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Marx’s Literary Style
A true understanding of Marx’s work requires a careful study of his literary choices
In Marx’s Literary Style, the Venezuelan poet and philosopher Ludovico Silva argues that much of the confusion around Marx’s work results from a failure to understand his literary mode of expression. Through meticulous readings of key passages in Marx’s oeuvre, Silva isolates the key elements of his style: his search for an “architectonic” unity at the level of the text, his capacity to express himself dialectically at the level of the sentence, and, above all, his great gift for metaphor. Silva’s unique sensitivity to Marx’s literary choices allows him to illuminate a number of terms that have been persistently, and fatefully, misunderstood by many of Marx’s most influential readers, including alienation, reflection, and base and superstructure. At the heart of Silva’s book is his contention that we we cannot hope to understand Marx if we treat him as a scientist, a philosopher, or a literary writer, when he was in fact all three at once.
Originally published in 1971, this is a key work by one of the most important Latin American Marxists of the twentieth century. This edition, which marks the first appearance of one of Silva’s works in English, features an introduction by Alberto Toscano.
In Marx’s Literary Style, the Venezuelan poet and philosopher Ludovico Silva argues that much of the confusion around Marx’s work results from a failure to understand his literary mode of expression. Through meticulous readings of key passages in Marx’s oeuvre, Silva isolates the key elements of his style: his search for an “architectonic” unity at the level of the text, his capacity to express himself dialectically at the level of the sentence, and, above all, his great gift for metaphor. Silva’s unique sensitivity to Marx’s literary choices allows him to illuminate a number of terms that have been persistently, and fatefully, misunderstood by many of Marx’s most influential readers, including alienation, reflection, and base and superstructure. At the heart of Silva’s book is his contention that we we cannot hope to understand Marx if we treat him as a scientist, a philosopher, or a literary writer, when he was in fact all three at once.
Originally published in 1971, this is a key work by one of the most important Latin American Marxists of the twentieth century. This edition, which marks the first appearance of one of Silva’s works in English, features an introduction by Alberto Toscano.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
February 12, 2023
More of an introduction than an in depth study. It starts with the premise that Marx is just as much a great writer as he is a great philosopher, economist, social scientist, and historian. From there it begins laying out a few stylistic features of Marx's writing like his architectonics (cool word I didn't know before reading!), his dialectical structuring of sentences and paragraphs, his extensive and masterful use of metaphors, and his polemical style. Packed into a little over 100 pages are plenty of insights that will make any reading of Marx pleasurable, as well as enlightening.
That said, Silva is not a revolutionary Marxist. He is a professor with a conscience. In certain passages you can almost feel his feet leaving the ground as he lauds Marx the author for his "infinite capacity" for a whole bunch of different things, head in the clouds of thoughts and ideas dissociated from actual practical work. As far as academic marxism goes, I am sure you could do much worse - but, alas, academic marxism is remains.
That said, Silva is not a revolutionary Marxist. He is a professor with a conscience. In certain passages you can almost feel his feet leaving the ground as he lauds Marx the author for his "infinite capacity" for a whole bunch of different things, head in the clouds of thoughts and ideas dissociated from actual practical work. As far as academic marxism goes, I am sure you could do much worse - but, alas, academic marxism is remains.
October 25, 2022
What's more to say about a book called "Marx's Literary Style" that isn't already said in the title? This is a focused look on language and style in Marx's work, and for anyone interested in Marx, Marxist thought, or the greater contemporary literary conversation in general, this is a must-read. For those not interested in Marx's economic or philosophical dimensions, this is a great way to get into one of the most influential thinkers of all time.
May 19, 2023
Unnecessarily long review incoming:
This book is a useful, if not essential, work, analysing particular aspects of how Karl Marx wrote. Without reading this book, Marx is still very much accessible, but anyone hoping to conduct a serious study of Marx’s writing would benefit from some analysis of how he wrote.
In writing Marx’s Literary Style, Silva argues that Marx consciously adopted a particular style in order to communicate his ideas. Marx “is not content with the clean conscience that comes from having used the scientifically correct terms” but rather his writing uses “every linguistic resource at its disposal.” Marx wrote not just to understand the world, but to change it.
Some critics of Marx point to his use of imagery and metaphor in order to slander him as unscientific. The same accusation was made of Trotsky by James Burnham in 1940: “you have a too literary conception of proof, of evidence; that you deceive yourself into treating persuasive rhetoric as logical demonstration, a brilliant metaphor as argument.” Both Marx and Trotsky use such tactics to the same effect: to make clear and concrete difficult and abstract concepts. As Silva writes “His metaphors constitute an additional expenditure of verbal energy that ensures effective communication with the reader. Many scientific writers consider additional expenditures of this kind inappropriate and silly; they do not seem to aspire to communication - in fact, some take an unhealthy pleasure in not being understood”
Marx was certainly interested in style. In a letter to Ferdinand Lasalle, explaining his lateness in producing for publication his work A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx writes: “the material was to hand and all that I was concerned with was the form,” and further “I shall have finished about 4 weeks from now, having only just begun the actual writing.” This after fifteen years of work (the Critique being intended as a preview for his later magnum opus, Capital).
Silva in particular identifies several key aspects of Marx’s literary style: the “Architectonic of Science,” the “expression of the dialectic,” Marx’s use of metaphor, his ability to render the abstract concrete, his polemicism and mockery, and his use of irony. At just over 120 pages, and three main chapters, Marx’s Literary Style is quite short - and the key substance of the book is found in chapter two. This single 53 page chapter contains the actual explanation and analysis of Marx’s style and could perhaps stand on its own if one were interested only in the key points.
The first chapter describes Marx’s origins as a writer. Perhaps the most enlightening point here is that Marx started off as a journalist, writing on politics and philosophy, before becoming a theorist in his own right. He originated as someone whose task was not just to record ideas, but to communicate them effectively to his audience. Other points raised here - his failed efforts at poetry, his study of the classics, are more in the realm of interesting biographical details.
The second chapter, divided into sections each analysing different features, begins with the “Architectonic of Science.” This was perhaps the weakest point, and the most poorly explained, but essentially seems to outline that Marx’s analysis of capitalism across his entire oeuvre is one internally consistent system. As Marx writes to Engels, “the advantage of my writings is that they are an artistic whole.”
“The expression of the dialectic, or the dialectic of expression” is a far more interesting section, pointing to a sentence structure used time and again by Marx “in which opposite terms are neatly drawn in an antagonistic correlation before being fused in a synthetic phrase.” What this amounts to is an explanation of things in a dialectical way - drawing out how seemingly opposite concepts depend on and presuppose one another. This type of wordplay isn’t just ornamental, but both explains the immediate subject being discussed and engages the reader in thinking dialectically. Numerous examples are given, such as “All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.” Or, for example “The mortgage the peasant has on heavenly possessions guarantees the mortgage the bourgeois has on peasant possessions” Marx biographer Francis Wheen, in criticising this technique, nevertheless points to one particularly famous example: right before Marx described religion as the opium of the people, he says “Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.”
In the third part of the chapter, Silva speaks not just about Marx’s use of metaphors (about which he earlier states that “nothing contributes to the comprehensibility of a theory like a fitting metaphor”), but also presents a very solid argument that too often Marxists have treated his metaphors as theories. For example, he argues that “base and superstructure” and “ideological reflection” are not theories in their own right but only metaphors to explain a broader theory of ideology - metaphors which, though useful, break down when studied on their own and out of context. Base and superstructure, for example, is used to point out how a society’s ideology is built on a material “base” - its economy and so on. But this fails to bring out the full nuance of how a society’s ideology develops in response to the development of its economic system, and how this ideology is in turn used to ensure that development. The ideological superstructure and the material base it is built upon are not static forces but are ever changing and developing, and this metaphor only seeks to help readers to understand this, while the full theory is elsewhere.
Finally, the chapter discusses other features - Marx’s spirit of mockery, his indignance, his spirited attacks on his opponents, how he renders the abstract concrete. All are clear throughout his work. One only needs to view just how many of his works’ titles begin with the words “A critique of…” to see his polemical spirit in action, for example.
The third chapter seeks to appraise Marx’s works on the basis of the features laid out in chapter two. One particularly noteworthy example is on the Communist Manifesto. Here, Silva argues, it is clear that Marx (alongside Engels) was adopting a particular literary style to achieve a desired effect: “the apocalyptic presentation of events, the description of history as the theatre of dramatically presented class struggle, the terrible predictions, its overall lyrical aspect, all mark this work as a ‘breakwater of eternities,’ which is what Marx and Engels, with good political sense, sought.”
Overall, Marx’s Literary Style is a worthwhile book. For anyone making a serious study of Marx’s writing, as all socialists should strive to do, thinking about what is being written and why is helpful, and this book certainly lends itself to that - although, even at not much more than 100 pages, the book could be far more concise. Perhaps not every argument made within necessarily holds up, but the majority of points are good and well made.
This book is a useful, if not essential, work, analysing particular aspects of how Karl Marx wrote. Without reading this book, Marx is still very much accessible, but anyone hoping to conduct a serious study of Marx’s writing would benefit from some analysis of how he wrote.
In writing Marx’s Literary Style, Silva argues that Marx consciously adopted a particular style in order to communicate his ideas. Marx “is not content with the clean conscience that comes from having used the scientifically correct terms” but rather his writing uses “every linguistic resource at its disposal.” Marx wrote not just to understand the world, but to change it.
Some critics of Marx point to his use of imagery and metaphor in order to slander him as unscientific. The same accusation was made of Trotsky by James Burnham in 1940: “you have a too literary conception of proof, of evidence; that you deceive yourself into treating persuasive rhetoric as logical demonstration, a brilliant metaphor as argument.” Both Marx and Trotsky use such tactics to the same effect: to make clear and concrete difficult and abstract concepts. As Silva writes “His metaphors constitute an additional expenditure of verbal energy that ensures effective communication with the reader. Many scientific writers consider additional expenditures of this kind inappropriate and silly; they do not seem to aspire to communication - in fact, some take an unhealthy pleasure in not being understood”
Marx was certainly interested in style. In a letter to Ferdinand Lasalle, explaining his lateness in producing for publication his work A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx writes: “the material was to hand and all that I was concerned with was the form,” and further “I shall have finished about 4 weeks from now, having only just begun the actual writing.” This after fifteen years of work (the Critique being intended as a preview for his later magnum opus, Capital).
Silva in particular identifies several key aspects of Marx’s literary style: the “Architectonic of Science,” the “expression of the dialectic,” Marx’s use of metaphor, his ability to render the abstract concrete, his polemicism and mockery, and his use of irony. At just over 120 pages, and three main chapters, Marx’s Literary Style is quite short - and the key substance of the book is found in chapter two. This single 53 page chapter contains the actual explanation and analysis of Marx’s style and could perhaps stand on its own if one were interested only in the key points.
The first chapter describes Marx’s origins as a writer. Perhaps the most enlightening point here is that Marx started off as a journalist, writing on politics and philosophy, before becoming a theorist in his own right. He originated as someone whose task was not just to record ideas, but to communicate them effectively to his audience. Other points raised here - his failed efforts at poetry, his study of the classics, are more in the realm of interesting biographical details.
The second chapter, divided into sections each analysing different features, begins with the “Architectonic of Science.” This was perhaps the weakest point, and the most poorly explained, but essentially seems to outline that Marx’s analysis of capitalism across his entire oeuvre is one internally consistent system. As Marx writes to Engels, “the advantage of my writings is that they are an artistic whole.”
“The expression of the dialectic, or the dialectic of expression” is a far more interesting section, pointing to a sentence structure used time and again by Marx “in which opposite terms are neatly drawn in an antagonistic correlation before being fused in a synthetic phrase.” What this amounts to is an explanation of things in a dialectical way - drawing out how seemingly opposite concepts depend on and presuppose one another. This type of wordplay isn’t just ornamental, but both explains the immediate subject being discussed and engages the reader in thinking dialectically. Numerous examples are given, such as “All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.” Or, for example “The mortgage the peasant has on heavenly possessions guarantees the mortgage the bourgeois has on peasant possessions” Marx biographer Francis Wheen, in criticising this technique, nevertheless points to one particularly famous example: right before Marx described religion as the opium of the people, he says “Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering.”
In the third part of the chapter, Silva speaks not just about Marx’s use of metaphors (about which he earlier states that “nothing contributes to the comprehensibility of a theory like a fitting metaphor”), but also presents a very solid argument that too often Marxists have treated his metaphors as theories. For example, he argues that “base and superstructure” and “ideological reflection” are not theories in their own right but only metaphors to explain a broader theory of ideology - metaphors which, though useful, break down when studied on their own and out of context. Base and superstructure, for example, is used to point out how a society’s ideology is built on a material “base” - its economy and so on. But this fails to bring out the full nuance of how a society’s ideology develops in response to the development of its economic system, and how this ideology is in turn used to ensure that development. The ideological superstructure and the material base it is built upon are not static forces but are ever changing and developing, and this metaphor only seeks to help readers to understand this, while the full theory is elsewhere.
Finally, the chapter discusses other features - Marx’s spirit of mockery, his indignance, his spirited attacks on his opponents, how he renders the abstract concrete. All are clear throughout his work. One only needs to view just how many of his works’ titles begin with the words “A critique of…” to see his polemical spirit in action, for example.
The third chapter seeks to appraise Marx’s works on the basis of the features laid out in chapter two. One particularly noteworthy example is on the Communist Manifesto. Here, Silva argues, it is clear that Marx (alongside Engels) was adopting a particular literary style to achieve a desired effect: “the apocalyptic presentation of events, the description of history as the theatre of dramatically presented class struggle, the terrible predictions, its overall lyrical aspect, all mark this work as a ‘breakwater of eternities,’ which is what Marx and Engels, with good political sense, sought.”
Overall, Marx’s Literary Style is a worthwhile book. For anyone making a serious study of Marx’s writing, as all socialists should strive to do, thinking about what is being written and why is helpful, and this book certainly lends itself to that - although, even at not much more than 100 pages, the book could be far more concise. Perhaps not every argument made within necessarily holds up, but the majority of points are good and well made.
April 13, 2025
In Marx’s Literary Style, Venezuelan philosopher Ludovico Silva presents a brilliant and incisive examination of Karl Marx not merely as an economist or political theorist, but as a writer—a stylist—whose prose is infused with rhetorical precision, poetic cadence, and literary intentionality. First published in Spanish in 1970 and now available in English translation, this work offers a much-needed lens through which to reconsider Marx’s texts as literary artifacts in their own right.
Silva’s central thesis is that Marx’s writing cannot be separated from his method; that the form of his prose is integral to the function of his critique. Drawing on close readings of Capital, The Communist Manifesto, and lesser-known writings, Silva uncovers the richness of Marx’s metaphors, the musicality of his syntax, and the irony embedded in his dialectics. Rather than approaching style as an ornament, Silva treats it as ideological form—an aesthetic weapon of critique.
What makes this work particularly resonant is its dual fidelity: to literary theory and to Marxist analysis. Silva moves with equal fluency between philological detail and political context, arguing that Marx’s stylistic choices were not only deliberate but revolutionary. Whether invoking classical rhetoric or unmasking the bourgeois masquerade through satire, Marx deployed language with as much strategic force as he did economic theory.
This translation—lucid and elegant—retains the philosophical urgency and literary sensitivity of the original. For scholars of Marxism, literary studies, or the intersections of aesthetics and ideology, Silva’s text serves both as a critical resource and as a work of literary theory in its own right.
Final Verdict:
Marx’s Literary Style is a masterful exegesis of language as praxis. Silva challenges us to reread Marx not only as a thinker of systems and structures, but as an architect of language—deliberate, artful, and politically charged. This book is indispensable for anyone interested in the poetics of critique and the aesthetics of revolution.
Rating: ★★★★★
Disclaimer: I read an advance copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Silva’s central thesis is that Marx’s writing cannot be separated from his method; that the form of his prose is integral to the function of his critique. Drawing on close readings of Capital, The Communist Manifesto, and lesser-known writings, Silva uncovers the richness of Marx’s metaphors, the musicality of his syntax, and the irony embedded in his dialectics. Rather than approaching style as an ornament, Silva treats it as ideological form—an aesthetic weapon of critique.
What makes this work particularly resonant is its dual fidelity: to literary theory and to Marxist analysis. Silva moves with equal fluency between philological detail and political context, arguing that Marx’s stylistic choices were not only deliberate but revolutionary. Whether invoking classical rhetoric or unmasking the bourgeois masquerade through satire, Marx deployed language with as much strategic force as he did economic theory.
This translation—lucid and elegant—retains the philosophical urgency and literary sensitivity of the original. For scholars of Marxism, literary studies, or the intersections of aesthetics and ideology, Silva’s text serves both as a critical resource and as a work of literary theory in its own right.
Final Verdict:
Marx’s Literary Style is a masterful exegesis of language as praxis. Silva challenges us to reread Marx not only as a thinker of systems and structures, but as an architect of language—deliberate, artful, and politically charged. This book is indispensable for anyone interested in the poetics of critique and the aesthetics of revolution.
Rating: ★★★★★
Disclaimer: I read an advance copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 1, 2023
A decent book. I imagine it would be more enriching (or enraging) to those with more of a interest and knowledge of linguistics
December 2, 2023
Pretty good book for what it set out to do, which was to highlight the importance of Marx's literary style (roll credits) in interpreting his work. I frankly think this book deserved to be a 600-page close reading of all of Capital, but for all intents and purposes it made the points it needed to: Marx's style is architectonic and expressively dialectical, he uses metaphors to explicate scientific analyses, he shifts from the concrete to the abstract to the concrete, and his critical/polemical/ironic spirit is central to his writing as a whole. I think certain arguments could've been stronger—for instance, substantiating (1) the architectonic nature of Marx's writings and the importance of this; (2) the claim that Marx's use of contradiction and opposites was properly dialectical; (3) that superstructure- and reflection-theory were unfaithful to Marx's use of the terms and how; (4) how Marx's use of polemic and irony were related to alienation under capitalism [the epilogue did this but could've been more substantial in my opinion]. Nonetheless, the book gave a brief explanation for each of these claims and thoroughly-enough showed how those claims then support the overarching thesis of the relevance of Marx's literary style. Overall: a good book that unearths a relatively unexplored area of Marxist study and deserves further investigation and elaboration.
April 9, 2024
Vaya librazo.
January 25, 2023
Originally published back in 1975 at a time when interest in Marx inspired by the events of 1968 was beginning to wane the essays in this brief book seem to have as their aim a defense of the master against the accusation that he was a mere ideologue motivated by a messianic passion requiring the denunciation of capitalism and all its works, rather than scientific analysis. Silva notes that Marx's style hung around countless metaphors, analogies and polemical thrusts which gives it a very different tone from anything else found in the academic cannon. Given the sneering that this as provoked from adherents of the mainstream, was this 'style' a misjudgment on Marx's part, or an integral part of the case he was seeking to make?
Silva sees in Marx's work an intervention which seeks to confront the feature of modern society which seemed most worthy of condemnation: the production of people as subjects alienated from their own productive essence. The humans who think about the world they live in who have not reflected on their alienation will accept a view of the world that fragments thought and action into a thousand pieces which exist independently from one another. When thought does not return to the materiality of human existence then it takes the form of ideology - at best partial insight which allows the person to function with a degree of efficiency in society but always holding her back from radical insight into the true nature of existence. Dialectical reasoning aims to achieve radical insight by attempting a synthesis of the fragmentary perceptions of reality at the point in which they contradict one another.
This unpicking of ideology at its jagged edges, where it no longer provides explanati0ns that are consistent with the claims the bourgeois world viewpoint makes about itself - such as the claim that the work done by the workers and the wage she receives for it embodies the principle of fair and equitable exchange - are revealed and made transparent by the use of metaphor and analogy, with large does of irony mixed in. What Marx intends is not a philosophical thesis by and expose of capitalism that can be traced back to its roots in the everyday lives of the people it has made its subjects.
In setting out this perspective Silva takes a few shots at Marxists who themselves have failed to appreciate the use of metaphor and have accepted an assertion made in one of Marx's tests as a category of scientific analysis. The concept of capitalist as having a base/superstructure, with the one degerming the other, is the outstanding example. Though it has become a staple of dogmatic and mechanical versions of Marxism the few cases when the idea was expounded by March himself (notably in The German Ideology) are offered as metaphor and never made it into the more rigorous analytical categories used in his later work.
It might be easy to dismiss the discussion presented here as a bit of Marxology which will only interest the mandarins concerned with textural exegesis. But these are times of renewed interest in Marxist theory motivated by the desire, expressed by the likes of Mike Davis and Meikins Wood to get to the'hidden Marx' and the revolutionary project he espoused. Read from that vantage point it is worth spending the few hours needed to consider the arguments presented in this brief, lively, book
Silva sees in Marx's work an intervention which seeks to confront the feature of modern society which seemed most worthy of condemnation: the production of people as subjects alienated from their own productive essence. The humans who think about the world they live in who have not reflected on their alienation will accept a view of the world that fragments thought and action into a thousand pieces which exist independently from one another. When thought does not return to the materiality of human existence then it takes the form of ideology - at best partial insight which allows the person to function with a degree of efficiency in society but always holding her back from radical insight into the true nature of existence. Dialectical reasoning aims to achieve radical insight by attempting a synthesis of the fragmentary perceptions of reality at the point in which they contradict one another.
This unpicking of ideology at its jagged edges, where it no longer provides explanati0ns that are consistent with the claims the bourgeois world viewpoint makes about itself - such as the claim that the work done by the workers and the wage she receives for it embodies the principle of fair and equitable exchange - are revealed and made transparent by the use of metaphor and analogy, with large does of irony mixed in. What Marx intends is not a philosophical thesis by and expose of capitalism that can be traced back to its roots in the everyday lives of the people it has made its subjects.
In setting out this perspective Silva takes a few shots at Marxists who themselves have failed to appreciate the use of metaphor and have accepted an assertion made in one of Marx's tests as a category of scientific analysis. The concept of capitalist as having a base/superstructure, with the one degerming the other, is the outstanding example. Though it has become a staple of dogmatic and mechanical versions of Marxism the few cases when the idea was expounded by March himself (notably in The German Ideology) are offered as metaphor and never made it into the more rigorous analytical categories used in his later work.
It might be easy to dismiss the discussion presented here as a bit of Marxology which will only interest the mandarins concerned with textural exegesis. But these are times of renewed interest in Marxist theory motivated by the desire, expressed by the likes of Mike Davis and Meikins Wood to get to the'hidden Marx' and the revolutionary project he espoused. Read from that vantage point it is worth spending the few hours needed to consider the arguments presented in this brief, lively, book
February 19, 2023
“For [Karl] Marx, for whom praxis was the ultimate criterion of knowledge, it was indispensable to communicate practically with his public and to be understood so profoundly that he could influence the task of Veränderung – the subversive transformation of the world. That is why he took such care with his expressive economy.”
–––––––––––––––––––––
MARX’S LITERARY STYLE feels like a love letter written by Venezuelan writer and philosopher Ludovico Silva (translation by Paco Brito Núñez) not just for Karl Marx, but also to all people who want to dive into the works of the often misunderstood man.
Throughout the essay, divided into chapters, Silva dissected several of Marx’s writings to point out key elements such as the architectonic of science and dialectics, as well as his love of metaphors, and why these are often used by Marx’s critics against his works.
At the heart of Silva’s essay is not much a defense of the way Marx wrote, but an invitation to understand why such style is necessary given the subject-issues he tackled head on. It’s a masterclass – or perhaps a manifesto – against Marxist academics who tend to consume and present Marx’s works separate from his writing style. For Silva, to read Marx is to understand why he wrote in such a way, and to ignore this is to ignore the very reason he started writing in the first place.
I’ve read a lot of Marx from my university days, but reading Silva’s analysis gave a clearer picture of the philosopher for me. I learned that Marx preferred sending the final versions of his writings, and not drafts, to friends and colleagues. This meant that the works published prior to his death are the ones where we really read the real Marx, because these works underwent the process he preferred.
One particular passage that I loved from Silva’s analysis is this part, where he differentiated Marx’s complete works from others: “...all great thinkers who are also great stylists tend to present their work not as the result of previous thought but as the process or act of thinking itself: their readers are always present at the creation of their thinking, and they benefit from it because, instead of being forced to digest hardened thoughts, they are prompted to think, to rethink and to recreate.”
I appreciated this part because it showed that Marx cared for his readers and their backgrounds. But at the same time, he did not write the way he wrote to make his work accessible, but to give a certain level of respect to those who will consume it. At the end, Marx wrote for the people and not intellectuals.
Silva also went beyond the textual elements, but also highlighted the crucial role played by Marx’s background as a failed poet and lover of Greek and Latin literature, among others, in the development of his writing style. This reinforced the importance of the classics, the humanities, not just for Marx’s cannon but also for every piece of social analysis created and will be created in future generations.
This essay by Silva was first published in 1971 but the English translation was only released this month! I highly encourage everyone to read this book. You don’t need to be a Marxist nor subscribe to similar ideologies, you just need to have the thirst to understand.
–––––––––––––––––––––
MARX’S LITERARY STYLE feels like a love letter written by Venezuelan writer and philosopher Ludovico Silva (translation by Paco Brito Núñez) not just for Karl Marx, but also to all people who want to dive into the works of the often misunderstood man.
Throughout the essay, divided into chapters, Silva dissected several of Marx’s writings to point out key elements such as the architectonic of science and dialectics, as well as his love of metaphors, and why these are often used by Marx’s critics against his works.
At the heart of Silva’s essay is not much a defense of the way Marx wrote, but an invitation to understand why such style is necessary given the subject-issues he tackled head on. It’s a masterclass – or perhaps a manifesto – against Marxist academics who tend to consume and present Marx’s works separate from his writing style. For Silva, to read Marx is to understand why he wrote in such a way, and to ignore this is to ignore the very reason he started writing in the first place.
I’ve read a lot of Marx from my university days, but reading Silva’s analysis gave a clearer picture of the philosopher for me. I learned that Marx preferred sending the final versions of his writings, and not drafts, to friends and colleagues. This meant that the works published prior to his death are the ones where we really read the real Marx, because these works underwent the process he preferred.
One particular passage that I loved from Silva’s analysis is this part, where he differentiated Marx’s complete works from others: “...all great thinkers who are also great stylists tend to present their work not as the result of previous thought but as the process or act of thinking itself: their readers are always present at the creation of their thinking, and they benefit from it because, instead of being forced to digest hardened thoughts, they are prompted to think, to rethink and to recreate.”
I appreciated this part because it showed that Marx cared for his readers and their backgrounds. But at the same time, he did not write the way he wrote to make his work accessible, but to give a certain level of respect to those who will consume it. At the end, Marx wrote for the people and not intellectuals.
Silva also went beyond the textual elements, but also highlighted the crucial role played by Marx’s background as a failed poet and lover of Greek and Latin literature, among others, in the development of his writing style. This reinforced the importance of the classics, the humanities, not just for Marx’s cannon but also for every piece of social analysis created and will be created in future generations.
This essay by Silva was first published in 1971 but the English translation was only released this month! I highly encourage everyone to read this book. You don’t need to be a Marxist nor subscribe to similar ideologies, you just need to have the thirst to understand.
January 14, 2023
Originally published in 1971 by Ludovico Silva (1937-1988), a Venezuelan poet and Marxist philosopher. Comes out this month by Verso Books, an essay that outlines Marx as a literary figure.
Prerequisites: The reader needn't be familiar with the contents of Capital. But a certain awareness of dialectics, particularly Hegel's dialectics. A quick tour of the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy might be helpful.
Things I learned: Shakespeare and Homer were Marx's favorite poets. His doctoral thesis was on the natural philosophy of Epicurus and Democritus. And he had enormous love for Latin and Greek works.
At University, he took courses on Homer, Greek and Roman mythology, the history of modern art and Roman law, and Puggé's encyclopedia of law.
This background seemed essential for him to become a social scientist who incorporated metaphors and dialectics in his works. He appreciated the economy of words for his take on economics. I might be paraphrasing but Ludovico has provided another example of how classical studies may be enjoyed once again.
The short chapters that follow show excerpts from Marx's work and the usage of metaphors as a literary tool to chart the arguments. Stylistic features of his works mentioned are the architectonic of science (Kant's art of systems), dialectics about class struggle or struggle of opposites (formulating a phrase, following up with an inverse phrase with the same words, and finally tying up with a third phrase that creates a synthesis), and his superstructure metaphor from plain building architecture.
In writing this essay, Ludovico warns contemporary Marxists to respect Marx's metaphors as metaphors alone for analogy purposes and not be falsely presented as scientific theories.
I am not well-read enough to understand the whole text. But I know enough that believing metaphors as an ideology is dangerous for any society. Ludovico makes a case that Marx didn't intend the stated in his works.
Prerequisites: The reader needn't be familiar with the contents of Capital. But a certain awareness of dialectics, particularly Hegel's dialectics. A quick tour of the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy might be helpful.
Things I learned: Shakespeare and Homer were Marx's favorite poets. His doctoral thesis was on the natural philosophy of Epicurus and Democritus. And he had enormous love for Latin and Greek works.
At University, he took courses on Homer, Greek and Roman mythology, the history of modern art and Roman law, and Puggé's encyclopedia of law.
This background seemed essential for him to become a social scientist who incorporated metaphors and dialectics in his works. He appreciated the economy of words for his take on economics. I might be paraphrasing but Ludovico has provided another example of how classical studies may be enjoyed once again.
The short chapters that follow show excerpts from Marx's work and the usage of metaphors as a literary tool to chart the arguments. Stylistic features of his works mentioned are the architectonic of science (Kant's art of systems), dialectics about class struggle or struggle of opposites (formulating a phrase, following up with an inverse phrase with the same words, and finally tying up with a third phrase that creates a synthesis), and his superstructure metaphor from plain building architecture.
In writing this essay, Ludovico warns contemporary Marxists to respect Marx's metaphors as metaphors alone for analogy purposes and not be falsely presented as scientific theories.
I am not well-read enough to understand the whole text. But I know enough that believing metaphors as an ideology is dangerous for any society. Ludovico makes a case that Marx didn't intend the stated in his works.
September 22, 2022
Marx's Literary Style by Ludovico Silva, translated by Paco Brito Núñez, is the first English translation of this important work and a must read for those with an interest in Marx and/or Marxist thought.
I remember back in the early 90s a visiting professor told me about this book and we spent many hours discussing Marx with an eye toward what this book did to his thinking. I struggled through a reading of the original but my language skills were shabby at best. This English translation is a welcome opportunity for me to revisit those discussions and Marx more broadly.
Alberto Toscano's foreword is an excellent introduction to the text and to Silva, helping to place both in context. Between the foreword, a reader's previous understanding of Marx, and this volume by Silva a whole new way of understanding and appreciating Marx opens up. Thinking of Marx as just a philosopher, or just a scientist, or just a literary figure is to miss out on how he wrote. He was one person who happened to be those three things. We have to make the effort to understand him where these three modes meet, not through just one of them.
I would highly recommend this to anyone who has read Marx and wants to understand him better. Especially great for those who understand the bigger pictures but find some of Marx's writing to be too, well, whatever it is that might be off-putting to you. I also think those who might have an appreciation of Marx but whose main interest is in the area of writing, language, and linguistics might find some useful ideas here that will apply well beyond Marx.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
I remember back in the early 90s a visiting professor told me about this book and we spent many hours discussing Marx with an eye toward what this book did to his thinking. I struggled through a reading of the original but my language skills were shabby at best. This English translation is a welcome opportunity for me to revisit those discussions and Marx more broadly.
Alberto Toscano's foreword is an excellent introduction to the text and to Silva, helping to place both in context. Between the foreword, a reader's previous understanding of Marx, and this volume by Silva a whole new way of understanding and appreciating Marx opens up. Thinking of Marx as just a philosopher, or just a scientist, or just a literary figure is to miss out on how he wrote. He was one person who happened to be those three things. We have to make the effort to understand him where these three modes meet, not through just one of them.
I would highly recommend this to anyone who has read Marx and wants to understand him better. Especially great for those who understand the bigger pictures but find some of Marx's writing to be too, well, whatever it is that might be off-putting to you. I also think those who might have an appreciation of Marx but whose main interest is in the area of writing, language, and linguistics might find some useful ideas here that will apply well beyond Marx.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
September 20, 2023
This is definitely a piece of academic and theoretical prowess. I admire Silva's dedication to the praise of Marx, but by the end of the book, it felt like he was going out of his way to kowtow to him...
However, Marx is absolutely a master of prose. It is no coincidence that he is remembered for his polemical (sometimes accessible) style in addition to his hot takes. I loved Silva's outline of Marx's reasons for using such provocative metaphors in his works like Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 and The German Ideology / Theses on Feuerbach / Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy and how modern-day critics often confuse his metaphors as ONLY rhetorical devices or extrapolate them (incorrectly) into scientific explanations.
Overall, my biggest takeaway is that Karl Marx is severely misunderstood and misrepresented in modern-day political and economic theory. Reading Marx's works is the only way to truly understand what he means when attempting to evaluate this critical theory.
However, Marx is absolutely a master of prose. It is no coincidence that he is remembered for his polemical (sometimes accessible) style in addition to his hot takes. I loved Silva's outline of Marx's reasons for using such provocative metaphors in his works like Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 and The German Ideology / Theses on Feuerbach / Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy and how modern-day critics often confuse his metaphors as ONLY rhetorical devices or extrapolate them (incorrectly) into scientific explanations.
Overall, my biggest takeaway is that Karl Marx is severely misunderstood and misrepresented in modern-day political and economic theory. Reading Marx's works is the only way to truly understand what he means when attempting to evaluate this critical theory.
February 12, 2023
Useful as a guide to the overall body of work, where you may want to prioritize your study. As I get ready to ramp up to read Marx (reading Hegel's Phenomenology too), this helped get my anticipation up and had some good biographical overview. But otherwise not much on offer here. No real analysis and no critique but a helpful sorting of which work goes where for someone trying to dip their toe back into some of the more mature works and cherry pick the younger stuff.
January 14, 2026
A surprisingly readable and informative analysis of exactly what it claims. Its also a great primer for those of use not well versed in Marx literature. It definitely piqued my interest in the first volume of capital in a way that I haven't had before, and it discusses some of the big ideas in Marx with rigor and respect. Given the heady nature of all the prose involved, I'm surprised that so many take umbrage with Marx himself, but then again, Marx would argue that is what ideology does!
July 20, 2023
Short but fascinating assessment of Marx as a writer. Silva was himself a Marxist in the seventies, and you do therefore need to screen out a small amount of hyperbole. But the core of Silva's argument about both the structure of Marx's prose and his use of metaphor and polemic is extremely interesting.
September 25, 2023
A brief but fascinating analysis of Marx's writing. You do need to filter out a little bit of hyperbole because Silva was a Marxist himself in the 1970s. However, Silva's central contention regarding Marx's use of metaphor and polemic, as well as the organisation of his text, is incredibly intriguing.
October 11, 2023
I loved this 1973 essay about Marx by Venezuelan poet Ludovico Silva. His close reading of Marx brings the 150-year-old books to life. Silva suggests we consider the way Marx wrote, not just the topics and ideas he wrote about. If you are a Marx reader, this is a must-read, and I give it my most dialectical recommendation.
September 1, 2023
This reads like someone claiming their sacrosanct Bible is perfectly and beautifully written. Was excited going into it; now, having read it, I know nothing more than before it. Useless.
October 9, 2023
made reading marx feel worth it lmao
Read
September 11, 2023i only starting reading this slight volume because it wondered into the bookshop. yet it has a weight to it.
time for me to take up the challenge to read marx with charity.
time for me to take up the challenge to read marx with charity.
November 18, 2023
In what I think is a unique angle, Marxist poet and philosopher Ludovico Silva dives into Marx's literary style in order to show where many of Marx's detractors and admirers alike have missed the forest for the trees.
On the other hand Silva's formula of the dialectic is boring (the ol' thesis-antithesis-synthesis), and his constant reminders of his dislike of Hegel I find a bit distasteful. But what can you do? I'm not the hugest fan either. And of course one can't entirely agree—love them both for their different takes and for what they offer to your own.
Silva's book is short and has many sharp edges. Marx definitely took his literary style seriously, and there is a lot to learn from using Silva's frame to interpret his work, even more than fifty years after it was first published.
We could continue quoting, because this section of the 1844 Manuscripts is filled with many such oppositions, all of which have the purpose of delineating the moral, psychological and even physiological effects of alienated labour. If alienation is, at its root, a kind of separation of the self, a splitting, what better way to express it stylistically than through the splitting of sentences into pairs of linear oppositions? Moreover, the condition of doubling must be stylistically synthesized, hence the comparison to religion which, it bears saying, is very frequent in Marx – and also the comparison to animal life, as if the point were to paint man as profoundly riven across the whole distance that separates beasts from gods. This is why Marx says that the worker, who is a man, feels free in his animal functions, and feels like an animal in his human functions; he feels free when he eats, drinks and sleeps, he feels like an animal when he works; therefore, to sum up: Tierische wird das Menschliche und das Menschliche das Tierische – what is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.
On the other hand Silva's formula of the dialectic is boring (the ol' thesis-antithesis-synthesis), and his constant reminders of his dislike of Hegel I find a bit distasteful. But what can you do? I'm not the hugest fan either. And of course one can't entirely agree—love them both for their different takes and for what they offer to your own.
But the best of all metaphors discovered by Marx is gigantic: it is capitalist society taken as a whole. The Greek word 'metaphor' means translatio or to transfer from one meaning to another. In capitalist society we find a strange and all-encompassing transfer from the real meaning of human life towards a distorted meaning. The capitalist metaphor is alienation. In the Middle Ages, alienatio meant 'transference' or movement from one meaning to another: from the proper meaning of a word to an improper meaning. This 'impropriety' can end up being positive and beautiful, as when we make literary metaphors and speak, for example, of the Platonic 'sun of ideas' or of the 'eyes of the soul'; but it can also be negative, as when we make a word mean something it truly does not and in so doing produce confusion or ambiguity. The same thing occurs with capitalist alienation, which is nothing but a monstrous metaphor. In capitalist society, the meaning of use-value – the meaning of quality – is expropriated from itself and substituted by the meaning of exchange-value, of quantity.
Silva's book is short and has many sharp edges. Marx definitely took his literary style seriously, and there is a lot to learn from using Silva's frame to interpret his work, even more than fifty years after it was first published.
February 19, 2025
Pretty underwhelming. I don't think this text does Marx's style any justice.
I like literature, I like Marx, and I like Marx's literary style. It's well-written, it's a nice translation too. I think the subject of analysis is fascinating and I am eager to read a literary analysis or study of Marx.But I don't really think Silva tells us anything all that interesting or insightful about Marx's writing style. He seems to fall short at every turn.
I think those claiming it's a "must-read" to understand Marx are exaggerating, or easily impressed by the difference between metaphor and theory. It's precisely where Silva attempts a literary analysis with any profundity that he appears most superficial. The three main concepts or theories he addresses just aren't that interesting or unique to Marx.
That said, close and careful readings of Marx are absolutely necessary and welcome to combat the usual dogmatic readings that have found themselves baked into Marxist discourse. If this text can inspire so much, and help launch more anti-dogmatic readings of Marx, then it's great. More literature students should take their skills in reading and analysing texts closely to Marx's pages.
I like literature, I like Marx, and I like Marx's literary style. It's well-written, it's a nice translation too. I think the subject of analysis is fascinating and I am eager to read a literary analysis or study of Marx.But I don't really think Silva tells us anything all that interesting or insightful about Marx's writing style. He seems to fall short at every turn.
I think those claiming it's a "must-read" to understand Marx are exaggerating, or easily impressed by the difference between metaphor and theory. It's precisely where Silva attempts a literary analysis with any profundity that he appears most superficial. The three main concepts or theories he addresses just aren't that interesting or unique to Marx.
That said, close and careful readings of Marx are absolutely necessary and welcome to combat the usual dogmatic readings that have found themselves baked into Marxist discourse. If this text can inspire so much, and help launch more anti-dogmatic readings of Marx, then it's great. More literature students should take their skills in reading and analysing texts closely to Marx's pages.
March 22, 2024
Corto, conciso y claro: A través del análisis de las principales metáforas de la obra de Marx y tratando de separar lo que sería supuesto estilo literario, de obra científica, Ludovico Silva nos ofrece explicaciones cocnretas y precisas de los pasajes más importantes de la obra de Karl. Igual a un experto marxista le resulta repetitivo o general, pero es un ejercicio brillante de análisis anti-dogmático de la escritura y obra de Marx que se lee con mucho placer.
September 27, 2024
I don't get it
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