresenta una preziosa novità.

Genres: History, Biography, Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Economics

216 pages, Paperback

Published June 30, 2020

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

[Morgan]

A short read about the late Marx. While it is labeled an intellectual biography, it is just as much about Marx's personal life. He has never felt more alive to me than in this book. Musto's main point, though, is to show Marx as a dynamic yet consistent thinker, and he succeeds amply. The length means the analysis of his development remains somewhat limited, however. Only Marx's views on Russia are given their own chapter, and even there the analysis is somewhat marred by the author's frustrating caricatures of Engels and the Second International as mechanistic and dogmatic (though that is par for the course when it comes to 'Marx-only' socialists. See the works of Lars T. Lih - particularly the first chapter of Lenin Rediscovered and his review of Witnesses to Permanent Revolution - for a refutation of myths about the Second International). He is also somewhat lenient on Marx's eurocentrism (again, par for the course). Musto promises closer analysis in the future, but this raises the question of why he felt the need to put out this book so early. It is nevertheless valuable as one of (thus far) few works available in English seriously analyzing a very important part of Marx's life.

[Neal Spadafora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Musgo had written an insightful look into the last years of Marx’s life and the travails that characterized such years. I knew that Marx had interests in the natural and physics sciences, yet I did not know that he spent an incredible amount of time reading such texts; however, such a fact easily contextualizes Marx’s incessant use of chemistry metaphors in Capital Vol. I.

Musto’s chapter on Marx and his correspondence with Russians was particularly fascinating. Marx essentially studied a commune in Russia and concluded that socialism need not pass through capitalism first; Marx saw that there were many historical trajectories that could lead up to socialism and his writings that stated otherwise were explicitly concerned with Western European trajectories.

Going forward, I will certainly be reading more of Musto’s work.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short biography, intellectual and personal, of the last two years of Marx's life. It is another book which clarifies some of the misconceptions surrounding Marx's theory, by Marxists and non-Marxist alike, by examining his late work. It joins a seemingly burgeoning field alongside others such as Kevin Anderson's Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies, and another Anderson recently published called The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism.

Thus, thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it has become possible to read a Marx very unlike the dogmatic, economistic, and Eurocentric theorist who was paraded around for so long. Of course, one can find in Marx's massive literary bequest a number of statements suggesting that the development of the productive forces is leading to dissolution of the capitalist mode of production. But it would be wrong to attribute to him any idea that the advent of socialism is a historical inevitability. Indeed, for Marx the possibility of transforming society depended on the working class and its capacity, through struggle, to bring about social upheavals that led to the birth of an alternative economic and political system.

[Molsa Roja(s) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un llibre meravellós de Musto sobre la vida de Marx. És colpidor, després de llegir els textos de Marx i ser incapaç d'imaginar-lo físicament, poder apropar-m'hi gràcies a aquesta feina... Resulta una aproximació més que satisfactòria de Marx com a persona, estimada, profundament humana i sempre llesta per la causa. Al llibre s'explica, també, bona part dels interessos de Marx en antropologia i modes de propietat arcaics pertanyents a la perifèria, entenent-la com al defora de l'Occident més clàssic, com ara Rússia, l'Índia, els indígenes americans o el poble algerià. També queda clar l'abandó de la dialèctica hegeliana per la qual el capitalisme era una fase històrica a ser formada i posteriorment superada, possibilitant així en el seu moment que pobles encara relativament lliures del domini del capital es proposessin la revolució.

[Julia Landgraf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Um bom livro pra entender as aproximações que Marx teve com a etnologia no fim da sua vida, e inclusive repensar certos aspectos de teorias vistas unilateralmente dentro da antropologia. Faz seu extenso trabalho de biografia a partir de suas cartas com Engels e a família, que achei bem interessante. No mais, apoiado com tanto material que tem surgido nos últimos anos (como "Karl Marx: uma biografia", do Netto, e "Marx nas margens", do Anderson), serve pra refutar muito bem o senso comum e alguns reducionismos pós-modernos que colocam a teoria marxiana enquanto "economicista".

[Elliot · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've read that incorporates the man Marx and his life into his work. A wonderful section on Marx's relations with his family, daughter, and Engels. Really phenomenal work on Marx's later theoretical development, interest in anthropology and mathematics. The section detailing Marx's correspondence with Russian communists in the 1870's and his recognition that there does not need to be a teleological development of Communism is worth the entire price of the book on its own.

[R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

To the end, through the loss of wife and daughter and countless ailments, Marx never lost his thirst for knowledge. This is a chronicle of those last years that puts to rest many of the myths surrounding them.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who demystifies the demystifiers?

[Praveen Kumar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The World is not enough for Marx.

[João Pedro Lopes · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://medium.com/@jphpwii/d756c590329f

[Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliant

[Omar Abolnasr · Rating 5 out of 5]

انطباع ماركس عن سلوك المستعمرين الأوروبيين في الجزائر:

"وهاجم ماركس بازدراء الانتهاكات العنيفة من جانب الأوروبيين والإهانات الدائمة، وليس أقلها "غطرستهم الدائمة والتطاول الفج على السلالات الأدنى". وهاجم أيضًا الهوس المروع الذي يصل إلى حد التقديس بإجبار السكان على التكفير عن أي تمرد يقومون به .. على سبيل المثال؛ عندما ترتكب عصابة عربية جريمة قتل ثم يتم القبض على المجرمين الفعليين في وقت قصير وتجري محاكمتهم وإعدامهم، فإن ذلك لا يعتبر جزاءًا عادلًا من قبل عائلة الاستعماري المكلومة، بل إنهم يطالبون بالمساومة على قتل ما لا يقل عن ستة من العرب الأبرياء. وعندما يسكن مستعمر أوروبي بين "السلالات الأدنى" فإنه يعتبر نفسه بشكل عام أكثر حصانةً من وليام الأول الوسيم."

[Sam Plauche · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read that all leftist should lead through, offering both an insight to who Marx was as a person as well as important reflections from him that are important to understanding communism and you can’t get from “The Communist Manifesto.” A take away I had was the reminder that communism is born from a reaction to capitalism, just as capitalism is a reaction to feudalism, and each piece, each system, has it’s role to play (good and bad) in building a better, more utopic, society.