How to Read Marx

How to Read...

by Peter Osborne, Simon Critchley (Series Editor)

Intent on letting the reader experience the pleasure and intellectual stimulation in reading classic authors, the How to Read series will facilitate and enrich your understanding of texts vital to the canon. Emphasizing the Romantic heritage and modernist legacy of Karl Marx’s writings, Peter Osborne presents Marx’s thought as a developing investigation into what it means, concretely, for humans to be practical historical beings.

Drawing on passages from a wide range of Marx’s writings, and showing the links among them, Osborne refutes the myth of Marx as a reductively economistic thinker. What Marx meant by “materialism,” “communism,” and the “critique of political economy” was much richer and more original, philosophically, than is generally recognized. With the renewed globalization of capitalism since 1989, Osborne argues, Marx’s analyses of the consequences of commodification are more relevant today than ever before.

Extracts are taken from the full breadth of Marx’s writings, including Notebooks on Epicurean Philosophy , the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts , and The Communist Manifesto to Capital .

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, History, Economics, Sociology, Nonfiction

146 pages, Paperback

First published October 3, 2005

About the author

Peter Osborne is Professor of Modern European Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University London and was appointed Visiting Professor of Critical Studies at Yale in 2017. From 1983 to 2016, he was an editor of the British journal Radical Philosophy. He has contributed to a range of international journals (including Art History, Cultural Studies, New German Critique, New Left Review, October, Telos and Texte zur Kunst) and to the catalogues of major art institutions (including Manifesta 5, Tate Modern, Biennale of Sydney, Walker Art Center Minneapolis, Office of Contemporary Art Norway, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design Oslo, CGAC in Santiago de Compostela, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León.)
He has recently held Visiting International Chairs in the Philosophy Department at the University of Paris 8 (2012 & 2014) and in ‘Philosophy in the Context of Art’ at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm (2015).
His books include The Politics of Time: Modernity and Avant-Garde (1995; 2011), Philosophy in Cultural Theory (2000), Conceptual Art (2002), Marx (2005), El arte mas alla de la estetica: ensayos filosoficos sobre el arte contemporaneo (2010), Anywhere or Not at All: Philosophy of Contemporary Art (2013) and The Postconceptual Condition (2018).

Reviews

[Mohammad Mirzaali]

کتابی بد از یک سری خوب. آزبرن علاقه‌ی عجیبی دارد تا مارکس را نه یک اقتصاددان و اقتصادسیاسی‌دان منتقد سرمایه‌داری، که یک فیلسوف نسبتن محض بداند. در نتیجه شاید با این کتاب، و به کمکش، نتوان مارکس خواند
ترجمه: بد

[Leila Gharavi]

ترکیب غیرجذابی از کتاب متوسط با ترجمه‌ی به‌غایت بد.

[Jorinde]

Thank you Hulme book exchange shelf for this book. It was a nice refresher but I’m happy I didn’t pay any money for it

[Nirvana]

Found this book very useful summary of Marx's ideas along with good interpretations of them. For someone like me who has read Marx's writings very sporadic and wanna continue a more deep study, it's kinda a necessary book to read.
On the other hand, what makes this book worthy is many other ones that are tainted with biased readings and misunderstandings of Marx.

Marx was a historical realist who acknowledged the amorality and violence of history, and condemned the hypocrisy of those who would present such events in essentially moral terms. For Marx, the historical meaning of such events was ultimately to be judged according to the possibilities for humanity opened up by the social developments in question, not within the lifetime of those affected by them, but in the long term. As we shall see in the next chapter, in the context of capitalist colonialism, this kind of speculative historical realism has been highly contentious.

[Luke]

A detailed tour through some of the most vital (and often confusing) passages of Marx's work. The author evidences a deep familiarity with this body of work while also not coming of as a fan boy (his deepest criticism is reserved for the final chapter on Marx's views of colonialism). I highly recommend this work as an introduction to Marx's thought.

[Raya Al-Raddadi]

من أفضل المقدمات حول ماركس وأهم أفكاره، كتيب صغير مقسم لأجزاء حسب المواضيع أو المفاهيم الأساسية في فكر ماركس. يبتدأ كل جزء باقتباس من ماركس ثم يشرح اوسبورن بلغة واضحة حول هذا المفهوم وينفي بعض الأفكار المغلوطة والمنتشرة حولها .. بعض هذه الافكار تشمل
alienation, new materialism, fetish commodity, communism and original accumulation.

[Estrella]

Kind of helpful but complicated

[Patrick]

bit shit

[Jeffrey N. Hora]

Well-written overview of Marx's writings and thought. His vocabulary is still somewhat opaque to me, but this helps a bit.

[Manfred]

This book focuses more on Marx's philosophical roots (and even his work as "literature") than it does on his economic arguments. This makes him surprisingly warm and searching--not the somewhat dry, sarcastic fellow I remember from other readings.