Kirjahaku

It is by no means absurd to say that Engels invented Marxism. His work did more than Marx to make converts of the most influential political movement of modern times. He was not only the father of dialectical and historical materialism, the official philosophies of history and science in many communist countries; he was also the first Marxist historian, anthropologist, philosopher, and commentator on early Marx. In his later years Engels developed his materialist interpretation of history, his chief intellectual legacy, which has had revolutionary effects on the arts and social sciences. Terrell Carver traces its source and its effect on the development of Marxist theory and practice, assesses its utility, and discusses the difficulties which Marxists have encountered in defending it. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Men in political theory builds on feminist re-readings of the traditional canon of male writers in Political Philosophy by turning the 'gender lens' on to the representation of men in widely studies texts. It explains the distinction between 'man' as an apparently de-gendered 'individual' or 'citizen', and 'man' as an overtly gendered being in human society. Both these representations of 'man' are crucial to a clearer understanding of the operation of gender.Newly available in paperback, the book is the first to use the 'men's studies' and 'masculinities' literatures in re-thinking the political problems that students and specialists in the social sciences and humanities must encounter: consent, obligation, patriarchy, gender, sexuality, life-cycle, and discriminatory disadvantage related to sex, age, class, race/ethnicity and disability. It does this by re-examining the historical materials from which present-day concepts of citizenship, individuality, identity, subjectivity, normativity and legitimacy arise.The ten chapters on Plato, Aristotle, Jesus, Augustine, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Marx and Engels show the operation of the 'gender lens' in different ways, depending on how the philosopher deploys concepts of men and masculinity to pose and solve classic problems. They can all be read independently and are as suitable for those just making the acquaintance of these classic writers as for those with specialist knowledge and interests.

Karl Marx was the first theorist of global capitalism and remains perhaps its most trenchant critic. This clear and innovative book, from one of the leading contemporary experts on Marx's thought, gives us a fresh overview of his ideas by framing them within concepts that remain topical and alive today, from class struggle and progress to democracy and exploitation. Taking Marx's work in his pamphleteering, journalism, speeches, correspondence and published books as central to a renewed understanding of the man and his politics, this book brings both his life experience and our contemporary political engagements vividly to life. It shows us the many ways that a nineteenth-century thinker has been made into the 'Marx' we know today, beginning with his own self-presentations before moving on to the successive different "Marxes" that were later constructed: an icon of communist revolution, a demonic figure in the Cold War, a 'humanist' philosopher, and a spectre haunting Occupy Wall Street. Carver's accessible and lively book unpacks the historical, intellectual and political difficulties that make Marx sometimes difficult to read and understand, while also highlighting the distinct areas where his challenging writings speak directly to the twenty-first-century world. It will be essential reading for students and scholars throughout the social sciences and anyone interested in the contemporary legacy of his revolutionary ideas.

Karl Marx was the first theorist of global capitalism and remains perhaps its most trenchant critic. This clear and innovative book, from one of the leading contemporary experts on Marx's thought, gives us a fresh overview of his ideas by framing them within concepts that remain topical and alive today, from class struggle and progress to democracy and exploitation. Taking Marx's work in his pamphleteering, journalism, speeches, correspondence and published books as central to a renewed understanding of the man and his politics, this book brings both his life experience and our contemporary political engagements vividly to life. It shows us the many ways that a nineteenth-century thinker has been made into the 'Marx' we know today, beginning with his own self-presentations before moving on to the successive different "Marxes" that were later constructed: an icon of communist revolution, a demonic figure in the Cold War, a 'humanist' philosopher, and a spectre haunting Occupy Wall Street. Carver's accessible and lively book unpacks the historical, intellectual and political difficulties that make Marx sometimes difficult to read and understand, while also highlighting the distinct areas where his challenging writings speak directly to the twenty-first-century world. It will be essential reading for students and scholars throughout the social sciences and anyone interested in the contemporary legacy of his revolutionary ideas.

This book examines the life and works of Friedrich Engels during the decade before he entered a political partnership with Karl Marx. It takes a thematic approach in three substantial chapters: Imagination, Observation, and Vocation. Throughout, the reader sees the world from Engels’s perspective, not knowing how his story will turn out. This approach reveals the multifaceted and ambitious character of young Friedrich’s achievements from age sixteen till just turning twenty-five. At the time that he accepted Marx’s invitation to co-author a short political satire, Engels was far better known and much more accomplished. He had published many more articles on far more subjects, in both German and English, than Marx had managed. Moreover, he had written a critique of political economy from a perspective unique in the German context, and published his own pioneering and substantial study of working class conditions in an industrializing economy. Offering an innovative approach to a largely neglected period of Engels’s life before meeting Marx, Carver upends standard narratives in existing biographical studies of Engels to reveal him as an important figure not just in relation to his more famous collaborator, but a key voice in the liberal-democratic, constitutional and nation-building revolutionism of the 1830s and 1840s.

Worldwide political changes since 1990 have driven a re-evaluation of Marxism, a renaissance in Marx-studies, and a renewed interest in his lifelong intellectual partner and personal friend Friedrich Engels. In Terrell Carver’s 30th anniversary edition of his pioneering biographical study of the ‘junior partner’ – which still remains the only one to balance Engels’s pre-Marx, with-Marx, and post-Marx writings, giving a rounded view of his life and thought – Carver adopts a comparative and critical approach, neither taking the ‘perfect partnership’ as a given, nor presuming that all the intellectual fireworks were Marx’s. Engels’s famously ‘bourgeois’ class position and ‘champagne socialist’ lifestyle emerge as resolutions rather than contradictions – they provided opportunities for activist writing and politicking that would not otherwise occur. This study is driven by questions that readers might like to ask about Engels, rather than by the sheer weight of archival materials and stereotypical framing. A newly written introduction provides reflections on how politics since the 1990s has brought Marx, Engels, and Marxisms back to life, and how publication of the Marx-Engels ‘collected works’ in a definitive edition, and in English translation, have promoted interpretive innovation. Engels himself did his best to establish his own biographical narrative. This book enables readers to assess that dominating view for themselves.

Worldwide political changes since 1990 have driven a re-evaluation of Marxism, a renaissance in Marx-studies, and a renewed interest in his lifelong intellectual partner and personal friend Friedrich Engels. In Terrell Carver’s 30th anniversary edition of his pioneering biographical study of the ‘junior partner’ – which still remains the only one to balance Engels’s pre-Marx, with-Marx, and post-Marx writings, giving a rounded view of his life and thought – Carver adopts a comparative and critical approach, neither taking the ‘perfect partnership’ as a given, nor presuming that all the intellectual fireworks were Marx’s. Engels’s famously ‘bourgeois’ class position and ‘champagne socialist’ lifestyle emerge as resolutions rather than contradictions – they provided opportunities for activist writing and politicking that would not otherwise occur. This study is driven by questions that readers might like to ask about Engels, rather than by the sheer weight of archival materials and stereotypical framing. A newly written introduction provides reflections on how politics since the 1990s has brought Marx, Engels, and Marxisms back to life, and how publication of the Marx-Engels ‘collected works’ in a definitive edition, and in English translation, have promoted interpretive innovation. Engels himself did his best to establish his own biographical narrative. This book enables readers to assess that dominating view for themselves.