Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life

Really interesting biography of a nuanced, complex man both theoretically and personally. There were so many contradictions, as there are with all great, deep thinkers. I disagree with most of his essential ideas, but he was important.

This book is well worth reading, but is rather thin gruel. I am not sure quite why. Perhaps it is because the author has that characteristic certainty adopted by American academics, who treat themselves as teachers rather than as contributors to our understanding in some way or another that may or may not work for this audience or that one. In other words, just a tad illiberal. There is no internal narrative on what the author has decided to leave out, on what the interpretative puzzles are, on degrees of certainty and so on. It is a text usable when only one line is to be delivered to the students. For all that it is an interesting read. I dropped it half way through in favour of the 1996 study of the UK edited by Nick Tiratsoo, which, written by British Lefties, is self-reflective and considered in ways that Sperber is not. They engage with the facts and with debates. Now I will return to Sperber.

A brilliant biography of one of the few people still famous, or infamous, throughout the world well over a century after their death. Professor Jonathan Sperber gives the reader the basics of the largely intertwined personal and intellectual lives of Karl Marx, a difficult man who hated those with the money and power in the deeply class-conscious states of 19th century: Germany, Russia, and the rest of Europe. His youth and education in Germany, his primary partnership with Engels, his poverty, his almost middle-class family life during exile in England, his economic theories and journalistic writings, and his never ceasing battles with revolutionary colleagues are all here. Karl Marx influenced our world, especially the USSR, China, Cuba and other "Marxist" states. It is useful for an educated person to know something about this leading leader of the left and the times that shaped him; Professor Sperber's book serves as a solid introduction to the one who stridently called for the workers of the world to unite.

Interesting but rather longwinded depiction of a famous and certainly at times misunderstood intellectual who has been used and abused for political reasons. Worth a read.

Marx and his theories can evoke all sorts of responses. As a theory that has launched a thousand rebellions it is useful to understand the man himself. This book does quite a reasonable job at that. The author is a clear writer and he manages to cohesive take one through Marx's life and the times that influenced him. The author is an expert of the revolutions of 1848, a period which managed to change Europe and set the stage for the next hundred and fifty years. Marx is a product of that time, building on Hegel and German thought, conflicting with Proudhon and French throught, and assimilating in a dialectical manner Locke and English thought. Marx as a writer can be ponderous and exhilerating. The book takes one step by step through his development and the forces that created Capital. This is not a book describing Marxism, it is a book about Marx. It is definitely something one should read to better understand the man, his ideas and the times that made them.

The closer you look at a thinker, the harder it is to say what he thought. The simplifying of Marx, often inspired by those both pro and con, reduces him to class struggle, theory of surplus value, dialectical materialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the falling rate of profit, etc. Sperber's biography goes a good way towards showing that Marx's actual thinking is much more dynamic, more complex, and less consistent. Sperber's intention is to treat Marx, as the subtitle indicates, as a nineteenth century figure, in the context of nineteenth century thought and events. And he does so admirably. He avoids the iconic Marx, created primarily by twentieth century thought and events, allowing us to see Marx as a thinker among thinkers and as a revolutionary among revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries of his own time. I am not a Marx scholar by any means. I have not studied Marx as closely as other 19th century thinkers (Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche), and I don't have the background in the history of economics to pick up the subtleties of Capital or to criticize Marx's principal contentions there and elsewhere. But Sperber's book does give me the broader context and at least the rudiments of Marx's thinking to put together for myself an historical picture of Marx's intellectual development and something of the development of the culture of revolutionary thinking during the mid-nineteenth century. Marx never had the leisure to be a "philosopher" in the traditional sense. He never held academic positions. Instead he pieced together a career as a journalist, surprisingly even a popular journalist at times, to help make ends meet for himself, his family, and his causes. He didn't always succeed, and, of course, he famously depended on the support of Engels to remain afloat financially. But through the journals he founded or contributed to and through mostly unfinished manuscripts of a more theoretical nature, we can see something of the evolution of his thought, sometimes punctuated by issues of personality and struggles within the politics of revolutionary movements. Sperber is particular adamant in his portrayal of Marx as an Hegelian to the end, somewhat contrary to the portrait, encouraged by Engels, of Marx as a positivist economist, constructing theories from hard economic data. Underlying the theories is always the sense of historical development, a rationale, in Hegelian manner, to the progressions that Marx saw in the forms of labor and the organization of production. The book is also a personal biography. Sperber presents a convincing account of Marx's troubled devotion to his family. In fact, he goes some way toward pointing out the apparent contradiction between the traditional attitudes Marx had toward family, the role of men as fathers and breadwinners, and bourgeois morals and respectability. The personal Marx was inescapably a man of his time. It's no sanitizing account of Marx as a person, though. Marx could certainly be petty. Sperber follows a running theme of Marx's penchant for attacking those around him, both personally and publicly. Within the circles of revolutionaries, it was if Marx attempted to monopolize what was (and still is) a broad spectrum of what could be called "socialism" and even covered the tracks of his own intellectual development by harshly criticizing those who thought what he once thought but has changed his mind about. It's hard to write a book about Marx. Everybody already knows who Marx is, or they think they do. For us, Marx is polarizing. Are you pro or con? It's a sucker's question, and a way to close, not open, thinking. Hopefully, Sperber's book will help a little bit to bring discussion of Marx back to the real Marx rather than that iconic Marx of twentieth-century making.

Enfin une biographie authentiquement authentique d'un personnage autour duquel il y a tant de rumeurs... il était temps ! un magistral exemple de méthodologie historique... je la conseille à mes étudiants

後半ほど面白い伝記である。特に、経済学者としてのマルクスに焦点を当てた１１章だけでも読む価値がある。ただし、当時は、「全世界のプロレタリア団結せよ！」ですが、いまは、「全世界の１％団結せよ！」の時代ですが。 哲学的な側面では、１９世紀初頭の流行であるヘーゲル哲学と、科学技術の発展にともない１９世紀後半にますます主流となってくる種の起源に代表される実証主義の潮流に揺れ動くマルクスの論理の揺らぎを見事に分析している。 また、当時マルクス自身、ユダヤ人である認識がなく、政敵のユダヤ人を人種的偏見丸出しで口汚くののしっていた事実など詳しく紹介されている。この反ユダヤ主義は、マルクスの死後、マルクス主義によって活性化された労働運動に対抗して出現したナチズム等の独裁思想に受け継がれ、２０世紀前半の世界的大混乱へとつながってゆく経緯は、まさに歴史の皮肉である。

This review concerns the hardcover edition, which, while a solid purchase, does seem a little cheaply made, with the outside edges of the pages quite roughly cut. Other than that, though, it is a thoroughly good book, this – the kind of book you want to read for your own enlightenment, and put on your shelf for visitors to see and discuss at length. Marx’ ideas are thought by many to be universal, and they have indeed been adapted and applied to situations and ideologies throughout the 20th century. It is, however, difficult to escape the fact that Marx was long dead at that point; he could have no opinion about those changing times long after his passing. More than describing a utopic future, he was doing social analyses for his contemporary age. This is the main point in Jonathan Sperber’s ”Karl Marx: a nineteenth-century life”. Sperber places Marx squarely in the society of the 19th century, and underlines the point that everything he did must be seen in the light of his contemporary age. Over the next hundred years, social thinkers, revolutionaries and philosophers alike have placed the marxist ideas in a 20th century context, often leaping straight over the fact that Marx’ life and works should instead be seen in the light of his own times. It’s a fairly big book, this: Sperber bases much of his work on the MEGA, a wealth of information consisting of all known writings made by Marx and Engels, be it published papers, newspapers, minutes of meetings or family letters. It is evident that Sperber is not only trained in the use of sources, but revels in the interpretation of them. He spends much of his time using the MEGA to unveil and deal with details of Marx life, including his family life, economic situation and working life in addition to the development of his political ideas. The exchange of opinions between friends and rivals, issues both big and small, give the reader a thoroughly deep look into what made Marx tick. As his ideas were changing over time with changing political and economic developments, you can see how much the contemporary situation matters in the forming of ideas. This book truly emphasizes that Marx was a man of his time. It should be noted that this is not an in-depth analysis of various Communist ideas or social theory. Sperber sticks with his subject. Still, Marx’ relationship with other socialists are covered, and it is interesting to see how much he was influenced by personal matters. This is perhaps best illustrated by the conflict between Marx and Karl Grün, another revolutionary intellectual with many of the same characteristics. As Sperber points out, one might think that two such similar characters would find done another appealing and start working out a social theory together, but instead, they became rivals, both wanting a central position in the Communist movement. This book also describes relationships between other intellectuals and revolutionaries, where Marx might end up embracing or rejecting their ideas, based (at least in part) on personal grounds – indeed, possibly even whether his wife got along well with them. Reading Sperber’s work, we are constantly reminded that ”the father of Communism” was but one of many people at the time who were working for a social revolution, and that his work is tied to the political development in Western Europe – but also that personal experiences and rivalry could be just as important in shaping his ideas. The book is divided into sections, each dealing with Marx as a man, as a father, as a revolutionary, as a political thinker, as a news editor – so many areas of a man’s life that can all have an impact. ’Who knows’, you are left to ponder, ’perhaps Marx had not developed his revolutionary stance if he had not experienced suppression of his work by Preussian authorities?’ Perhaps his ideological legacy had been less potent if his personal economic situation were better and he had been able to develop his work as a newspaper editor? Sperber outlines philosophies, but stays true to the intention of writing a biography, not an interpretation of Marxist ideology. Rather than focus on his work alone, as many other biographers do, Sperber’s focal point is the life of his subject. ”Karl Marx: a nineteenth-century life” is a truly interesting and enlightening look into the life one of the most important thinkers of modern times. Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life

Muy criticado por algunas personas y muy aplaudido por otras, sin duda importante leerlo para hacerse su propio juicio. Esta edición es muy bonita.

This is an excellent biography. It's unfussy, well-written and excellently researched. Sperber does an outstanding job of locating Marx in his 19th century context and separating him from some of the 20th century myths about him. As with any biography of Marx, it's helpful to have SOME grasp of what Hegel stood for, but Sperber does a good job of unpicking and presenting the relevant parts of that too. Not every chapter gripped me, as some of the detail and personality conflicts of the revolutionary movements during Marx's life were not so interesting to me. But every chapter was expertly crafted. A great book for anyone interested in 19th century history and revolutionary thought, or simply curious about the life of Karl Marx.