The Thought of Karl Marx

by David McLellan

This text provides the basic elements necessary for a grasp of the range and complexity of Marx's ideas. The first half of the book is a chronological account of Marx's ideas with a miniumum of biographical and historical detail. The second half is thematic and provides a concise summary of Marx's position, and extracts from his key texts on alienation, historical materialism, labour, class, the party, the state, revolution and future Communist society. David McLellan is the author of "The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx", "Karl The Early Texts", and "Marx Before Marxism".

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, History, Biography

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

David 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.

Reviews

[Always Pouting]

A really good primer to Marx and his writing. The author gives a biography and divides up Marx's life into periods with a summary of his writings from that period. Then he goes into major themes in Marxs writing. Might need to be some what familiar with other works like Hegel who is mentioned extensively.

[Domhnall]

Marx was born in a province of Prussia in 1818 and I very much expect that the second centenary of his birth - not so far away now - will be an occasion for many loud voices to declare the failure of his ideas and the death of his influence. Yet given his astonishing impact throughout the C20th, it would be helpful to my mind if more of his critics took some time out to review what Marx actually said and did. Quiet voices will then be heard whispering that, oddly enough, he is still relevant. When a factory manufacturing components for a major phone company has netting around its walls to catch workers as they attempt suicide by jumping from the roof, one just has to think of the analysis in Marx's Capital of the way in which capitalists are prepared to screw every last morsel of life out of their employees in the pursuit of profit and ask - is he really so mistaken? But even when we notice industry developing job enrichment schemes to improve productivity, and when we see efforts made to engage the imagination and creativity of employees for the benefit of the business, are we not observing the clever way in which business has learned, slowly and selectively, that it is not useful to treat employees as mere units of production. Marx warned them long ago and his warning remains valid.

So there is a downbeat suggestion that Marx was right and the capitalist economy is doomed, but also an upbeat argument - widely heard - that capitalism has survived and prospered by rejecting the one sided deal of exploiting workers to benefit the rich and learned to offer a more balanced package of mutual benefit. Who knows which view is right - the positive or the negative? Probably both have a place. The real point is that we need to know more about Marx, even if we are inclined to use our new understanding to argue against him. He is too important to ignore.

Marx is a philosopher and an economic theorist but also a journalist. What he has to say is challenging and difficult but, once I have taken an interest in reading him, I have found the experience quite pleasing and he is not (always) inaccessible. Nevertheless, this guide to his thoughts is very concise and it works at a brisk pace through a huge amount of material, so many chapters will call for a decent time out period to let the ideas percolate.

The first part of the book is effectively a biographical guide to the various works Marx produced and places each into a context. That is important. I have encountered people arguing that somehow Marx personally invented either communism or even the entire liberal spectrum of political thought, depending on the level of hyperbole preferred, so that every aspect of left wing thought is a product of and reflects upon Marx. Absolute nonsense. Marx was a revolutionary socialist before he had really developed much of a career at all. He adopted a position that was pretty widely held - he did not invent it and was not personally in charge of it. He contributed to a social phenomenon which probably would have proceeded at much the same pace and in a broadly similar direction without him. IMHO

The second part of the book devotes a (still very brief) chapter to each of nine different concepts - alienation, historical materialism, dialectic, labour, class, the party, the state, revolution and future communist society. I think much of the value of the book will be here because it is helpful to be able to check out - sometimes as a reminder - just what Marx was saying under each of these headings.

To understand Marx certainly will require a lot more reading but this guide is invaluable, I think. It ensures a coherent grasp of Marx' thinking and provides a handy reference whenever it is necessary to refresh our memory of notions that are, to be fair, quit abstract and hence difficult.

When the second centenary does come, it will certainly be helpful and much more interesting to be well informed about the man who is being remembered.

[Conor Tuohy]

It gives an interesting overview of his work. The first half is a chronological account of his work on a decade by decade basis before the second half takes particular aspects of his thought e.g. his understanding of labour or alienation, and gives an account of it before setting out relevant extracts from the texts.

I had previously read particular interpretations of Marx in the context of critical legal studies and aspects of political philosophy so it was nice to get a more generalist account, but I think I would have preferred more of a focus on the analysis of the specific aspects of his work as opposed to the chronology. Regardless, it was definitely worth my time and I have a richer understanding of the Marxist analysis.

[Arunanjan]

comment

[Jake]

I did not enjoy this book one bit. My problem is not with Marx, or McLellan, but the prose and presentation. I was looking for a beginners book on Marx and found this to be turgid and unhelpful.

The books lay out is inspired and would be useful as a reference text offering both a chronological and thematic breakdown of Marx's ideas. However, a good level of knowledge of a range of 19th century political theory is needed to decode the writing style of McLellan and to draw out useful knowledge.

I like the books last two lines, they explained well why I undertook to read it. McLellan writes, 'his interpretation of history remains an indispensable reference point in contemporary social science. And without an adequate interpretation of society how can we hope to change it?'

I feel this review may reveal my intellectual flaws, but shouldn't we all be more open about them.

For a biography of Marx Francis Wheen's Karl Marx is excellent, I would recommend it.

[Samuel Weiss]

A very good introduction to Marx, especially for students who need to write an essay about Marx but did not have enough time to read any primary sources.

McLellan provides an intellectual biography of Marx, describing the content of each of the major texts that constitute his corpus. He then briefly discusses some important topics in Marx's thought (e.g. alienation, historical materialism), before providing a large set of excerpts from a variety of Marx's works where he discusses the concept in question.

[Jordan Bright]

As someone who is getting to grips with Marx and his thoughts, I found it especially helpful that this book included both the authors thoughts as well as key parts of original texts.

[Dylan]

wasn't that into it. uh, my only compliment is that it is brief.

[NJ Mukti]

Its good