coldhearted scientist وداد

From Oxford University Press, on Jonathan Wolff, Why Read Marx Today? (OUP, 2003):

Jonathan Wolff argues that if we detach Marx the critic of current society from Marx the prophet of some never-to-be-realized worker’s paradise, he remains the most impressive critic we have of liberal, capitalist, bourgeois society. The author shows how Marx’s main ideas still shed light on wider concerns about culture and society and he guides the reader through Marx’s notoriously difficult writings. Wolff also argues that the value of a great thinker does not depend on his or her views being true, but on other features such as originality, insight, and systematic vision. From this perspective, Marx still richly deserves to be read.

Here is some of Badrinath Rao’s review of the book, from this thread.

In the first two chapters, Wolff offers a broad overview of Marx’s thoughts on religion, historical materialism, labour and alienation, money and
credit, liberalism, emancipation and so on. In doing so, he accomplishes two objectives at once. First, he provides a succinct account of the debates and the ideological background of Marx’s period. Second, he elucidates the more abstruse aspects of Marx’s ideas through his apposite exegesis and explains how the seminal thoughts of Marx radically broadened the scholarly horizons of his age. Thus, having established the necessary framework for assessing Marx, Wolff goes on to examine critically the validity and usefulness of Marx’s ideas.

A major strength of the book is its intellectual rigour, a quality it shares with the writings of Marx. Although writing on cerebral issues, Wolff presents his views in an accessible manner. Steering clear of high rhetoric, convoluted logic and intellectual calisthenics – the stuff of polemical writings – he predicates his critique on Marx’s original writings and unobtrusively brings to bold relief their strengths and shortcomings. Neither timid in his praise nor shrill in his criticism, Wolff offers a nuanced evaluation of Marx. He, for instance, is troubled by the ‘sweeping’ and ‘unsubstantiated’ nature of Marx’s grand theories and argues that we must abandon them. Yet, he also generously pays tribute to Marx for his rapier-sharp analysis of capitalism and describes him as `the great-grandfather of today’s anti-capitalist movement’ (page 2).

Before analysing polemical issues of Marxian dialectics, in a briefintroduction to the life of Marx, Wolff rightly points out some general reasons why reading his works would be a rewarding exercise. As is well known, Karl Marx was a polymath, an intellectual colossus whose scholarly interests were staggeringly eclectic. Even as a youngster, he read voraciously and mastered poetry, the classics, philosophy, economics, law, religion, literature and a number of European languages. To give a sense of his prodigious intellect, Wolff refers to a letter the barely 19-year-old Karl – then a student of law in Berlin – wrote to his father. In it, Marx apprises his father of the work he accomplished during the term. It included his poetry, translations from classical languages, a 300-page philosophical treatise on law, a dialogue unifying art and science, readings on law and philosophy, and the entire opus of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Besides, during his spare time, he apparently, started teaching himself English and Italian. Wolff also cites a memorable postscript to this letter in which Marx writes: “Forgive, dear father, the illegible handwriting and bad style; it is almost four o’clock. The candle is burnt right down and my eyes are sore” (page 6). In terms of his intellectual abilities, Marx, thus, was not just a person; he was a phenomenon. He embodied the highest traditions of scholarship during his epoch. As for a work ethic, Marx did not have one, he was the work ethic.

Evidently, savouring the writings of such a genius is, in and of itself, a great joy. Whether or not his ideas are germane now, his myriad writings and their intricate logic pose a tantalising challenge to one’s thinking, one that any intellectual worth his or her salt would willingly accept.

On a related note, anyone interested in the history and evolution of ideas simply cannot ignore Marx. No social science discipline has remained immune from his critical interventions. In fact, such is the pervasive sway of Marxian thought that it has fundamentally altered the trajectory of all the areas in which Marx wrote. As Wolff puts it: “Marx’s influence, in both theory and practice, is beyond measure” (page 100). Furthermore, as is evident from his vast corpus, Marx invariably rejected received wisdom; instead, he moved beyond it by offering innovative explanations for social phenomena. Not just that, he also provided creative solutions to the problems he had identified. All of which means that even die-hard opponents of Marxism have to grapple with his ideas one way or the other.

One of the areas in which Marx’s intervention is truly promethean is religion. He rejected the views of Hegel and modified those of Ludwig Feuerbach, two leading thinkers whose thoughts were influential in his time. Hegel argued that God created the world and He did so because “God simply would not be God without the world” (page 15). Feuerbach maintained that human beings created God in their own image and hence urged people to forsake religion and embrace radical humanism instead. Marx affirmed his contention and improved on it, stating that we invent God and religion to find solace from our miseries on earth. As Wolff points out, Marx also states that the cause of our misery is alienation and that religion is an ersatz solution to it. He claimed that in a communist society there would be no alienation and hence no need for religion. Marx’s innovation lies in explaining why Feuerbach’s thesis is true and how we can adopt it to improve our lives.

Axé.