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Political Writings #3
The First International and After
Karl Marx was not only the great theorist of capitalism, he was also a superb journalist, politician and historian. In these brand-new editions of Marx’s Political Writings we are able to see the depth and range of his mature work from 1848 through to the end of his life, from The Communist Manifesto to The Class Struggles in France and The Critique of the Gotha Programme . Each book has a new introduction from a major contemporary thinker, to shed new light on these vital texts. Volume 3: The First International and After : The crucial texts of Marx’s later years—notably The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Programme —count among his most important work. These articles include a searching analysis of the tragic but inspiring failure of the Paris Commune, as well as essays on German unification, the Irish question, the Polish national movement and the possibility of revolution in Russia. The founding documents of the First international and polemical pieces attacking the disciples of Proudhon and Bakunin and the advocates of reformism, by contrast, reveal a tactical mastery that has influenced revolutionary movements ever since.
416 pages, Paperback
First published May 4, 1993
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About the author
Karl Marx
3,278 books6,625 followersWith the help of Friedrich Engels, German philosopher and revolutionary Karl Marx wrote
The Communist Manifesto
(1848) and
Das Kapital
(1867-1894), works, which explain historical development in terms of the interaction of contradictory economic forces, form many regimes, and profoundly influenced the social sciences.
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
German social theorist Friedrich Engels collaborated with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and on numerous other works.
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin in London opposed Communism of Karl Marx with his antithetical anarchy.
Works of Jacques Martin Barzun include Darwin, Marx, Wagner (1941).
The Prussian kingdom introduced a prohibition on Jews, practicing law; in response, a man converted to Protestantism and shortly afterward fathered Karl Marx.
Marx began co-operating with Bruno Bauer on editing Philosophy of Religion of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (see Democritus and Epicurus), doctoral thesis, also engaged Marx, who completed it in 1841. People described the controversial essay as "a daring and original piece... in which Marx set out to show that theology must yield to the superior wisdom." Marx decided to submit his thesis not to the particularly conservative professors at the University of Berlin but instead to the more liberal faculty of University of Jena, which for his contributed key theory awarded his Philosophiae Doctor in April 1841. Marx and Bauer, both atheists, in March 1841 began plans for a journal, entitled Archiv des Atheismus (Atheistic Archives), which never came to fruition.
Marx edited the newspaper Vorwärts! in 1844 in Paris. The urging of the Prussian government from France banished and expelled Marx in absentia; he then studied in Brussels. He joined the league in 1847 and published.
Marx participated the failure of 1848 and afterward eventually wound in London. Marx, a foreigner, corresponded for several publications of United States.
He came in three volumes. Marx organized the International and the social democratic party.
Marx in a letter to C. Schmidt once quipped, "All I know is that I am not a Marxist," as Warren Allen Smith related in Who's Who in Hell .
People describe Marx, who most figured among humans. They typically cite Marx with Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, the principal modern architects.
Bertrand Russell later remarked of non-religious Marx, "His belief that there is a cosmic ... called dialectical materialism, which governs ... independently of human volitions, is mere mythology" ( Portraits from Memory , 1956).
More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bi...
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/...
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic...
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/...
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/t...
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June 11, 2023There are two aspects to this collection: firstly, the description of how communism initially fared across different European countries and secondly how the International sought to manage the various ideological splits within its movement.
If we start with the first of these, Marx was a strong supporter of Irish independence from Britain and the restoration of Polish sovereignty from Russia, Austria and Germany. His grounds for this are perhaps more questionable than the overall stance though: he felt that the likelihood of a revolution in Britain i.e. British workers would be forced to blame capitalism for their ills if their ability to scapegoat Irish workers as economic competitors was removed. In practice, there's no reason to think anything of the kind happened when Ireland did eventually gain its independence. Similarly, Marx saw Poland as potentially fertile territory for revolution but entirely missed the possibility that Russia was a more likely candidate.
The reason for this is that Marx saw revolution as the culmination of a historical process that was intrinsically tried to industrialisation. He plays down the possibility of revolution in Germany for similar reasons i.e. that the proportion of industrial workers versus agrarian workers was insufficient, as well as attributing the failure of the Paris Commune to the same cause: Paris itself had a sufficient proletariat but that failed outside of the city. It seems a naïve argument: industrial societies were comparatively prosperous to a society like Russia that only recently emancipated its serfs, so it hardly seems surprising that the conditions for revolution were greatest in poorer countries.
Moving onto the second point, Marx spends a great deal of time navigating between more meliorist tendencies that wanted social democratic reform (as with his critique of the Gotha programme) or more extreme figures like Bakunin. The former seems rather futile: in practice, social democratic reform of capitalist countries was a considerable success, even if Marx here denounces it as an impossibility. The latter is interesting, as he does seem to predict some aspects of the Soviet Union's ultimate failure: "if the workers replace the dictatorship of the bourgeois class with their own revolutionary dictatorship... a revolution is the authoritarian thing the is: it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will on the other part by means of rifles... the working class cannot simply lay hold of the readymade state machinery and wield it for its own purposes."
If we start with the first of these, Marx was a strong supporter of Irish independence from Britain and the restoration of Polish sovereignty from Russia, Austria and Germany. His grounds for this are perhaps more questionable than the overall stance though: he felt that the likelihood of a revolution in Britain i.e. British workers would be forced to blame capitalism for their ills if their ability to scapegoat Irish workers as economic competitors was removed. In practice, there's no reason to think anything of the kind happened when Ireland did eventually gain its independence. Similarly, Marx saw Poland as potentially fertile territory for revolution but entirely missed the possibility that Russia was a more likely candidate.
The reason for this is that Marx saw revolution as the culmination of a historical process that was intrinsically tried to industrialisation. He plays down the possibility of revolution in Germany for similar reasons i.e. that the proportion of industrial workers versus agrarian workers was insufficient, as well as attributing the failure of the Paris Commune to the same cause: Paris itself had a sufficient proletariat but that failed outside of the city. It seems a naïve argument: industrial societies were comparatively prosperous to a society like Russia that only recently emancipated its serfs, so it hardly seems surprising that the conditions for revolution were greatest in poorer countries.
Moving onto the second point, Marx spends a great deal of time navigating between more meliorist tendencies that wanted social democratic reform (as with his critique of the Gotha programme) or more extreme figures like Bakunin. The former seems rather futile: in practice, social democratic reform of capitalist countries was a considerable success, even if Marx here denounces it as an impossibility. The latter is interesting, as he does seem to predict some aspects of the Soviet Union's ultimate failure: "if the workers replace the dictatorship of the bourgeois class with their own revolutionary dictatorship... a revolution is the authoritarian thing the is: it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will on the other part by means of rifles... the working class cannot simply lay hold of the readymade state machinery and wield it for its own purposes."
October 7, 2015
This is slightly better than the other 2 books in the collection, but most of it seems unimportant and adds nothing to any of Marx's theories. Half the book is basically report-backs on the situations in different parts of the world (meetings, meetings, meetings...).
One bit I did find interesting was the here-and-there remarks on Bakunin and the split in the First International. Obviously Marx is biased and won't paint Bakunin in a positive light, but I'm actually in agreement with a few of Marx's points, specifically his take on communism being the abolition of classes against Bakunin's equality for all classes.
One bit I did find interesting was the here-and-there remarks on Bakunin and the split in the First International. Obviously Marx is biased and won't paint Bakunin in a positive light, but I'm actually in agreement with a few of Marx's points, specifically his take on communism being the abolition of classes against Bakunin's equality for all classes.
July 29, 2017
The final volume in the set of three covering Marx's "political" writings published by Verso, this covers the period of the First International. Similar to the first two volumes this shows Marx grappling with the tactical issues of the day. Although this means that many of the articles included in the book cover quite specific topics - and therefore might seem somewhat limited in more general interest - in fact they show Marx as anything but the doctrinaire ideologue he is often portrayed to have been. Instead it shows him carefully managing the various sectional interests in order to maintain a coherent programme across the movement.
In particular Marx insists on the need to maintain a revolutionary goal. Whatever tactics are suitable to the situation at hand, the working class movement must not lose sight of the need to overthrow the existing system and replace it with something else in the end.
Marx's argument with Bakunin during the revolution is an interesting follow on, making it clear that Marx believed that a political programme is a necessary part of a revolutionary movement. It is not sufficient to pursue a purely 'economic' agenda looking to improve working conditions. The movement must remain engaged with the political struggle too.
This is complimented by the other section which is particularly interesting which includes "The Civil War in France", Marx's writing on the Paris Commune. This covers some of his most specific statements on the subject of the state, what a "dictatorship of the proletariat" might mean in practice, how the working class might go about dismantling the capitalist state, and what might come afterwards in practice.
All this means that it is a volume with a great deal of relevance to the modern left wing and is worth reading for the intersection it presents between the building of an engaged daily working class movement on top of a strong foundation in an economic analysis of capitalism and the state.
In particular Marx insists on the need to maintain a revolutionary goal. Whatever tactics are suitable to the situation at hand, the working class movement must not lose sight of the need to overthrow the existing system and replace it with something else in the end.
Marx's argument with Bakunin during the revolution is an interesting follow on, making it clear that Marx believed that a political programme is a necessary part of a revolutionary movement. It is not sufficient to pursue a purely 'economic' agenda looking to improve working conditions. The movement must remain engaged with the political struggle too.
This is complimented by the other section which is particularly interesting which includes "The Civil War in France", Marx's writing on the Paris Commune. This covers some of his most specific statements on the subject of the state, what a "dictatorship of the proletariat" might mean in practice, how the working class might go about dismantling the capitalist state, and what might come afterwards in practice.
All this means that it is a volume with a great deal of relevance to the modern left wing and is worth reading for the intersection it presents between the building of an engaged daily working class movement on top of a strong foundation in an economic analysis of capitalism and the state.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews