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Karl Marx: A Biography
All the great political revolutions of the twentieth century referred back to Marx. Reviled by some, revered by many, Marx's influence can be found in every area of the humanities and social sciences from literary criticism to globalization. In this thoroughly revised and updated new edition of his classic biography, David McLellan provides a clear and detailed account both of Marx's dramatic life and of his path-breaking thought together with a wealth of bibliographical information for further reading.
502 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
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About the author
David McLellan
51 books37 followersDavid McLellan (born 10 February 1940) is an English scholar of Karl Marx and Marxism. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St. John's College, Oxford University.
McLellan is currently visiting Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. He was previously Professor of Political Theory at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent.
McLellan has also been Visiting Professor at the State University of New York, Guest Fellow in Politics at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla, and has lectured widely in North America and Europe.
McLellan is currently visiting Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmiths' College, University of London. He was previously Professor of Political Theory at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent.
McLellan has also been Visiting Professor at the State University of New York, Guest Fellow in Politics at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla, and has lectured widely in North America and Europe.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
June 17, 2022
This book was mostly what I was after. I wanted to read a biography of Marx, but biographies are often hit and miss. Part of the problem is, I guess, that they can read like they have been written by a genealogist on their great, great grand aunt. That is, you get a very positive view of her life, but really it is packed with all of the dross she might not have remembered herself. The date she moved into the little house on Grove Avenue, how much she was paid when she sold her dining table and chairs – which, unfortunately enough, is the sort of things recorded in most records, that is, the sorts of things that only tell you the most uninteresting things about people in the past. Inevitably, there was stuff like that in this book, too, biographies being what they are.
The other problem with doing a biography on someone like Marx is summed up in his own statement “what is certain is that I am no Marxist”. There are so many ‘Marxists’ and, like Christians, it isn’t in the least bit clear that Christ would have called himself a Christian either. But the sort of person likely to write a book like this is also likely to belong to one or other of these sects, and so the biography has the danger of being written to justify the sect more than explain the person. A problem further compounded by the fact that Marx isn’t exactly someone you can discuss without also discussing his ideas.
What I wanted from this book was a thumbnail of his key ideas, but mostly a timeline of his key works that also gave something of a feel for the time and situation in which he wrote them. And I got this in spades. And for that reason, I would recommend this book. I really should have read something like this book years and years ago, but didn’t. If I had it would have saved me a lot of frigging around. Not least since it would have been clearer why he was writing certain texts at certain times.
Marx’s style of writing is a bit of a function of him being a perfectionist. Any number of times in this we will be told that, in response to a publisher or friend or comrade, Marx would, often in all sincerity, say he was two weeks away from finishing some major work. Then, three years later, it still wouldn’t be finished. This wasn’t always due to procrastination, most often it was because he had found a series of books on the same topic and decided that he needed to read and incorporate all of these into his text first… or that he needed to wait while some new crisis of capitalism was playing out to be sure his theories would still hold given the new context.
The other part of this book is the horror of the life he lived – particularly in relation to his family life. His devoted wife seems to have been very devoted – but early on, Marx got into something of an argument with God, and God never seems to have forgiven him. If you want to see what a complete bastard this God guy can be, Marx’s life is something of an exemplar. From carbuncles on his penis (now, there's a thing), to the majority of his children dying before becoming adults, to his favourite daughter dying just before he did – honestly, we are talking Job level torments. As Stendhal once said, “God’s only excuse is that he doesn’t exist”.
Even so, this book could hardly be called a hagiography. I’m not entirely sure if I left the book actually liking Marx. That said, I think it would be hard to come away from this book without some respect for him. He put himself in the midst of change and was buffeted by change, often to points beyond endurance. He was constantly criticised for being a communist, but also by the left for being too much of the middle class, being too educated, being a Jew. When people refuse to challenge your ideas, they are most likely to find other things to criticise you for.
If I have a problem with this book, I guess it is that the author plays down Marxist philosophy. He sees dialectics as being something Engels snuck in under Marx’s gaze, or rather waited to sneak in after Marx had died. I’m not convinced of this. Dialectics is truth through negation, and that is the essence of Marx’s critical philosophical stance. At one point the author says something to the effect that it seemed odd that Marx often began works as a polemic against some leading idea of the time. But this would be hardly surprising if Marx was what he said he was – a person who saw the path to truth as coming through a clash of contradictory elements.
This book becomes increasingly difficult to read at the end, not the language or ideas, but this is where God extracts he nastiest revenges –all the same, it will give you enough background to understand what you are reading if you choose to read some of Marx’s actual works themselves.
The other problem with doing a biography on someone like Marx is summed up in his own statement “what is certain is that I am no Marxist”. There are so many ‘Marxists’ and, like Christians, it isn’t in the least bit clear that Christ would have called himself a Christian either. But the sort of person likely to write a book like this is also likely to belong to one or other of these sects, and so the biography has the danger of being written to justify the sect more than explain the person. A problem further compounded by the fact that Marx isn’t exactly someone you can discuss without also discussing his ideas.
What I wanted from this book was a thumbnail of his key ideas, but mostly a timeline of his key works that also gave something of a feel for the time and situation in which he wrote them. And I got this in spades. And for that reason, I would recommend this book. I really should have read something like this book years and years ago, but didn’t. If I had it would have saved me a lot of frigging around. Not least since it would have been clearer why he was writing certain texts at certain times.
Marx’s style of writing is a bit of a function of him being a perfectionist. Any number of times in this we will be told that, in response to a publisher or friend or comrade, Marx would, often in all sincerity, say he was two weeks away from finishing some major work. Then, three years later, it still wouldn’t be finished. This wasn’t always due to procrastination, most often it was because he had found a series of books on the same topic and decided that he needed to read and incorporate all of these into his text first… or that he needed to wait while some new crisis of capitalism was playing out to be sure his theories would still hold given the new context.
The other part of this book is the horror of the life he lived – particularly in relation to his family life. His devoted wife seems to have been very devoted – but early on, Marx got into something of an argument with God, and God never seems to have forgiven him. If you want to see what a complete bastard this God guy can be, Marx’s life is something of an exemplar. From carbuncles on his penis (now, there's a thing), to the majority of his children dying before becoming adults, to his favourite daughter dying just before he did – honestly, we are talking Job level torments. As Stendhal once said, “God’s only excuse is that he doesn’t exist”.
Even so, this book could hardly be called a hagiography. I’m not entirely sure if I left the book actually liking Marx. That said, I think it would be hard to come away from this book without some respect for him. He put himself in the midst of change and was buffeted by change, often to points beyond endurance. He was constantly criticised for being a communist, but also by the left for being too much of the middle class, being too educated, being a Jew. When people refuse to challenge your ideas, they are most likely to find other things to criticise you for.
If I have a problem with this book, I guess it is that the author plays down Marxist philosophy. He sees dialectics as being something Engels snuck in under Marx’s gaze, or rather waited to sneak in after Marx had died. I’m not convinced of this. Dialectics is truth through negation, and that is the essence of Marx’s critical philosophical stance. At one point the author says something to the effect that it seemed odd that Marx often began works as a polemic against some leading idea of the time. But this would be hardly surprising if Marx was what he said he was – a person who saw the path to truth as coming through a clash of contradictory elements.
This book becomes increasingly difficult to read at the end, not the language or ideas, but this is where God extracts he nastiest revenges –all the same, it will give you enough background to understand what you are reading if you choose to read some of Marx’s actual works themselves.
September 6, 2011
This is both an intellectual and personal biography of Karl Marx written with sympathetic intelligence by a recognized authority on Marx and Marxism. Commentators (one appended) often cite it as the best biography of Marx in English. Having only read about four of them, I can only say the claim is quite plausible. In any case, the writing is clear, the scholarship good and the notes helpful.
December 26, 2015
I'm glad the life he led was consistent with his views. Kind of a miserable life of poverty though.
February 21, 2017
این کتاب برای آشنایی با اندیشه های کارل مارکس کتاب مناسبی است. نویسنده کوشیده است تا خطوط اصلی اندیشه مارکس را تا آنجا که حجم نوشته امکان داده است روشن سازد و نیز تا آنجا که ممکن است از تفاسیری که بعدها از اندیشه مارکس انجام شده است دوری گزیده و تا آنجا که ممکن است به اندیشه خود مارکس وفادار باشد.
نویسنده در پایان کتاب نیز در فصلی با عنوان «چگونه مارکس را بخوانیم؟» کوشیده است تا راه مطالعات بعدی در زمینه اندیشه مارکس را به خوانندگان نشان دهد.
روی هم رفته این کتاب به عنوان یک کتاب مقدماتی برای آشنایی با مارکس کتاب بسیار خوبیست.
نویسنده در پایان کتاب نیز در فصلی با عنوان «چگونه مارکس را بخوانیم؟» کوشیده است تا راه مطالعات بعدی در زمینه اندیشه مارکس را به خوانندگان نشان دهد.
روی هم رفته این کتاب به عنوان یک کتاب مقدماتی برای آشنایی با مارکس کتاب بسیار خوبیست.
November 7, 2021
In what has stood for decades now as the standard English-language biography of Karl Marx, David McLellan offers a deeply humanizing and, in my view, fair portrait of the father of scientific socialism. Essential reading for every Marxist.
December 31, 2022
This is dry, dry, dry, dry. It reads like the reports I wrote in high school.
January 13, 2018
Drawing upon the exhaustive archives of Karl Marx's correspondence, notebooks, and unpublished manuscripts, this biography by David McLellan not only details the contours of Marx's life, both private and public, political and theoretical, but also provides a picture of his personality, sense of humor, prejudices, friendships and enmities which is often as surprising in its content as in its vividness. Following Marx on his not-infrequent travels (for reasons of both politics and, late in his life, failing health) back and forth across western Europe from his final home base in London, the book also pieces together his intellectual development from Young Hegelian and Romantic poet(!) to pragmatic dialectical materialist, his lifelong involvement in (often struggling, frequently censored) socialist journalism, revolutionary hopes raised and then dashed in the upheavals of 1848 and then again in the Franco-Prussian War, and his role in the formation, internecine factionalism, and dissolution of the First International. His habitual tendency to political activism, along with his (also habitual) impecunity, shed some light on the trying conditions under which Marx, by his method of voraciously synthesizing vast reams of data, and further burdened by his own perfectionist compulsion to endlessly revise his work, managed to produce the handful of groundbreaking texts that would serve – beginning even in Marx's lifetime – as the theoretical foundations of modern communist political-economics.
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September 10, 2011reading this for my intro to marxism class. i have learned so much. almost everything that i thought i knew &have heard people say is wrong about the beliefs of marx. you have to read marx before you make comments &assumptions on him.
April 27, 2023
This is an excellent biography of Karl Marx which I highly recommend. It was written by an author who grasps Marxism and the development of Marx's thought. It is very detailed, thoroughly researched, well structured, and of a quality which hasn't really been seen since the 70s in terms of serious Marx scholarship. It is long and quite dense - I found it slow going in places, and it can be challenging to keep track of all the names of his contemporaries. If you want something shorter and easier, go for Isaiah Berlin's biography. But this is a superior book. By the end of it you feel like you know Marx as a real human being and as a political giant.
April 10, 2018
I clarified some assumptions that I had held about Marx--for example, he never mentioned "dialectical materialism" in his writings (a Soviet add-on) and that he was much more of a humanist than I remember--so that by the end of my reading, I wanted to call myself a Marxist. Except Marx refused to call himself a Marxist. So much for that idea.
This was my second reading. My first was in my undergrad days and it was fascinating to read my own underlinings and notes in the margin. My own personal time capsule, this book. Oddly invigorating!
This was my second reading. My first was in my undergrad days and it was fascinating to read my own underlinings and notes in the margin. My own personal time capsule, this book. Oddly invigorating!
February 12, 2024
Very dry book. Took me over a month to finish, and I fell asleep at least five times reading it.
That said, this was very thorough and about as unbiased an account of his life as one could hope for - especially given a controversial figure such as Marx.
Includes many long excerpts from Marx's own work as well as his (and others') letters/memoirs.
Biggest takeaway from Marx's life: his absolute dedication to his work and his steadfast commitment to realizing his ideals.
That said, this was very thorough and about as unbiased an account of his life as one could hope for - especially given a controversial figure such as Marx.
Includes many long excerpts from Marx's own work as well as his (and others') letters/memoirs.
Biggest takeaway from Marx's life: his absolute dedication to his work and his steadfast commitment to realizing his ideals.
June 19, 2018
A genius who never saw the impact of his work. And yet he was a disorganised, possibly quite lazy, dreamer. Not so much workers of the world unit but more dreamers of the world unite.
August 22, 2022
Quite liberal use of the word "dialectical," enjoyed learning about the grudges Marx held against his ideological opposition in his later years but the sections about his early life fell flat.
June 30, 2023
Very thorough biography written by a scolar intimately familiar with Marxist theory.
July 10, 2025
Majestic.
May 21, 2021
An excellent study of Marx, showing him to be a brilliant mind but flawed individual. The danger of discussing well-written biographies is that you end up reviewing the subject of the book rather than the book itself, but here goes...
Like Marx himself, the book starts slowly. There's not a lot to talk about for 20-odd years as Marx (8th out of about 30 in his class at school) seems destined for little more than middle-class mediocrity. He's also terrible with money throughout his life, relying on handouts from friends and relatives, which would no doubt amuse any opponents of his political and economic thought. A massive snob, both intellectual (You will lose count of the number of people he dismisses as 'Philistines') and social, Marx clearly had no intention of touching a working-class person with a ten-foot-bargepole. His wife is loyal and long-suffering. He has an illegitimate child with the maid. His best friend, Engels, bails him out financially for decades and even writes articles for him when Marx is indisposed. Marx fails to show any sympathy or concern when Engels' 'wife' passes away. He holds innumerable pointless grudges and indulges in the kind of hair-splitting arguments on doctrine that have characterised left-wing politics throughout its history. If you're only 99.5% in agreement with Karl's opinions, that's 0.5% too little for him.
Remarkably, despite all this, McLellan's clear, objective approach makes you, if not sympathetic to the man, at least understanding of the passion and tireless work that he put into his writing.
Like Marx himself, the book starts slowly. There's not a lot to talk about for 20-odd years as Marx (8th out of about 30 in his class at school) seems destined for little more than middle-class mediocrity. He's also terrible with money throughout his life, relying on handouts from friends and relatives, which would no doubt amuse any opponents of his political and economic thought. A massive snob, both intellectual (You will lose count of the number of people he dismisses as 'Philistines') and social, Marx clearly had no intention of touching a working-class person with a ten-foot-bargepole. His wife is loyal and long-suffering. He has an illegitimate child with the maid. His best friend, Engels, bails him out financially for decades and even writes articles for him when Marx is indisposed. Marx fails to show any sympathy or concern when Engels' 'wife' passes away. He holds innumerable pointless grudges and indulges in the kind of hair-splitting arguments on doctrine that have characterised left-wing politics throughout its history. If you're only 99.5% in agreement with Karl's opinions, that's 0.5% too little for him.
Remarkably, despite all this, McLellan's clear, objective approach makes you, if not sympathetic to the man, at least understanding of the passion and tireless work that he put into his writing.
March 14, 2017
The single best book on, you guessed it, Marx's life and thought. Covers his intellectual development comprehensively.
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June 25, 2024A good biography of a revolutionary philosopher.
May 9, 2023
A wonderful introduction to Marx covering both his life and the basics of his intellectual progress. I assume it's slightly outdated now - certainly the bibliography is I suspect no more than a starting point to the older work on Marx. That said, McClellan was recommended as part of my University course and has a very readable style. The book presents Marx's work in it's chronological context as a progression rather than taking pieces in isolation. As such McClellan doesn't see a break in Marx's thought and the book is the stronger for it. A great introduction for the general reader to his life and thought.
Second reading with not much to add, as part of my reading theme on Marx's life and method documented on my blog here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
Second reading with not much to add, as part of my reading theme on Marx's life and method documented on my blog here: https://marxadventure.wordpress.com/2...
February 2, 2008
A general biographical introduction to Dr. Marx and his thought.
March 24, 2013
A must read for anyone interested in Karl Marx. Fascinating well researched story about Karl his life his writings and the times he lived in.
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July 27, 2013want to read,but i can not find a english version.
January 15, 2016
"Os filósofos limitaram-se a interpretar o mundo de diversas maneiras;o que importa é modificá-lo".
(Karl Marx)
(Karl Marx)
January 10, 2023
Much better than actually reading Marx.
August 13, 2008
magnificent book..
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March 12, 2018Very well written. good job David!
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews