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Karl Marx
«Nessun pensatore del secolo scorso ha avuto un’influenza così diretta, meditata e profonda sull’umanità quanto quella esercitata da Karl Marx». L’incipit di questo libro ha la cadenza perentoria del dato acquisito, eppure registra un paradosso: Marx non possedeva né «le qualità che fanno un grande capo» (come Herzen), né la «meravigliosa eloquenza» di Bakunin, né un qualsivoglia tratto che suscitasse l’«intensa, quasi religiosa, venerazione dei discepoli» (come Kossuth o Mazzini). Muovendo da questo enigma, Berlin ripercorre magistralmente gli eventi esterni della biografia di Marx e gli aspetti salienti della sua formazione intellettuale: la mediazione tra l’empirismo scientifico dei francesi e lo storicismo metafisico dei tedeschi; il peso decisivo della critica della religione; la passione divorante per la letteratura. E ci fa via via scoprire come Marx, pensatore «dogmatico e pedante», interessato più alle teorie che agli uomini, sia tuttavia riuscito a cogliere lucidamente gli effetti dell’economia e dell’ideologia sulla società, inquadrandoli in una serie di prognosi di impressionante esattezza, a partire da quella sull’influenza decisiva dei mutamenti tecnologici e del capitale finanziario. Quello di Berlin è dunque un Marx opportunamente depurato da ogni presunta ortodossia – aderente al suo celebre autoritratto: «Quel che è certo è che io non sono un marxista».
309 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1939
About the author
Isaiah Berlin
215 books834 followersSir Isaiah Berlin was a philosopher and historian of ideas, regarded as one of the leading liberal thinkers of the twentieth century. He excelled as an essayist, lecturer and conversationalist; and as a brilliant speaker who delivered, rapidly and spontaneously, richly allusive and coherently structured material, whether for a lecture series at Oxford University or as a broadcaster on the BBC Third Programme, usually without a script. Many of his essays and lectures were later collected in book form.
Born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, he was the first person of Jewish descent to be elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. From 1957 to 1967, he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1963 to 1964. In 1966, he helped to found Wolfson College, Oxford, and became its first President. He was knighted in 1957, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1971. He was President of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978. He also received the 1979 Jerusalem Prize for his writings on individual freedom. Berlin's work on liberal theory has had a lasting influence.
Berlin is best known for his essay Two Concepts of Liberty, delivered in 1958 as his inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. He defined negative liberty as the absence of constraints on, or interference with, agents' possible action. Greater "negative freedom" meant fewer restrictions on possible action. Berlin associated positive liberty with the idea of self-mastery, or the capacity to determine oneself, to be in control of one's destiny. While Berlin granted that both concepts of liberty represent valid human ideals, as a matter of history the positive concept of liberty has proven particularly susceptible to political abuse.
Berlin contended that under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel (all committed to the positive concept of liberty), European political thinkers often equated liberty with forms of political discipline or constraint. This became politically dangerous when notions of positive liberty were, in the nineteenth century, used to defend nationalism, self-determination and the Communist idea of collective rational control over human destiny. Berlin argued that, following this line of thought, demands for freedom paradoxically become demands for forms of collective control and discipline – those deemed necessary for the "self-mastery" or self-determination of nations, classes, democratic communities, and even humanity as a whole. There is thus an elective affinity, for Berlin, between positive liberty and political totalitarianism.
Conversely, negative liberty represents a different, perhaps safer, understanding of the concept of liberty. Its proponents (such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) insisted that constraint and discipline were the antithesis of liberty and so were (and are) less prone to confusing liberty and constraint in the manner of the philosophical harbingers of modern totalitarianism. It is this concept of Negative Liberty that Isaiah Berlin supported. It dominated heavily his early chapters in his third lecture.
This negative liberty is central to the claim for toleration due to incommensurability. This concept is mirrored in the work of Joseph Raz.
Berlin's espousal of negative liberty, his hatred of totalitarianism and his experience of Russia in the revolution and through his contact with the poet Anna Akhmatova made him an enemy of the Soviet Union and he was one of the leading public intellectuals in the ideological battle against Communism during the Cold War.
Born in Riga, now capital of Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire, he was the first person of Jewish descent to be elected to a prize fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford. From 1957 to 1967, he was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at the University of Oxford. He was president of the Aristotelian Society from 1963 to 1964. In 1966, he helped to found Wolfson College, Oxford, and became its first President. He was knighted in 1957, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1971. He was President of the British Academy from 1974 to 1978. He also received the 1979 Jerusalem Prize for his writings on individual freedom. Berlin's work on liberal theory has had a lasting influence.
Berlin is best known for his essay Two Concepts of Liberty, delivered in 1958 as his inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford. He defined negative liberty as the absence of constraints on, or interference with, agents' possible action. Greater "negative freedom" meant fewer restrictions on possible action. Berlin associated positive liberty with the idea of self-mastery, or the capacity to determine oneself, to be in control of one's destiny. While Berlin granted that both concepts of liberty represent valid human ideals, as a matter of history the positive concept of liberty has proven particularly susceptible to political abuse.
Berlin contended that under the influence of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel (all committed to the positive concept of liberty), European political thinkers often equated liberty with forms of political discipline or constraint. This became politically dangerous when notions of positive liberty were, in the nineteenth century, used to defend nationalism, self-determination and the Communist idea of collective rational control over human destiny. Berlin argued that, following this line of thought, demands for freedom paradoxically become demands for forms of collective control and discipline – those deemed necessary for the "self-mastery" or self-determination of nations, classes, democratic communities, and even humanity as a whole. There is thus an elective affinity, for Berlin, between positive liberty and political totalitarianism.
Conversely, negative liberty represents a different, perhaps safer, understanding of the concept of liberty. Its proponents (such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) insisted that constraint and discipline were the antithesis of liberty and so were (and are) less prone to confusing liberty and constraint in the manner of the philosophical harbingers of modern totalitarianism. It is this concept of Negative Liberty that Isaiah Berlin supported. It dominated heavily his early chapters in his third lecture.
This negative liberty is central to the claim for toleration due to incommensurability. This concept is mirrored in the work of Joseph Raz.
Berlin's espousal of negative liberty, his hatred of totalitarianism and his experience of Russia in the revolution and through his contact with the poet Anna Akhmatova made him an enemy of the Soviet Union and he was one of the leading public intellectuals in the ideological battle against Communism during the Cold War.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 113 reviews
September 24, 2008
This is the first book-length biography of Karl Marx I read. Actually, it is more a book about Marxism than about the individual. Few very personal details are included, but what is discussed is important. The occasion of my reading of it is burned in memory. Except to me, it is not important.
By junior year I was quite the high school radical. A member of Students for a Democratic Society and The Young People's Socialist League, a good student, a volunteer on weekends at the Chicago A.C.L.U., I was an unremovable thorn in the side of the school's conservative administration, a delight to most of my teachers, an associate of the intellectuals of the senior class and an absolute neurotic when it came to females of my own age.
So great was my reputation that I was occasionally invited to political events associated with schools out of the district. On one such occasion, a meeting at a private home in Skokie to organize the Niles Township schools, I met Fern Platt.
Fern was also left-wing, Fern talked to me, Fern even invited me to meet with her a few days after the meeting: one particularly slushy day by Old Orchard, a shopping center near her house, far from mine. Arriving, footsore, chilled and soaked, my shoes ruined, we spent a rather uneventful hour or so looking into stores, maybe buying an ice cream, before I had to trudge home in the darkening afternoon. By now I was obsessed, excited thoughts of her occupying the hours and miles back to Park Ridge. She had said she'd telephone the next day, Sunday.
Sunday, another grey, miserable day with the temperature hovering at the freezing point. I sat upstairs in my brother's room, Isaiah Berlin in hand, waiting for the call. Hours passed. The phone would sound, but not for me. My thoughts struggled to apprehend the progress of the Idea in history against the steady pull of Fern: her visage, her voice, her smell. Hours passed. Hegel was replaced by dialectical materialism. The alluring image of Fern was increasingly disrupted by doubt ("she said Sunday, didn't she?"), fear ("perhaps something horrible has happened!"), dread ("she'll never call--she never intended to call--we'll never meet again!") and despair ("no girl would ever want me").
She didn't call. I finished the book. I never saw her again.
By junior year I was quite the high school radical. A member of Students for a Democratic Society and The Young People's Socialist League, a good student, a volunteer on weekends at the Chicago A.C.L.U., I was an unremovable thorn in the side of the school's conservative administration, a delight to most of my teachers, an associate of the intellectuals of the senior class and an absolute neurotic when it came to females of my own age.
So great was my reputation that I was occasionally invited to political events associated with schools out of the district. On one such occasion, a meeting at a private home in Skokie to organize the Niles Township schools, I met Fern Platt.
Fern was also left-wing, Fern talked to me, Fern even invited me to meet with her a few days after the meeting: one particularly slushy day by Old Orchard, a shopping center near her house, far from mine. Arriving, footsore, chilled and soaked, my shoes ruined, we spent a rather uneventful hour or so looking into stores, maybe buying an ice cream, before I had to trudge home in the darkening afternoon. By now I was obsessed, excited thoughts of her occupying the hours and miles back to Park Ridge. She had said she'd telephone the next day, Sunday.
Sunday, another grey, miserable day with the temperature hovering at the freezing point. I sat upstairs in my brother's room, Isaiah Berlin in hand, waiting for the call. Hours passed. The phone would sound, but not for me. My thoughts struggled to apprehend the progress of the Idea in history against the steady pull of Fern: her visage, her voice, her smell. Hours passed. Hegel was replaced by dialectical materialism. The alluring image of Fern was increasingly disrupted by doubt ("she said Sunday, didn't she?"), fear ("perhaps something horrible has happened!"), dread ("she'll never call--she never intended to call--we'll never meet again!") and despair ("no girl would ever want me").
She didn't call. I finished the book. I never saw her again.
July 19, 2022
La lectura de esta biografía de Karl Marx, a la que en esta nueva edición se ha extirpado su subtítulo original – Su vida y su entorno –, ha reafirmado la percepción que obtuve al leer Pensadores rusos de Isaiah Berlin como un extraordinario historiador de las ideas, que aplica un método crítico por el que se funde con el objeto de estudio y extrae los puntos esenciales para posteriormente reflejarlos en un lenguaje diáfano y riguroso. Como afirma Terrell Carver en el postfacio de la obra, «Berlin sintonizaba temperamentalmente con la complejidad y con la apertura de miras, y (…) esto puede ser una virtud académica y política, especialmente al ocuparse de Marx y el marxismo, puesto que ambos son fenómenos complejos y abiertos a la discusión». El pensador nacido en la actual Letonia, defensor de la complejidad humana y escéptico respecto a los sistemas intelectuales simplificadores del pensamiento, inició su producción literaria con una obra heterodoxa en la que desafiaba las concepciones que por entonces habían establecido firmemente los comentaristas de la obra de Marx.
Karl Marx: His Life and Environment fue publicado en 1939, cinco años después de aceptar un encargo editorial para el que el biógrafo del autor Michael Ignatieff afirma que no estaba preparado y que «no sabía casi nada sobre el tema». Desde luego, la temática se encontraba muy alejada de su campo de investigación, lo que complicaba la elaboración de un libro para el que no contaba con referencias válidas y el acceso a información sobre el filósofo de Tréveris era extraordinariamente limitado. Sin embargo, contra todo pronóstico su genialidad le permitió realizar una biografía que, con leves retoques en las sucesivas ediciones, ha sobrevivido al paso del tiempo como una semblanza desapasionada, fiel a la figura retratada y ajena tanto a los acercamientos hagiográficos como condenatorios que se habían publicado anteriormente y continuarían editándose después. Su opera prima marcaría definitivamente el sentido de su carrera historiográfica, que satisfizo su natural interés por las ideas, teorías y el aspecto revolucionario de las corrientes liberales y nacionalistas del siglo XIX.
La obra pretendía situar a Karl Marx en su contexto intelectual, poniendo especial énfasis en sus influencias, precedentes y figuras paralelas: Hegel, Feuerbach, Saint-Simon, Annenkov, Herzen, Proudhon, Bakunin, etc. Se trataba de una delicada misión, habida cuenta del contexto histórico en el que se enmarcaba su propósito, las establecidas perspectivas tanto de la ortodoxia marxista como de los críticos antimarxistas y los filtros – el engelsiano y los de las respectivas corrientes que se identificaban como sus herederos – por los que las ideas del intelectual judeoalemán habían sido introducidas. No obstante, logró dejar estas perspectivas fuera de su análisis y eludir cualquier tipo de contaminación ideológica que se interpusiera desde el presente, lo que en algunos casos le lleva durante el escrito a dejar preguntas sin responder y permitir al lector la posibilidad de otorgarlas una respuesta.
Desde la introducción a la obra, donde realiza una exposición sucinta pero clarividente de las principales ideas de Marx, estableciendo los elementos esenciales que conformaron su doctrina y señalando los ejes centrales en torno a los que giraban sus análisis, Berlin hace gala de su comprensión profunda de la filosofía marxiana – por evitar el término «marxista», del que famosamente Marx también se apartó – y de sus excepcionales dotes divulgativas. Posteriormente da comienzo el relato sobre el filósofo revolucionario, en el que hilvana las vicisitudes de su compleja existencia con la explicación de su pensamiento, lo que en ocasiones lleva a extensas digresiones, como es el caso del tercer capítulo, en el que realiza un esbozo de los jóvenes hegelianos y la «filosofía del espíritu». Resulta curiosa la ausencia de una terminología habitual cuando se trata el personaje de Karl Marx como «socialismo científico» o «materialismo dialéctico», que se debe al propósito del autor de beber únicamente de las fuentes del momento sin dejarse influir por las interpretaciones posteriores. Para Berlin, el desarrollo de la doctrina de Marx culmina en «una notable combinación de principios fundamentales, simples, con generalización, detalle y realismo» que el autor oxoniense define con precisión, absteniéndose de pronunciarse sobre cuestiones conflictivas y permitiendo al protagonista de su obra expresarse en abundantes citas. Quizá uno de los más importantes aspectos que aporta Berlin es la pléyade de intelectuales precursores y contemporáneos de Marx de los que éste extrajo ideas y principios para incorporarlos a un sistema cerrado del que fue artífice con la inestimable asistencia de su fiel amigo y compañero Friedrich Engels.
Para el biógrafo, Marx buscaba proporcionar una explicación detallada y completa del surgimiento e inminente caída del sistema capitalista. Con este objetivo elaboró una teoría económica completa y una teoría de la historia que establecía la primacía de los factores económicos como elemento determinante del comportamiento de las sociedades. Berlin hace poco hincapié en la teoría del valor-trabajo, a la que parece considerar de poca importancia ya que interpreta que la teoría de la explotación basada en ella «resulta comparativamente poco afectada». Del mismo modo, presta poca atención a las aportaciones de Engels a la muerte del «Moro», así como al impacto de las doctrinas de Marx en los movimientos políticos que se apoyaban en su pensamiento, que se entreven únicamente en algunas sentencias a lo largo de la obra.
Uno de los mitos que yo creía verídicos – y el propio Berlin también, ya que lo incluyó en la primera edición de su obra, aunque corrigió su error unas décadas después – y desmonta esta edición de la biografía era el de la dedicatoria por parte de Marx de la segunda edición del primer volumen del capital a Charles Darwin. Al parecer, aunque quedara profundamente impresionado por los descubrimientos del naturalista inglés, la anécdota es apócrifa y es producto de una mala interpretación de una carta enviada por Darwin al yerno de Marx, Edward Aveling. Berlin subsanaría esta confusión y publicaría en 1978 un artículo en la revista Journal of the History of Ideas titulado «Marx’s Kapital and Darwin».
A lo largo del libro son señaladas distintas paradojas en las que, en opinión del autor, incurrió Marx durante su vida y sus escritos, siendo la más relevante aquella que ocupa el último párrafo de la obra:
Estas frases tocan una tecla sobre la que he reflexionado alguna vez y de la que ignoro si existe literatura al respecto, que es cómo explica la filosofía de la historia marxista el surgimiento y colosal expansión e influencia del propio marxismo. En cualquier caso, la exposición de las ideas de Marx en esta obra es esquemática y su estudio requiere el análisis minucioso de las obras originales, que se encuentran listadas en un anexo bibliográfico realizado por el mismo Terrell Carver. Según asegura el profesor estadounidense, la biografía realizada por Berlin dio comienzo al estudio reflexivo y sistemático de la obra de Marx como «una figura importante e incluso de primer nivel intelectual, más allá de las controversias ahora periclitadas sobre el bolchevismo, la guerra fría, el telón de acero y el muro de Berlín». Desde entonces, la bibliografía publicada sobre Karl Marx ha sido formidable y, en muchos casos, mucho más fundamentada y crítica que este libro de Isaiah Berlin. No obstante, pocos autores podrán igualar las brillantes apreciaciones que destila esta obra y el estilo luminoso y afable que se desprende de sus páginas.
Karl Marx: His Life and Environment fue publicado en 1939, cinco años después de aceptar un encargo editorial para el que el biógrafo del autor Michael Ignatieff afirma que no estaba preparado y que «no sabía casi nada sobre el tema». Desde luego, la temática se encontraba muy alejada de su campo de investigación, lo que complicaba la elaboración de un libro para el que no contaba con referencias válidas y el acceso a información sobre el filósofo de Tréveris era extraordinariamente limitado. Sin embargo, contra todo pronóstico su genialidad le permitió realizar una biografía que, con leves retoques en las sucesivas ediciones, ha sobrevivido al paso del tiempo como una semblanza desapasionada, fiel a la figura retratada y ajena tanto a los acercamientos hagiográficos como condenatorios que se habían publicado anteriormente y continuarían editándose después. Su opera prima marcaría definitivamente el sentido de su carrera historiográfica, que satisfizo su natural interés por las ideas, teorías y el aspecto revolucionario de las corrientes liberales y nacionalistas del siglo XIX.
La obra pretendía situar a Karl Marx en su contexto intelectual, poniendo especial énfasis en sus influencias, precedentes y figuras paralelas: Hegel, Feuerbach, Saint-Simon, Annenkov, Herzen, Proudhon, Bakunin, etc. Se trataba de una delicada misión, habida cuenta del contexto histórico en el que se enmarcaba su propósito, las establecidas perspectivas tanto de la ortodoxia marxista como de los críticos antimarxistas y los filtros – el engelsiano y los de las respectivas corrientes que se identificaban como sus herederos – por los que las ideas del intelectual judeoalemán habían sido introducidas. No obstante, logró dejar estas perspectivas fuera de su análisis y eludir cualquier tipo de contaminación ideológica que se interpusiera desde el presente, lo que en algunos casos le lleva durante el escrito a dejar preguntas sin responder y permitir al lector la posibilidad de otorgarlas una respuesta.
Desde la introducción a la obra, donde realiza una exposición sucinta pero clarividente de las principales ideas de Marx, estableciendo los elementos esenciales que conformaron su doctrina y señalando los ejes centrales en torno a los que giraban sus análisis, Berlin hace gala de su comprensión profunda de la filosofía marxiana – por evitar el término «marxista», del que famosamente Marx también se apartó – y de sus excepcionales dotes divulgativas. Posteriormente da comienzo el relato sobre el filósofo revolucionario, en el que hilvana las vicisitudes de su compleja existencia con la explicación de su pensamiento, lo que en ocasiones lleva a extensas digresiones, como es el caso del tercer capítulo, en el que realiza un esbozo de los jóvenes hegelianos y la «filosofía del espíritu». Resulta curiosa la ausencia de una terminología habitual cuando se trata el personaje de Karl Marx como «socialismo científico» o «materialismo dialéctico», que se debe al propósito del autor de beber únicamente de las fuentes del momento sin dejarse influir por las interpretaciones posteriores. Para Berlin, el desarrollo de la doctrina de Marx culmina en «una notable combinación de principios fundamentales, simples, con generalización, detalle y realismo» que el autor oxoniense define con precisión, absteniéndose de pronunciarse sobre cuestiones conflictivas y permitiendo al protagonista de su obra expresarse en abundantes citas. Quizá uno de los más importantes aspectos que aporta Berlin es la pléyade de intelectuales precursores y contemporáneos de Marx de los que éste extrajo ideas y principios para incorporarlos a un sistema cerrado del que fue artífice con la inestimable asistencia de su fiel amigo y compañero Friedrich Engels.
Para el biógrafo, Marx buscaba proporcionar una explicación detallada y completa del surgimiento e inminente caída del sistema capitalista. Con este objetivo elaboró una teoría económica completa y una teoría de la historia que establecía la primacía de los factores económicos como elemento determinante del comportamiento de las sociedades. Berlin hace poco hincapié en la teoría del valor-trabajo, a la que parece considerar de poca importancia ya que interpreta que la teoría de la explotación basada en ella «resulta comparativamente poco afectada». Del mismo modo, presta poca atención a las aportaciones de Engels a la muerte del «Moro», así como al impacto de las doctrinas de Marx en los movimientos políticos que se apoyaban en su pensamiento, que se entreven únicamente en algunas sentencias a lo largo de la obra.
Uno de los mitos que yo creía verídicos – y el propio Berlin también, ya que lo incluyó en la primera edición de su obra, aunque corrigió su error unas décadas después – y desmonta esta edición de la biografía era el de la dedicatoria por parte de Marx de la segunda edición del primer volumen del capital a Charles Darwin. Al parecer, aunque quedara profundamente impresionado por los descubrimientos del naturalista inglés, la anécdota es apócrifa y es producto de una mala interpretación de una carta enviada por Darwin al yerno de Marx, Edward Aveling. Berlin subsanaría esta confusión y publicaría en 1978 un artículo en la revista Journal of the History of Ideas titulado «Marx’s Kapital and Darwin».
A lo largo del libro son señaladas distintas paradojas en las que, en opinión del autor, incurrió Marx durante su vida y sus escritos, siendo la más relevante aquella que ocupa el último párrafo de la obra:
Marx erigió el sistema para refutar la proposición de que las ideas determinan decisivamente el curso de la historia, pero la misma extensión de su influencia sobre los asuntos humanos debilitó la fuerza de sus tesis. Pues al alterar la opinión hasta entonces dominante de la relación del individuo con su entorno y con sus semejantes, alteró palpablemente esa misma relación; y, en consecuencia, constituye la más poderosa de las fuerzas intelectuales que hoy transforma permanentemente los modos en que los hombres obran y piensan.
Estas frases tocan una tecla sobre la que he reflexionado alguna vez y de la que ignoro si existe literatura al respecto, que es cómo explica la filosofía de la historia marxista el surgimiento y colosal expansión e influencia del propio marxismo. En cualquier caso, la exposición de las ideas de Marx en esta obra es esquemática y su estudio requiere el análisis minucioso de las obras originales, que se encuentran listadas en un anexo bibliográfico realizado por el mismo Terrell Carver. Según asegura el profesor estadounidense, la biografía realizada por Berlin dio comienzo al estudio reflexivo y sistemático de la obra de Marx como «una figura importante e incluso de primer nivel intelectual, más allá de las controversias ahora periclitadas sobre el bolchevismo, la guerra fría, el telón de acero y el muro de Berlín». Desde entonces, la bibliografía publicada sobre Karl Marx ha sido formidable y, en muchos casos, mucho más fundamentada y crítica que este libro de Isaiah Berlin. No obstante, pocos autores podrán igualar las brillantes apreciaciones que destila esta obra y el estilo luminoso y afable que se desprende de sus páginas.
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November 17, 2015هر دوران جدیدی با رهایی طبقه ای آغاز می شود که پیش از آن سرکوب می شده است.
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پرولتاریا از هر چیزی محروم شده است جز انسانیت محض، همین بی چیزی و تهی دستی باعث شده است نماینده همه انسان ها باشد.
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در جنگ ملت ها یا خاندان ها هر کس که پیروز شود کارگران دو طرف همیشه بازنده اند.
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پرولتاریا از هر چیزی محروم شده است جز انسانیت محض، همین بی چیزی و تهی دستی باعث شده است نماینده همه انسان ها باشد.
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در جنگ ملت ها یا خاندان ها هر کس که پیروز شود کارگران دو طرف همیشه بازنده اند.
December 10, 2018
کارل مارکسِ آیزایا برلین مابین روایت زندگی شخصی و اجتماعی مارکس و ضمنا تحلیل زمینه و زمانهی او در نوسان است. برلین این شاهکار را وقتی تنها سی سال داشته منتشر کرده است —که واقعا رشکبرانگیز است— و طبق گفتهاش نیمی از کتاب را به درخواست ناشر در نسخهی نهایی حذف کرده است. کتاب نهایتا به همان سنت «تاریخنگاری اندیشه» متعلق است؛ مؤلف از ریشهها و تأثیرات تاریخ بر اندیشمند مورد بحثش سخن میگوید و اینکار را با نهایت زبردستی انجام میدهد
August 6, 2019
This is the type of fine work that has given Oxford University such an august reputation. I think that it is very much worth reading for someone who has read "Das Kapital" and several other of Marx's major works. Do not read it if you have only read "The Communist Manifesto".
Berlin's stated objective is to show how Marx combined Hegelian philosophy, classical British economics and the works of early theorists of socialism such as Proudhon to produce a corpus of work that was sufficiently comprehensive and systematic to sustain Communism as a dominant political force in the twentieth century.
Berlin is much better writing about Hegel and the pre-Marxian theorists of socialism than about the classical economists such as Ricardo, Say and Adam Smith. This however is quite normal. Very few of Marx's analysts have ever taken the effort to understand the economic thinking of Marx's time and thus never say anything of any substance about Marxian economics.
Berlin represents very well the thinking in British academic circles about Marx on the eve of World War II. In 1939 when his book was published, communism existed only in the USSR many observers thought that it was very unstable and might be eliminated. Ten years later, Communism had spread to China and ten or so additional European countries. Every where it was very solidly implanted. In other words, the world has a much different view about the posterity of Marx than at the time Berlin wrote his book. Berlin's book is still excellent but it no longer represents the current academic debate about Marx.
Berlin's stated objective is to show how Marx combined Hegelian philosophy, classical British economics and the works of early theorists of socialism such as Proudhon to produce a corpus of work that was sufficiently comprehensive and systematic to sustain Communism as a dominant political force in the twentieth century.
Berlin is much better writing about Hegel and the pre-Marxian theorists of socialism than about the classical economists such as Ricardo, Say and Adam Smith. This however is quite normal. Very few of Marx's analysts have ever taken the effort to understand the economic thinking of Marx's time and thus never say anything of any substance about Marxian economics.
Berlin represents very well the thinking in British academic circles about Marx on the eve of World War II. In 1939 when his book was published, communism existed only in the USSR many observers thought that it was very unstable and might be eliminated. Ten years later, Communism had spread to China and ten or so additional European countries. Every where it was very solidly implanted. In other words, the world has a much different view about the posterity of Marx than at the time Berlin wrote his book. Berlin's book is still excellent but it no longer represents the current academic debate about Marx.
October 3, 2024
چه به لحاظ مولف و چه محتوی و ترجمه ۵ ستاره.
خطابه انگلس در مراسم تشییع مارکس.
رسالتش در زندگی عبارت بود از مشارکت در سرنگونی جامعه ی سرمایه داری به هر نحوی از انحا... مشارکت در رهایی پرولتاریای امروز که خود او اولین کسی بود که آن را از وضعیت و نیازهایش و از شرایطی که در آن پرولتاریا میتواند به آزادی دست یابد، آگاه کرد. مبارزه رکن وجودش بود و با چنان شور و شوقی مبارزه کرد با چنان پایمردی و موفقیتی که کمتر کسی توانسته به پایش برسد... و از همین رو بیش از هر کس دیگری در زمانه اش آماج نفرت و افترا قرار گرفت.... هنگامی که درگذشت محبوب و مورد احترام بود و
میلیونها کارگر انقلابی سوگوارش شدند از معادن سیبری گرفته تا سواحل کالیفرنیا در همه ی نقاط اروپا و آمریکا... نامش و کارش در طی اعصار پاینده خواهد ماند.
خطابه انگلس در مراسم تشییع مارکس.
رسالتش در زندگی عبارت بود از مشارکت در سرنگونی جامعه ی سرمایه داری به هر نحوی از انحا... مشارکت در رهایی پرولتاریای امروز که خود او اولین کسی بود که آن را از وضعیت و نیازهایش و از شرایطی که در آن پرولتاریا میتواند به آزادی دست یابد، آگاه کرد. مبارزه رکن وجودش بود و با چنان شور و شوقی مبارزه کرد با چنان پایمردی و موفقیتی که کمتر کسی توانسته به پایش برسد... و از همین رو بیش از هر کس دیگری در زمانه اش آماج نفرت و افترا قرار گرفت.... هنگامی که درگذشت محبوب و مورد احترام بود و
میلیونها کارگر انقلابی سوگوارش شدند از معادن سیبری گرفته تا سواحل کالیفرنیا در همه ی نقاط اروپا و آمریکا... نامش و کارش در طی اعصار پاینده خواهد ماند.
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August 2, 2016Isaiah Berlin, the sort of broad-ranging thinker that makes me want to give up the intellectual effort entirely, takes on Karl Marx, a bright but impoverished family man living in London.
What I loved about Berlin's analysis was that while personal details were critical to the narrative, Marx's relationship with the ideas that came both before and after him is far more important. We learn no only about Marx, but about Hegel and Engels, Lafargue and Duhring, Saint-Simon and Feuerbach. And what I love most is how nonpartisan Berlin is with his analysis of the man's philosophy. Instead of writing as a fawning Trotskyist or a fuming anticommunist, he is merely writing as someone whose first allegiance is to the intellectual approach, albeit his own pluralistic, skeptical, emphatically liberal-democratic intellectual approach.
What I loved about Berlin's analysis was that while personal details were critical to the narrative, Marx's relationship with the ideas that came both before and after him is far more important. We learn no only about Marx, but about Hegel and Engels, Lafargue and Duhring, Saint-Simon and Feuerbach. And what I love most is how nonpartisan Berlin is with his analysis of the man's philosophy. Instead of writing as a fawning Trotskyist or a fuming anticommunist, he is merely writing as someone whose first allegiance is to the intellectual approach, albeit his own pluralistic, skeptical, emphatically liberal-democratic intellectual approach.
February 18, 2020
"Like Lenin after him, he seemed to have nothing but contempt for those who, during the heat of the battle, while the enemy was gained one position after another, were preoccupied with the state of their own souls"
"Marx's mode of living consisted of daily visits to the British Museum reading room, where he normally remained from 9 in the morning until it closed at 7..."
"Marx's mode of living consisted of daily visits to the British Museum reading room, where he normally remained from 9 in the morning until it closed at 7..."
February 2, 2018
خیلی کتاب علی بود ،ان روز های که مارکس در تبعید کشور انگلستان است هرگز فراموشم نمیشود ، در آخر کتاب گاه حس میگردم این من استم بجای مارکس که میمیرم
October 31, 2013
خوب، نوشتههای آیزایا برلین شفاف و روشنه و برای آدمهای آماتوری مثل من یک کلیاتی رو به قابلفهمترین شکل بیان میکنه. با این حال به نظرم میرسه مترجم در قسمتهای فلسفی و عمیقتر کتاب نتونسته به اندازهی کافی شفافیت متن رو حفظ کنه. اما به هر حال محیط و اوضاع و احوالی که مارکس در آن زندگی کرده و به عظمت رسیده رو قشنگ توصیف میکنه. آیزایا برلین این کار رو خیلی بهتر در کتاب رمانتیسیسم انجام میده و ما را قادر به درک یک دورهی تاریخی میکنه که در کشور خودمون چنین دورهای وجود نداشته است.
با خوندن این کتاب به یک سری تناقضاتی در تفکر کارل مارکس مواجه شدم که مطمئن نیستم ناشی از عدم درک درست متن توسط خودمه یا واقعا جای بحث داره. مثلا این که چطور میشه آدم هم معتقد به ناگریزی پیروزی پرولتریا باشه و هم به مبارزهی قهرآمیز و خشن. اگر جامعه هنوز انقدر رشد نکرده باشه و هنوز به آن مرحلهای از تاریخ نرسیده باشه که پرولتاریا بر بورژوازی پیروز بشه، مبارزهی قهرآمیز در آن چه جایی داره؟
با خوندن این کتاب به یک سری تناقضاتی در تفکر کارل مارکس مواجه شدم که مطمئن نیستم ناشی از عدم درک درست متن توسط خودمه یا واقعا جای بحث داره. مثلا این که چطور میشه آدم هم معتقد به ناگریزی پیروزی پرولتریا باشه و هم به مبارزهی قهرآمیز و خشن. اگر جامعه هنوز انقدر رشد نکرده باشه و هنوز به آن مرحلهای از تاریخ نرسیده باشه که پرولتاریا بر بورژوازی پیروز بشه، مبارزهی قهرآمیز در آن چه جایی داره؟
September 10, 2022
Propagandistic, ideological and plain wrong.
Avoid it.
Avoid it.
March 21, 2019
کتاب زیر عنوان زندگی و محیط داره اما در مجموع با خوندنش اطلاعات خیلی جالبی هم از روند زندگی و هم از تفکرات و ایدههای مارکس به دست میارید.
جایی از کتاب در مورد اثر اصلی کارل مارکس، کتاب سرمایه، میگه که این اثر از روزی که منتشر شده تا الان میلیونها موافق و مخالف دوآتشه داشته که حتی یه خط ازش هم نخونده بودن.
و فکر میکنم شناخت مارکس در ایران به طور کلی به همین صورته. طرفداران و مخالفهایی که در واقع حتی شناخت درستی از ایدهها و زندگی این فرد نابغه که در هر صورت روند درک ما از جهان رو بعد از خودش در تمام زمینهها زیر و رو کرده ندارند. این کتاب میتونه مرجع مناسبی برای آشنایی با مارکس باشه هرچند اگر تجربه خوندن فلسفه سیاسی و آشنایی ابتدایی با تاریخ اروپا ندارید باید در حین خوندن کتاب خیلی سرچ جانبی بکنید تا متوجه تمام اتفاقات کتاب بشید.
جایی از کتاب در مورد اثر اصلی کارل مارکس، کتاب سرمایه، میگه که این اثر از روزی که منتشر شده تا الان میلیونها موافق و مخالف دوآتشه داشته که حتی یه خط ازش هم نخونده بودن.
و فکر میکنم شناخت مارکس در ایران به طور کلی به همین صورته. طرفداران و مخالفهایی که در واقع حتی شناخت درستی از ایدهها و زندگی این فرد نابغه که در هر صورت روند درک ما از جهان رو بعد از خودش در تمام زمینهها زیر و رو کرده ندارند. این کتاب میتونه مرجع مناسبی برای آشنایی با مارکس باشه هرچند اگر تجربه خوندن فلسفه سیاسی و آشنایی ابتدایی با تاریخ اروپا ندارید باید در حین خوندن کتاب خیلی سرچ جانبی بکنید تا متوجه تمام اتفاقات کتاب بشید.
August 4, 2019
Bastante informativo e de acessível leitura, é um relato neutro do ponto de vista ideológico, cumprindo assim as expectativas desta leitora de nele encontrar uma descrição equidistante do biografado e do seu pensamento, sem pender nem para anti-marxismo nem para “hagiografia” -sem se poder, naturalmente, descartar o inafastável pendor subjectivo, ainda que diluído, que qualquer obra contém em si do seu autor.
March 25, 2015
برای رنج و درد روانی یک درمان وجود دارد و آن هم درد و رنج جسمانی است
کارل مارکس
کارل مارکس
February 8, 2021
”As soon as he concluded that the establishment of communism could only be achieved by an armed rising of the proletariat, his entire existence turned into an attempt to organize and discipline it for its task. His personal history which up to this point can be regarded as a series of episodes in the life of an individual, now becomes inseparable from the general history of socialism in Europe. An account of one is necessarily to some degree an account of the other.”
Reputation – 4/5
Isaiah Berlin was an incredible talker. There are videos of his interviews and lectures on YouTube confirming that the orderly and even progress of Berlin’s ideas in spontaneous speech exceeds all but very few of even the best edited and printed books by today’s intellectuals and public philosophers. By the end of his life, Berlin was no longer writing books, but merely dictating them in his nasally baritone. Some, such as the famous “hedgehog and fox,” which were more or less throwaway ideas to Berlin, became to mere mortals fully developed philosophical or artistic treatises.
Berlin was born in Latvia in 1909, spent his childhood in Russia, and saw the 1917 Revolution first-hand. Following the Revolution, his family moved to London and by his mid-twenties he was one of Britain’s foremost intellectuals - no small feat in the age of Russell and Wittgenstein. In 1939, he published his first book: this small biography and intellectual history of Karl Marx. Despite its age and brevity, it is still the most highly esteemed study of Marx in English.
Point – 5/5
Like much of Berlin’s later work, this “biography” of Karl Marx is more of an history of ideas. We do glimpse some of Marx’s personality through his letters and remembrances of him by his contemporaries (particularly of his putrid living conditions), but the main focus of this book is his thought and how it developed. This is perfectly appropriate in a work on Karl Marx. No man since Saint Paul of Tarsus lived his life so completely subservient to an idea. As the above quote makes clear, a life of Marx is inseparable from an understanding of European socialism. An understanding of Marx’s thought is inseparable from an understanding of the main currents of European philosophy in the 19th Century. In short, these were German idealism, French rationalism, and English economics. Marx absolutely mastered all three. Most people who take a shot at explaining Marx today don’t understand a single one.
In order of difficulty to the English intellectual, French rationalism is comprehensible with some study, English economics is practicably understandable in day-to-day life, but rarely theoretically or empirically mastered, and German Idealism is still badly misunderstood and feebly taught even at the graduate level in Anglophone universities.
Given the width and depth of Marx’s own study and intellectual environment, it requires a formidable mind to properly understand his ideas. To clearly explain them has proven to be a practically insurmountable task in English.
Berlin’s contribution is that of a continental intellectual of old-world heritage from a wealthy Jewish family. He spoke and wrote German, French, Russian, and English with perfect fluency. Given his pan-European roots, his linguistic virtuosity, and first-hand experience with Marx’s ideas in action, he is the only intellectual of whom I’m aware that would even have the starting material to write a good book on Marx.
But Berlin had more than the starting material, he had the mind to make it into something comprehensible. His writing style is tidy and proper. Sometimes his clauses seem excessive, but each is packed with meaning, and there is very little flourishing for rhetorical effect. If any complaint can be made of Berlin’s style, it is that he is so thorough that he breezes through aphorisms as if they’re not even worth repeating. Here is a typical example, the underline is mine:
”It [Marx’s system] has altered the history of human thought in the sense that after it certain things could never again be plausibly said. No subject loses, at least in the long run, by becoming a field of battle, and the Marxist emphasis upon the primacy of economic factors in determining human behaviour led directly to an intensified study of economic history, which, although it had not been entirely neglected in the past, did not attain to its present prominent rank, until the rise of Marxism gave an impulse to exact historical scholarship in that sphere – much as in the previous generation Hegelian doctrines acted as a powerful stimulus to historical studies in general.”
This second sentence, through its understanding of the form of ideological debate and its invocation of Hegel, is a better concise explanation of Marx’s impact on the social sciences than can be found in entire articles and books.
Recommendation – 4/5
I would recommend this as the best book on Marx for the Anglophone audience. It is necessarily an outsider’s view – Isaiah Berlin was not a Marxist, but a liberal democrat in the old European sense. As a sort of last testament, he threw blame for nearly all the terrors of the 20th Century on the Counter-Enlightenment thinking that arose in Germany towards the end of the 18th Century. This was the philosophy that would grow into German idealism and influence Marx. The incredible thing about this book is that its author believed so strongly that the Marx's ideas were basically fruit from the tree with the root of all evil, yet he has accurately understood them, and treated them with equanimity and clarity. That is much more than can be said for most books on Marx.
Personal – 5/5
Marx himself is often accused of writing unclearly and stupidly. But I wager if the amount of unclear and stupid writing about Marx were put against his own, the explanatory drivel about him would outweigh Marx’s by at least a factor of a million. This is what Berlin meant when he said that no subject loses by becoming a field of battle. The misinterpretation of Marx in printed books could fill the Atlantic Ocean. So, if I am wrong about Berlin's book, and a true disciple who has understood Marx is able to point out its logical flaws, then at least 300 pages of well-written intellectual history is hardly a drop in such a sea of nonsense.
Reputation – 4/5
Isaiah Berlin was an incredible talker. There are videos of his interviews and lectures on YouTube confirming that the orderly and even progress of Berlin’s ideas in spontaneous speech exceeds all but very few of even the best edited and printed books by today’s intellectuals and public philosophers. By the end of his life, Berlin was no longer writing books, but merely dictating them in his nasally baritone. Some, such as the famous “hedgehog and fox,” which were more or less throwaway ideas to Berlin, became to mere mortals fully developed philosophical or artistic treatises.
Berlin was born in Latvia in 1909, spent his childhood in Russia, and saw the 1917 Revolution first-hand. Following the Revolution, his family moved to London and by his mid-twenties he was one of Britain’s foremost intellectuals - no small feat in the age of Russell and Wittgenstein. In 1939, he published his first book: this small biography and intellectual history of Karl Marx. Despite its age and brevity, it is still the most highly esteemed study of Marx in English.
Point – 5/5
Like much of Berlin’s later work, this “biography” of Karl Marx is more of an history of ideas. We do glimpse some of Marx’s personality through his letters and remembrances of him by his contemporaries (particularly of his putrid living conditions), but the main focus of this book is his thought and how it developed. This is perfectly appropriate in a work on Karl Marx. No man since Saint Paul of Tarsus lived his life so completely subservient to an idea. As the above quote makes clear, a life of Marx is inseparable from an understanding of European socialism. An understanding of Marx’s thought is inseparable from an understanding of the main currents of European philosophy in the 19th Century. In short, these were German idealism, French rationalism, and English economics. Marx absolutely mastered all three. Most people who take a shot at explaining Marx today don’t understand a single one.
In order of difficulty to the English intellectual, French rationalism is comprehensible with some study, English economics is practicably understandable in day-to-day life, but rarely theoretically or empirically mastered, and German Idealism is still badly misunderstood and feebly taught even at the graduate level in Anglophone universities.
Given the width and depth of Marx’s own study and intellectual environment, it requires a formidable mind to properly understand his ideas. To clearly explain them has proven to be a practically insurmountable task in English.
Berlin’s contribution is that of a continental intellectual of old-world heritage from a wealthy Jewish family. He spoke and wrote German, French, Russian, and English with perfect fluency. Given his pan-European roots, his linguistic virtuosity, and first-hand experience with Marx’s ideas in action, he is the only intellectual of whom I’m aware that would even have the starting material to write a good book on Marx.
But Berlin had more than the starting material, he had the mind to make it into something comprehensible. His writing style is tidy and proper. Sometimes his clauses seem excessive, but each is packed with meaning, and there is very little flourishing for rhetorical effect. If any complaint can be made of Berlin’s style, it is that he is so thorough that he breezes through aphorisms as if they’re not even worth repeating. Here is a typical example, the underline is mine:
”It [Marx’s system] has altered the history of human thought in the sense that after it certain things could never again be plausibly said. No subject loses, at least in the long run, by becoming a field of battle, and the Marxist emphasis upon the primacy of economic factors in determining human behaviour led directly to an intensified study of economic history, which, although it had not been entirely neglected in the past, did not attain to its present prominent rank, until the rise of Marxism gave an impulse to exact historical scholarship in that sphere – much as in the previous generation Hegelian doctrines acted as a powerful stimulus to historical studies in general.”
This second sentence, through its understanding of the form of ideological debate and its invocation of Hegel, is a better concise explanation of Marx’s impact on the social sciences than can be found in entire articles and books.
Recommendation – 4/5
I would recommend this as the best book on Marx for the Anglophone audience. It is necessarily an outsider’s view – Isaiah Berlin was not a Marxist, but a liberal democrat in the old European sense. As a sort of last testament, he threw blame for nearly all the terrors of the 20th Century on the Counter-Enlightenment thinking that arose in Germany towards the end of the 18th Century. This was the philosophy that would grow into German idealism and influence Marx. The incredible thing about this book is that its author believed so strongly that the Marx's ideas were basically fruit from the tree with the root of all evil, yet he has accurately understood them, and treated them with equanimity and clarity. That is much more than can be said for most books on Marx.
Personal – 5/5
Marx himself is often accused of writing unclearly and stupidly. But I wager if the amount of unclear and stupid writing about Marx were put against his own, the explanatory drivel about him would outweigh Marx’s by at least a factor of a million. This is what Berlin meant when he said that no subject loses by becoming a field of battle. The misinterpretation of Marx in printed books could fill the Atlantic Ocean. So, if I am wrong about Berlin's book, and a true disciple who has understood Marx is able to point out its logical flaws, then at least 300 pages of well-written intellectual history is hardly a drop in such a sea of nonsense.
Read
November 5, 2020Esta es sin duda una obra fundamental para quien quiera introducirse en la vida y obra de aquel mastodonte de la filosofía, la economía y la política que fue Karl Marx. Sorpende que sea un liberal clásico como Berlin quien fuera capaz de realizar este empeño no solo monumental por su contenido, sino también honesto y riguroso en sus juicios. Es igualmente valiosa la caracterización del contexo histórico e intelectua, que permite hacerse una idea cabal de cuál fue el recorrido que el pensamiento radical y revolucionario hubo de emprender para llegar a lo que hoy conocemos como movimiento obrero. Poco más se puede añadir, aparte de decir que toda persona que se interese por Marx debe pasar por este libro, que por si fuese poco es claro y disfrutable en su rigor.
September 19, 2018
Un libro fantástico y muy ameno. No esperes una biografía, si no un análisis del entorno y evolución de la ideas alrededor de la mente de Marx.
October 4, 2012
This was a train wreck from the beginning for me, and I'm not afraid to admit that it was only so because it was basically out of my league. This is a book about a 19th century intellectual, written by a 20th century intellectual, and when read by a 21st century average joe, like myself, it doesn't always translate so well. I struggled with the prose from page one. Half page, run-on sentences packed with references to 18th and 19th century philosophers and their tenets made for an extremely hard read for me. For this reason, I found it too wordy and self-indulgent, it seems that Sir Isaiah Berlin made this work much more confusing than it had to be. Of course, someone with a more refined pallet would probably think it was eloquent and to the point.
The dryness of the material had me daydreaming, and I would finish two or three pages before I realized that I hadn't retained a word of it. Even after going back and rereading these parts I often found it hard to grasp, especially the discussions on basic Hegelianism and historical materialism. Unfortunately, these were important concepts in Marx's own philosophical development, so that made the later discussions on Marxism cloudy and confusing as well.
Still, I did get what I set out to get from this book, which was a basic understanding of Marxism and the man that Karl Marx was, along with the historical and philosophical environment that created both. I learned a lot of hidden European history that we simply do not ever talk about in the USA. The plight of the 19th century European working class in the throws of the industrial revolution is covered in detail. The most interesting theme for me is that of the revolutionary thinkers and leaders of the time who set out to improve the condition of the masses, but often succumbed to the basic human urge to improve their own condition first.
There is a short two-part passage near the end of the book that I found important and representative of this book's content and my experience with it. Berlin is speaking of Marx's seminal work, Das Kapital, it starts "It has been blindly worshipped, and blindly hated, by millions who have not read a line of it.." To me, this first part is absolute truth. Future communist societies that grew out of Marxism, like the USSR, often misinterpreted or ignored even the most basic elements of Marxist thought, most notably, his disillusionment with the state. Nevertheless, Marx was held up as a hero and father of their bastardized offshoots. Meanwhile, Americans growing up in the Cold War era generally have no understanding of the tenets of Marxism or it's importance in the development of modern social and political thought. Yet Marxism carries a connotation only slightly less negative than Nazism in the USA. The second part continues "...or have read without understanding its, at times, obscure and torturous prose." This simply represents my own personal feeling about Berlin's book in general.
I'm sure that I am not among the target audience for this book and my rating reflects that. I would guess I grasped about sixty percent of the material, and I am positive that a more scholarly individual would find much more to like, less to dislike, and would give this thing a higher rating. Still, even through my struggles, I am glad I stuck it out, because the stuff I did get out of it was very interesting. Despite my low rating, I would actually recommend this book to anyone looking to get a a basic understanding of Marxism and is willing to put in the time to negotiate the challenging style.
The dryness of the material had me daydreaming, and I would finish two or three pages before I realized that I hadn't retained a word of it. Even after going back and rereading these parts I often found it hard to grasp, especially the discussions on basic Hegelianism and historical materialism. Unfortunately, these were important concepts in Marx's own philosophical development, so that made the later discussions on Marxism cloudy and confusing as well.
Still, I did get what I set out to get from this book, which was a basic understanding of Marxism and the man that Karl Marx was, along with the historical and philosophical environment that created both. I learned a lot of hidden European history that we simply do not ever talk about in the USA. The plight of the 19th century European working class in the throws of the industrial revolution is covered in detail. The most interesting theme for me is that of the revolutionary thinkers and leaders of the time who set out to improve the condition of the masses, but often succumbed to the basic human urge to improve their own condition first.
There is a short two-part passage near the end of the book that I found important and representative of this book's content and my experience with it. Berlin is speaking of Marx's seminal work, Das Kapital, it starts "It has been blindly worshipped, and blindly hated, by millions who have not read a line of it.." To me, this first part is absolute truth. Future communist societies that grew out of Marxism, like the USSR, often misinterpreted or ignored even the most basic elements of Marxist thought, most notably, his disillusionment with the state. Nevertheless, Marx was held up as a hero and father of their bastardized offshoots. Meanwhile, Americans growing up in the Cold War era generally have no understanding of the tenets of Marxism or it's importance in the development of modern social and political thought. Yet Marxism carries a connotation only slightly less negative than Nazism in the USA. The second part continues "...or have read without understanding its, at times, obscure and torturous prose." This simply represents my own personal feeling about Berlin's book in general.
I'm sure that I am not among the target audience for this book and my rating reflects that. I would guess I grasped about sixty percent of the material, and I am positive that a more scholarly individual would find much more to like, less to dislike, and would give this thing a higher rating. Still, even through my struggles, I am glad I stuck it out, because the stuff I did get out of it was very interesting. Despite my low rating, I would actually recommend this book to anyone looking to get a a basic understanding of Marxism and is willing to put in the time to negotiate the challenging style.
July 3, 2010
This book was my introduction not only to Karl Marx and his thought, but to the author Isaiah Berlin. While I have fondness neither for the thought nor for the writings of Marx, I have become a fan of both the works and thoughts of Isaiah Berlin over the decades since this first encounter. Even in this early work (first published in 1939) Berlin's incisive and elegant style highlighted by meticulous scholarship is present. He brings to his study of Marx a much needed freedom from bias. While it is a short book it covers the essentials of a life that was devoted to reading and writing--unlike many other radical lives that were devoted more to the battlements and the streets. From the youth of Marx to the refolutions of the 1840s to the appearance of the first volume of Das Kapital in 1867 there is a thoroughly intense readability to this biographical portrayal of ideas. And the portrayal and analysis of ideas is why I enjoyed this book and continued to return to Berlin's other books over the ensuing years.
February 25, 2020
Uma obra de grande qualidade, com o rigor e a mestria do grande Isaiah Berlin. A melhor introdução ao marxismo de Marx e não aos "marxismos" que proliferaram aqui e ali. Além de muito bem escrito, Berlin preocupa-se em manter o rigor dos factos, distanciando-se de leituras parciais. Um excelente livro para quem quer conhecer Marx e o "primeiro marxismo".
August 21, 2026
“If to have turned into truisms what had previously been paradoxes is the mark of genius, Marx was richly endowed with it. His achievements in this sphere are necessarily ignored in proportion as their effects have become part of the permanent background of civilized thought”
Berlin’s account of Marx’s life forgoes the temptations of hagiographic sentimentality in exchange for the more revealing and honest operations of a humanistic empathy, whilst his treatment of Marx’s ideas remains circumspect without indulging in ideological posturing. What more could one hope for from a biographer of Marx, let alone one who was avowedly not wedded to a Marxism of any stripe?
Berlin deftly interweaves the context of Marx’s existence with the essence of his work, the development of his ideas, and the new world which emerged in his tempestuous wake. As with most biographies, this naturally lends the text to a chronological structure, embarking from the curious circumstances surrounding Marx’s father and soon traversing the young firebrand’s incipient and mercurial attempts at coming to terms with how his thought would, should, and could wrestle with the world in which he found himself. Berlin outlines this world—the post-Napoleonic, fallow lands of Prussia, politically stunted and philosophically romantic—in such a way that Marx comes on the scene as its almost destined adversary: an intractable opponent of the political-theological sclerosis of the state and an ambivalent (yet increasingly negative) commentator on the influence of Hegel and his epigones.
Berlin attempts the perennially doomed effort of fashioning a rough summary of Hegel’s thought, and whilst it is hardly authoritative (for instance, he avers that Hegel had a “low opinion of the French enlightenment”, whereas nothing could be further from the truth!) it does neatly situate him and his influence in the context of post-Napoleonic Prussia as the initiator of “cultural studies” as such, as opposed to merely what we might dub “continental philosophy” (or even “critical theory”). Hegel’s emphasis on the hitherto disregarded and ancillary stuff of culture as the index of Spirit’s progress towards its own freedom forced scholars to reconsider the value of the particular in relation to the universality of history, which even stripped of its Hegelian jargon still ultimately describes the basic presupposition of all cultural studies: that all the material of social relations, no matter how seemingly perfunctory, have something to say about the culture through which it is expressed, and perhaps even humanity more generally.
As is well known, Marx was a voracious reader and admirer of Hegel in his early years. What I did not know, however, is that his experience with Hegel was not only formative but revelatory; after almost a month of punishingly intensive Hegel study, Marx emerged on the other side ready to ditch his trajectory in law and dedicate himself absolutely to philosophy. Even the unrepentant Althusserian must, then, with great reluctance no doubt, owe Hegel at least a modicum of gratitude. Really, however, it was not Hegel, but his iconoclastic, radically secularising follower Feuerbach who would prove to be the most indelible influence on the young Marx. Indeed, Berlin’s framing of their relationship reads to me not unlike that of Hume to Kant vis-a-vis the former rousing the latter from his “dogmatic slumber”.
In his effort to give life to the diverse intellectual jungle in which Marx’s thinking fructified, Berlin provides a neat exposition of both the so-called utopian (i.e. pre-marxian) socialists and the trailblazing economists of the 18th and 19th centuries, who developed much of the conceptual content with which Marx’s mature theories would deal. In fact, if Berlin has any explicit historiographical agenda, if he has any particular contribution he seeks to make towards (at this time) fledgling field of marxology, it’s that Marx’s true genius was, to put it in vulgar terms, not analytic but synthetic.
This is to say that, whilst he certainly produced plenty of enduring concepts, Marx was first and foremost an exceptionally gifted and determined architect of political and economic theories; his thinking was undoubtedly revolutionary in the most literal sense of the word, but this is due less to the novelty of his perspicacity and more down to the way in which he tied together often disparate and confused raw material (Sismondi’s class war, Saint-Simon’s economic determinism, etc.) into an edifice of unprecedented rigour and singular design.
Intellectual wonders aside, Berlin paints a painfully bleak picture of just how extreme Marx’s poverty had become in his English exile. Frankly, some of the anecdotes he relates from this period are truly so demoralising and tragic that I won’t sour your mood by repeating them here. Let’s just say that I now have infinitely more respect for Engels, without whom Marx and his family would have, to put it bluntly, withered and died.
It is little consolation to read that his embittered exile coincided with the rise of Germany’s socialist movement, spearheaded by Ferdinand Lassalle and precipitated by the recrudescence of class consciousness in the wake of 1848. Whilst Marx was about as heavily involved in what would become the German Worker’s Association as one can be from the other side of the english channel, one can only wonder how much the preponderant presence of Lassalle grated him, given that he exhibited the two tendencies of “disorderly life and histrionic display” which were anathema to Marx over above all other character traits.
Perhaps even more offensively, Lassalle was an incorrigible statist whose politics better approximated the Hegel of the Philosophy of Right than the Marx of the 18th Brumaire, going so far as to negotiate with Bismarck in order to achieve his ultimately reformist (and arguably reactionary) goals.
It comes as no surprise then to learn that, as the 1870 Franco-Prussian war shook the nation into a jingoistic hysteria, the Lassallians were all too eager to vote for war credits in the Reichstag, leaving the Marxists, Liebknecht and Bebel to suffer the calumny owed to those who do not waver from their principles. Is this not all the more proof that history repeats itself not as farce following tragedy, but tragedy following farce? Is there anything more tragic than the fact that, in the face of WWI, the younger Liebknecht would, cutting through the throng nationalist enthusiasm, follow the elder in abstaining from war credits, only for this to mark the first step towards their suppression and ultimate annihilation?
The bitter gift of hindsight offers us no smaller tragedy in the establishment of the Working Men’s International, which even in its heyday under the auspices of Marx, would give birth to the very same Labour Party which long ago fell into line with the established apparatus of reaction.
To close, I will just take a moment to reflect on the evolving attitude of Marx towards Russia, from the irredeemable bastion of reaction in the east to the most advanced and promising crucible for revolutionary consciousness. Indeed, as Berlin tells us, Capital sold remarkably well in Russia; indeed, it sold better in this “backwards” nation without any developed capitalist forces or proletariat than in any other country.
For all his reputation as a man of unswerving conviction, Marx did not take long to revisit his attitudes towards Russia, concluding towards the end of his life that, to quote Berlin, “if a revolution in Russia should be the signal of a common rising of the entire European proletariat, it was conceivable, and even likely—that communism in Russia could be based directly upon the semi-feudal communal ownership of land by the village as it existed at the time; but this could not occur if capitalism continued among her nearest neighbours, since this would inevitably force Russia in sheer economic self-defence along the path already traversed by the more advanced countries of the West”.
Imagine how differently the Russian Revolution might have played out had the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had access to this information! The latter would have been robbed almost entirely of its raison d’etre, and the ideological and political ascendency of the Bolsheviks (who largely followed the late Marx on this regardless) would have been more securely assured. Perhaps it would have merely lubricated the gears of history already in motion, but regardless, it’s interesting to speculate isn’t it?
Berlin’s account of Marx’s life forgoes the temptations of hagiographic sentimentality in exchange for the more revealing and honest operations of a humanistic empathy, whilst his treatment of Marx’s ideas remains circumspect without indulging in ideological posturing. What more could one hope for from a biographer of Marx, let alone one who was avowedly not wedded to a Marxism of any stripe?
Berlin deftly interweaves the context of Marx’s existence with the essence of his work, the development of his ideas, and the new world which emerged in his tempestuous wake. As with most biographies, this naturally lends the text to a chronological structure, embarking from the curious circumstances surrounding Marx’s father and soon traversing the young firebrand’s incipient and mercurial attempts at coming to terms with how his thought would, should, and could wrestle with the world in which he found himself. Berlin outlines this world—the post-Napoleonic, fallow lands of Prussia, politically stunted and philosophically romantic—in such a way that Marx comes on the scene as its almost destined adversary: an intractable opponent of the political-theological sclerosis of the state and an ambivalent (yet increasingly negative) commentator on the influence of Hegel and his epigones.
Berlin attempts the perennially doomed effort of fashioning a rough summary of Hegel’s thought, and whilst it is hardly authoritative (for instance, he avers that Hegel had a “low opinion of the French enlightenment”, whereas nothing could be further from the truth!) it does neatly situate him and his influence in the context of post-Napoleonic Prussia as the initiator of “cultural studies” as such, as opposed to merely what we might dub “continental philosophy” (or even “critical theory”). Hegel’s emphasis on the hitherto disregarded and ancillary stuff of culture as the index of Spirit’s progress towards its own freedom forced scholars to reconsider the value of the particular in relation to the universality of history, which even stripped of its Hegelian jargon still ultimately describes the basic presupposition of all cultural studies: that all the material of social relations, no matter how seemingly perfunctory, have something to say about the culture through which it is expressed, and perhaps even humanity more generally.
As is well known, Marx was a voracious reader and admirer of Hegel in his early years. What I did not know, however, is that his experience with Hegel was not only formative but revelatory; after almost a month of punishingly intensive Hegel study, Marx emerged on the other side ready to ditch his trajectory in law and dedicate himself absolutely to philosophy. Even the unrepentant Althusserian must, then, with great reluctance no doubt, owe Hegel at least a modicum of gratitude. Really, however, it was not Hegel, but his iconoclastic, radically secularising follower Feuerbach who would prove to be the most indelible influence on the young Marx. Indeed, Berlin’s framing of their relationship reads to me not unlike that of Hume to Kant vis-a-vis the former rousing the latter from his “dogmatic slumber”.
In his effort to give life to the diverse intellectual jungle in which Marx’s thinking fructified, Berlin provides a neat exposition of both the so-called utopian (i.e. pre-marxian) socialists and the trailblazing economists of the 18th and 19th centuries, who developed much of the conceptual content with which Marx’s mature theories would deal. In fact, if Berlin has any explicit historiographical agenda, if he has any particular contribution he seeks to make towards (at this time) fledgling field of marxology, it’s that Marx’s true genius was, to put it in vulgar terms, not analytic but synthetic.
This is to say that, whilst he certainly produced plenty of enduring concepts, Marx was first and foremost an exceptionally gifted and determined architect of political and economic theories; his thinking was undoubtedly revolutionary in the most literal sense of the word, but this is due less to the novelty of his perspicacity and more down to the way in which he tied together often disparate and confused raw material (Sismondi’s class war, Saint-Simon’s economic determinism, etc.) into an edifice of unprecedented rigour and singular design.
Intellectual wonders aside, Berlin paints a painfully bleak picture of just how extreme Marx’s poverty had become in his English exile. Frankly, some of the anecdotes he relates from this period are truly so demoralising and tragic that I won’t sour your mood by repeating them here. Let’s just say that I now have infinitely more respect for Engels, without whom Marx and his family would have, to put it bluntly, withered and died.
It is little consolation to read that his embittered exile coincided with the rise of Germany’s socialist movement, spearheaded by Ferdinand Lassalle and precipitated by the recrudescence of class consciousness in the wake of 1848. Whilst Marx was about as heavily involved in what would become the German Worker’s Association as one can be from the other side of the english channel, one can only wonder how much the preponderant presence of Lassalle grated him, given that he exhibited the two tendencies of “disorderly life and histrionic display” which were anathema to Marx over above all other character traits.
Perhaps even more offensively, Lassalle was an incorrigible statist whose politics better approximated the Hegel of the Philosophy of Right than the Marx of the 18th Brumaire, going so far as to negotiate with Bismarck in order to achieve his ultimately reformist (and arguably reactionary) goals.
It comes as no surprise then to learn that, as the 1870 Franco-Prussian war shook the nation into a jingoistic hysteria, the Lassallians were all too eager to vote for war credits in the Reichstag, leaving the Marxists, Liebknecht and Bebel to suffer the calumny owed to those who do not waver from their principles. Is this not all the more proof that history repeats itself not as farce following tragedy, but tragedy following farce? Is there anything more tragic than the fact that, in the face of WWI, the younger Liebknecht would, cutting through the throng nationalist enthusiasm, follow the elder in abstaining from war credits, only for this to mark the first step towards their suppression and ultimate annihilation?
The bitter gift of hindsight offers us no smaller tragedy in the establishment of the Working Men’s International, which even in its heyday under the auspices of Marx, would give birth to the very same Labour Party which long ago fell into line with the established apparatus of reaction.
To close, I will just take a moment to reflect on the evolving attitude of Marx towards Russia, from the irredeemable bastion of reaction in the east to the most advanced and promising crucible for revolutionary consciousness. Indeed, as Berlin tells us, Capital sold remarkably well in Russia; indeed, it sold better in this “backwards” nation without any developed capitalist forces or proletariat than in any other country.
For all his reputation as a man of unswerving conviction, Marx did not take long to revisit his attitudes towards Russia, concluding towards the end of his life that, to quote Berlin, “if a revolution in Russia should be the signal of a common rising of the entire European proletariat, it was conceivable, and even likely—that communism in Russia could be based directly upon the semi-feudal communal ownership of land by the village as it existed at the time; but this could not occur if capitalism continued among her nearest neighbours, since this would inevitably force Russia in sheer economic self-defence along the path already traversed by the more advanced countries of the West”.
Imagine how differently the Russian Revolution might have played out had the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had access to this information! The latter would have been robbed almost entirely of its raison d’etre, and the ideological and political ascendency of the Bolsheviks (who largely followed the late Marx on this regardless) would have been more securely assured. Perhaps it would have merely lubricated the gears of history already in motion, but regardless, it’s interesting to speculate isn’t it?
January 2, 2021
What better way to start my "Month of Marx" than with Isaiah Berlin's erudite sketch of Karl Marx's life and theory. In the final sentence of his afterword, Terrell Carver write that "Berlin thus created quite a lot of uncertainty about Marx, and we can all benefit from that." Berlin has equipped me (or at least inspired me) to read past the cloaks of Orthodoxy and anti-Marxism. (Whether or not I understand what I've read is a separate question that will test me as it once did Russians.)
I did not know that Marx's journey began, in part, in search of why the 1789 French Revolution failed. How did liberté, égalité, fraternité end in the Bourbons? The 1848 émeute and The Commune of 1871 were likewise seminal moments in his development. In 1848, Marx pinned defeat on the dissipated nature of his co-revolutionaries. The principal lesson? "Disseminate among the masses the conciseness of their destiny and their task." A Hegelian in theory if not in spirit, Marx believed that the slow, painstaking education would, eventually, maximize the contradiction and end in violent, revolutionary Synthesis.
The Marx rival I found most fascinating, Bakunin, drew an entirely opposite conclusion from 1848, withdrawing into secret terrorism. Marx hated Bakunin's insistence on loosely confederated, vaguely nationalist, politically aloof Communist groups (instead of Marx's International), fearing that it would kill the proletariat in its infancy. Marx was a tactician in need of an army.
His greatest attempt to raise one was The Communist Manifesto. Berlin is at his best when describing that thin pamphlet. My favorite portion of Berlin's analysis is not related to the contents of Marx and Engel's message, but instead the muted historians joke that follows, "[The Communist Manifesto's] most immediate effect, however, was upon his own fortunes. The Belgian government... brusquely expelled Marx and his family from its territory."
Its time to wrap up my review because I've got a family here around me. Marx the man is singularly unattractive to me (although I believe I would have gotten along swimmingly with Engels), Marx the oracle seems to have been wrong, but Marx the social theorist will stay with me for the rest of my life. And I think that is what Berlin would have wanted.
I did not know that Marx's journey began, in part, in search of why the 1789 French Revolution failed. How did liberté, égalité, fraternité end in the Bourbons? The 1848 émeute and The Commune of 1871 were likewise seminal moments in his development. In 1848, Marx pinned defeat on the dissipated nature of his co-revolutionaries. The principal lesson? "Disseminate among the masses the conciseness of their destiny and their task." A Hegelian in theory if not in spirit, Marx believed that the slow, painstaking education would, eventually, maximize the contradiction and end in violent, revolutionary Synthesis.
The Marx rival I found most fascinating, Bakunin, drew an entirely opposite conclusion from 1848, withdrawing into secret terrorism. Marx hated Bakunin's insistence on loosely confederated, vaguely nationalist, politically aloof Communist groups (instead of Marx's International), fearing that it would kill the proletariat in its infancy. Marx was a tactician in need of an army.
His greatest attempt to raise one was The Communist Manifesto. Berlin is at his best when describing that thin pamphlet. My favorite portion of Berlin's analysis is not related to the contents of Marx and Engel's message, but instead the muted historians joke that follows, "[The Communist Manifesto's] most immediate effect, however, was upon his own fortunes. The Belgian government... brusquely expelled Marx and his family from its territory."
Its time to wrap up my review because I've got a family here around me. Marx the man is singularly unattractive to me (although I believe I would have gotten along swimmingly with Engels), Marx the oracle seems to have been wrong, but Marx the social theorist will stay with me for the rest of my life. And I think that is what Berlin would have wanted.
November 18, 2020
a very clear intellectual biography of the Moor
December 29, 2025
A solid overview of Marx's life, but I left the book wondering more about who he was...there was something missing about the core drive internal to Marx that just didn't quite come out in the book. I was also surprised about how much I disagreed with Marx on the diagnosis, not just the solution. Reading about dialectical materialism from the perspective of a dematerialized 21st-century economy in which employees of Nvidia, Google and Meta dominate the small factory owners of middle America, it's clear that there are severe limitations to the Communist perspective on what late-stage capitalism would look like. Thinkers like Romer + Nordhaus - the Growth Theorists - provide a much more compelling way of thinking about the contributions of ideas (as concrete economic entities) to the economy, which Marx completely missed.
Influenced so heavily by Hegel (and to some extent Goethe), Marx was a brilliant thinker and certainly a Prophet of Modernity given the impact communism and socialism has had in the 20th century. By focusing on materialism rather than idealism, he concretized many policies and was an effective theorist for his time. In many ways, he took Hegelian theories from the academy into the revolutionary world in an almost Faustian manner - especially with respect to the end of Part II, and to the very essence of a dead academy in the prologue, it's almost a direct application of Faustian striving to the material world.
But he really did miss the full lifecycle of capitalism - the way that design and development precede production - and so was unable to fully appreciate the role of an Idea Factory and the way in which intellectual labor ultimately played an important role in long-term economic success. Put another way, he appropriately understood certain elements of microeconomics, but totally missed out on macroeconomics (or perhaps metaeconomics) in terms of the second and third order dynamics. In an ultimate irony, he missed the Hegelian nature of the economy - the idea that change is not cyclical but teleological and progressive, that each era inherits its Weltgeist from its ancestors, and therefore "no man steps in the same river twice, because it's not the same river and he's not the same man." Far from being dialectical, Marx's view of the economy is fundamentally stagnant - a static ecosystem of competition on a fixed field of battle.
Compared to Progress and Poverty (which Marx read towards the end of his life when his thinking had fully ossified), Marx's diagnosis and solutions fall flat in our world of material abundance and spiritual destitution. Fundamentally, materialism overcorrects towards Goethe's "atoms" (Tat) and ignores the critical contribution of Hegel's "bits" (Geist). Though ironically, as we progress towards reindustrialization and reversing the dematerializing trends of the last 50 years, there may be more to learn from Marx than there has been - in today's era of cheap bits and expensive atoms, Baumol's cost disease seems to be forcing us back into a materialist worldview in which energy is as important as information in creating the next generation of world-changing technologies.
Marx would argue that the "Bits" (law, religion, philosophy, culture) are just a byproduct (the superstructure) of how we organize the "Atoms" (the base). He asserts that you cannot fix the bugs in the software (society) without rebuilding the hardware (the material economy), no matter how expensive or difficult that hardware is to change. And we will see whether he's right.
Some miscellaneous thoughts:
1. Engels played a critical role as the evangelist, the one able to take Marx's crazy ideas and actually simplify them for consumption.
2. Marx was a crazy hard worker - even in poverty, he worked 12-hour days at the British Museum. He was very much a believer in vast differences in ability.
3. The alienation of abstraction is a more general form of the alienation of capitalism. It's abstraction, not labor, that creates alienation.
4. Marx believed that it is the productive aspect, rather than the consumptive aspect, of human life is what gave it meaning.
5. In the struggle between labor + capital, Marx seems to have missed the competition between companies and over-emphasized struggle between classes of labor.
6. Baudrillard dominance: "Money for instance, which played a progressive role in the days of liberation from barter, has now become an absolute object of pursuit and worship for its own sake, brutalising and destroying man, whom it was invented to liberate."
7. Marx believed in the superiority of economic revolution to political revolution - politics downstream of economics vs politics as upstream.
8. It's hard to think of robots as slaves, although historically people thought of slaves as robots - also wild that slavery was still alive and well.
9. Money as a battery for human labor.
10. Completely missed productivity as a driver of profit: 'The more machinery replaces human labour, the lower the rate of profit is bound to fall, since the rate of profit is determined by living human labour, not by machinery.'
Great Quotes:
1. 'Like many great men he liked flattery, and, even more, total submission'
2. 'Against democrats only soldiers are any use'
3. 'In other words, he foresees neither Fascism nor the welfare state.'
4. 'His mode of life had scarcely changed at all. He rose at seven, drank several cups of black coffee, and then retired to his study where he read and wrote until two in the afternoon. After hurrying through his meal he worked again till supper, which he ate with his family. After that he took an evening walk on Hampstead Heath, or returned to his study, where he worked until two or three in the morning.'
5. 'He was fond of poetry and knew long passages of Dante, Aeschylus and Shakespeare by heart. His admiration for Shakespeare was limitless, and the whole household was brought up on him: he was read aloud, acted, discussed constantly.'
Post-Discussion:
One thing that I missed about Marx in the book was his definition of alienation - in this way, he was far more of an anarchist than I realized, probably because Lenin and the Soviets became the broad manifestation of Marx's ideas. He viewed the division of labor as the root of all evil, the thing that initially forced men to narrow their scope and specialize. A key concern, represented in his thoughts on money, was the idea the abstraction creates alienation. I didn't quite understand the comparison to Dante's belief in divine love, but Marx really thought that work was profoundly meaningful - and that the enjoyment of the fruits of one's own labor was the highest ideal. In this sense, I agree with him more than I expected - and worry quite a bit more about the coming alienation which AI may bring about as we go through the second fundamental shift in the means of production. Though AI will also make individual sovereignty more possible, as it democratizes knowledge, it will also apply the productive logic of the factory to research, design and development. For Marx, work was the substrate that provided meaning, and anything else was at best a temporary salve and at worst a malicious manipulation. It may be productive to work at a pin factory, but it will never provide the meaning that making pins for ones own use may be able to. As always, discussing a book can leave one with more thoughts than just reading it.
Influenced so heavily by Hegel (and to some extent Goethe), Marx was a brilliant thinker and certainly a Prophet of Modernity given the impact communism and socialism has had in the 20th century. By focusing on materialism rather than idealism, he concretized many policies and was an effective theorist for his time. In many ways, he took Hegelian theories from the academy into the revolutionary world in an almost Faustian manner - especially with respect to the end of Part II, and to the very essence of a dead academy in the prologue, it's almost a direct application of Faustian striving to the material world.
But he really did miss the full lifecycle of capitalism - the way that design and development precede production - and so was unable to fully appreciate the role of an Idea Factory and the way in which intellectual labor ultimately played an important role in long-term economic success. Put another way, he appropriately understood certain elements of microeconomics, but totally missed out on macroeconomics (or perhaps metaeconomics) in terms of the second and third order dynamics. In an ultimate irony, he missed the Hegelian nature of the economy - the idea that change is not cyclical but teleological and progressive, that each era inherits its Weltgeist from its ancestors, and therefore "no man steps in the same river twice, because it's not the same river and he's not the same man." Far from being dialectical, Marx's view of the economy is fundamentally stagnant - a static ecosystem of competition on a fixed field of battle.
Compared to Progress and Poverty (which Marx read towards the end of his life when his thinking had fully ossified), Marx's diagnosis and solutions fall flat in our world of material abundance and spiritual destitution. Fundamentally, materialism overcorrects towards Goethe's "atoms" (Tat) and ignores the critical contribution of Hegel's "bits" (Geist). Though ironically, as we progress towards reindustrialization and reversing the dematerializing trends of the last 50 years, there may be more to learn from Marx than there has been - in today's era of cheap bits and expensive atoms, Baumol's cost disease seems to be forcing us back into a materialist worldview in which energy is as important as information in creating the next generation of world-changing technologies.
Marx would argue that the "Bits" (law, religion, philosophy, culture) are just a byproduct (the superstructure) of how we organize the "Atoms" (the base). He asserts that you cannot fix the bugs in the software (society) without rebuilding the hardware (the material economy), no matter how expensive or difficult that hardware is to change. And we will see whether he's right.
Some miscellaneous thoughts:
1. Engels played a critical role as the evangelist, the one able to take Marx's crazy ideas and actually simplify them for consumption.
2. Marx was a crazy hard worker - even in poverty, he worked 12-hour days at the British Museum. He was very much a believer in vast differences in ability.
3. The alienation of abstraction is a more general form of the alienation of capitalism. It's abstraction, not labor, that creates alienation.
4. Marx believed that it is the productive aspect, rather than the consumptive aspect, of human life is what gave it meaning.
5. In the struggle between labor + capital, Marx seems to have missed the competition between companies and over-emphasized struggle between classes of labor.
6. Baudrillard dominance: "Money for instance, which played a progressive role in the days of liberation from barter, has now become an absolute object of pursuit and worship for its own sake, brutalising and destroying man, whom it was invented to liberate."
7. Marx believed in the superiority of economic revolution to political revolution - politics downstream of economics vs politics as upstream.
8. It's hard to think of robots as slaves, although historically people thought of slaves as robots - also wild that slavery was still alive and well.
9. Money as a battery for human labor.
10. Completely missed productivity as a driver of profit: 'The more machinery replaces human labour, the lower the rate of profit is bound to fall, since the rate of profit is determined by living human labour, not by machinery.'
Great Quotes:
1. 'Like many great men he liked flattery, and, even more, total submission'
2. 'Against democrats only soldiers are any use'
3. 'In other words, he foresees neither Fascism nor the welfare state.'
4. 'His mode of life had scarcely changed at all. He rose at seven, drank several cups of black coffee, and then retired to his study where he read and wrote until two in the afternoon. After hurrying through his meal he worked again till supper, which he ate with his family. After that he took an evening walk on Hampstead Heath, or returned to his study, where he worked until two or three in the morning.'
5. 'He was fond of poetry and knew long passages of Dante, Aeschylus and Shakespeare by heart. His admiration for Shakespeare was limitless, and the whole household was brought up on him: he was read aloud, acted, discussed constantly.'
Post-Discussion:
One thing that I missed about Marx in the book was his definition of alienation - in this way, he was far more of an anarchist than I realized, probably because Lenin and the Soviets became the broad manifestation of Marx's ideas. He viewed the division of labor as the root of all evil, the thing that initially forced men to narrow their scope and specialize. A key concern, represented in his thoughts on money, was the idea the abstraction creates alienation. I didn't quite understand the comparison to Dante's belief in divine love, but Marx really thought that work was profoundly meaningful - and that the enjoyment of the fruits of one's own labor was the highest ideal. In this sense, I agree with him more than I expected - and worry quite a bit more about the coming alienation which AI may bring about as we go through the second fundamental shift in the means of production. Though AI will also make individual sovereignty more possible, as it democratizes knowledge, it will also apply the productive logic of the factory to research, design and development. For Marx, work was the substrate that provided meaning, and anything else was at best a temporary salve and at worst a malicious manipulation. It may be productive to work at a pin factory, but it will never provide the meaning that making pins for ones own use may be able to. As always, discussing a book can leave one with more thoughts than just reading it.
March 14, 2022
“If anything is certain,” Karl Marx once declared, “it is that I myself am not a Marxist”. The 20th-century intellectuals and party ideologues who proudly called themselves Marxists typically had a clear sense of their doctrine: Marxism as they conceived it was a theory of society that pulled away the mystifying veil of capitalism to reveal the economic exploitation at its core. Embracing the universal concept of human history that portrayed class conflict as the final engine of change. More than this, it served as the modern name for an ancient but enduring dream: to put an end to unfreedom, and to realize the words of the old prophet, to “wipe the tears off every face.”
Now being out of that lucid dream we see here in this book, Isaiah Berlin analysing one of the greatest figure of ninetieth century. It would be wrong to assert that he only focused on Marx. He covered almost everything surrounding the historical movement of Marx's time. While doing this, apart from Marx he had to draw so many vivid pictures of the mentality of that particular period. A brilliantly lucid work of synthesis and exposition, the book introduces Marx's ideas and sets them in their context, explains why they were revolutionary in political and intellectual terms, and paints a memorable portrait of Marx's dramatic life and outsized personality. Berlin takes readers through Marx's years of adolescent rebellion and post-university communist agitation, the personal high point of the 1848 revolutions, and his later years of exile, political frustration, and intellectual effort. Critical yet sympathetic, Berlin's account illuminates a life without reproducing a legend.
As Berlin was brilliant and precise in his skill in sketching a vivid picture of history and Marx,this book as a result demands a very thoughtful reading. It is dense,but burning with amazing gusto and excitement. So it is one of those book that makes us fall in love with the subject of history.
Now being out of that lucid dream we see here in this book, Isaiah Berlin analysing one of the greatest figure of ninetieth century. It would be wrong to assert that he only focused on Marx. He covered almost everything surrounding the historical movement of Marx's time. While doing this, apart from Marx he had to draw so many vivid pictures of the mentality of that particular period. A brilliantly lucid work of synthesis and exposition, the book introduces Marx's ideas and sets them in their context, explains why they were revolutionary in political and intellectual terms, and paints a memorable portrait of Marx's dramatic life and outsized personality. Berlin takes readers through Marx's years of adolescent rebellion and post-university communist agitation, the personal high point of the 1848 revolutions, and his later years of exile, political frustration, and intellectual effort. Critical yet sympathetic, Berlin's account illuminates a life without reproducing a legend.
As Berlin was brilliant and precise in his skill in sketching a vivid picture of history and Marx,this book as a result demands a very thoughtful reading. It is dense,but burning with amazing gusto and excitement. So it is one of those book that makes us fall in love with the subject of history.
July 13, 2024
half a history of his life, half a history of his ideas and the ideas that shaped his ideas (or maybe 1/3rd 2/3rds). the language is approachable enough but i still had a hard time grasping a lot of the more theoretical concepts.
even though i would say this book is good for beginners to marx and marxism, it still requires a pretty solid background of radical european thought as well as an understanding of european history from ~1830-1880. if you don't know about metternich and the post-napoleonic status quo, the revolutions of 1848, the end of the second republic in france, and the franco-prussian war, this won't do much to help, although it casually references them at length. it's better at explaining thinkers contemporary to marx and those that influenced his own thought, but still, this is a book mostly on marx, so the explanations of the philosophies of proudhon, herzen, and bakunin, for example, are pretty incomplete. the early sections on hegel and how marx approached and transformed orthodox hegelian thought were very good and i think i finally somewhat understand what hegelian dialectics actually are which is something i had all but given up on, even after having it explained to me innumerable times.
even though i would say this book is good for beginners to marx and marxism, it still requires a pretty solid background of radical european thought as well as an understanding of european history from ~1830-1880. if you don't know about metternich and the post-napoleonic status quo, the revolutions of 1848, the end of the second republic in france, and the franco-prussian war, this won't do much to help, although it casually references them at length. it's better at explaining thinkers contemporary to marx and those that influenced his own thought, but still, this is a book mostly on marx, so the explanations of the philosophies of proudhon, herzen, and bakunin, for example, are pretty incomplete. the early sections on hegel and how marx approached and transformed orthodox hegelian thought were very good and i think i finally somewhat understand what hegelian dialectics actually are which is something i had all but given up on, even after having it explained to me innumerable times.
June 26, 2015
The curriculum I taught this year at my high school involved using Marxism as a critical lens through which to evaluate various works of literature. Unfortunately, I didn't know nearly as much about Marx as I needed to, and have begun to address this lack with Isaiah Berlin's wonderfully succinct biography. I agree with everything said about it by my Goodread's friend, James Henderson, and, like him, am now very interested in pursuing Berlin's other works.
As to Marx, I find it an amazing contradiction in his character that though a life-long devotee of books and ideas, as a determinist he discounted the power of ideas to influence history. History was for him a dialectical mechanism with a predetermined end. But, as Berlin comments on this idea, "the very extent of its own influence on human affairs has weakened the force of its thesis." Marx is a classic example of a determinist who saw himself as somehow outside his own deterministic framework.
As to Marx, I find it an amazing contradiction in his character that though a life-long devotee of books and ideas, as a determinist he discounted the power of ideas to influence history. History was for him a dialectical mechanism with a predetermined end. But, as Berlin comments on this idea, "the very extent of its own influence on human affairs has weakened the force of its thesis." Marx is a classic example of a determinist who saw himself as somehow outside his own deterministic framework.
March 22, 2013
There may be better introductions now on Marx in the terms of scholarship, but the style of Isaiah Berlin's prose compensates this. To read Berlin is always a pleasure.
September 12, 2020
Not Berlin’s most original book.
June 24, 2021
This is not biography, it’s the intellectual history of Karl Marx — the people, places, and ideas that influenced Marx himself, and made Marx and Marxism. And it’s done by Isaiah Berlin, who knows more about every single obscure historical intellectual figure imaginable.
So if you want to know Marx and his life, this isn’t the right book. If you want to understand what Marx believed, how he came to those conclusions, and why he’s the dominant figure in communism, this book not just good, it’s probably the best out there.
Berlin traces every influence with Marx. He weaves in family, friends, work colleagues, the cultural atmosphere around Marx, and more. The result is a clear portrait of how and why Marx became MARX, and resulted in Marxism. Berlin, as in all his writing, can get wordy with prolific use of the semicolon for wildly long sentence-paragraphs, but he covers a lot of ground in a fairly short book. Were this a 21st Century book, it’d be 500-600 pages minimum. Berlin accomplishes all of that in half the pages.
Highly recommend if Marxism is an interest.
So if you want to know Marx and his life, this isn’t the right book. If you want to understand what Marx believed, how he came to those conclusions, and why he’s the dominant figure in communism, this book not just good, it’s probably the best out there.
Berlin traces every influence with Marx. He weaves in family, friends, work colleagues, the cultural atmosphere around Marx, and more. The result is a clear portrait of how and why Marx became MARX, and resulted in Marxism. Berlin, as in all his writing, can get wordy with prolific use of the semicolon for wildly long sentence-paragraphs, but he covers a lot of ground in a fairly short book. Were this a 21st Century book, it’d be 500-600 pages minimum. Berlin accomplishes all of that in half the pages.
Highly recommend if Marxism is an interest.
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