Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough (Suny Series in Political Theory. Contemporary Issues) [Paperback]

August H. Nimtz Jr. (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 18, 2000 | ISBN-10: 0791444902 | ISBN-13: 978-0791444900

According to Nimtz, no two people contributed more to the struggle for democracy in the nineteenth century than Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Presenting the first major study of the two thinkers in the past twenty years and the first since the collapse of the Soviet Union, this book challenges many widely held views about their democratic credentials and their attitudes and policies on the peasantry, the importance of national self-determination, the struggle for women's equality, their so-called Eurocentric bias, political and party organizing, and the possibility for socialist revolution in an overwhelmingly peasant and underdeveloped country like late-nineteenth-century Russia.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

August H. Nimtz, Jr. is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Islam and Politics in East Africa: The Sufi Order in Tanzania.

Product Details

• Paperback: 394 pages
• Publisher: State University of New York Press (March 18, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0791444902
• ISBN-13: 978-0791444900
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #759,286 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Self-organization of the working class, January 17, 2002

By 

John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough (Suny Series in Political Theory. Contemporary Issues) (Paperback)

In the endless denunciations of totalitarianism even as neo-liberalism demolishes the achievements of a century of labor, we forget that it was the self-organization of the working class that spearheaded the real emergence of democracy and universal suffrage. This book attempts to demonstrate that Marx and Engels were the leading protagonists in that process. The book surveys the whole drama from the 1840's to the final period of Engels and German Social democracy, stressing the activist political role of Marx, whose passive British museum life as an uninvolved philosopher is exposed as the myth it is. Curiously mordant is the comparison of the reactions of Marx and Engels compared to that of Tocqueville to the period of revolution in 1848 and the coming of Napoleon. Tocqueville is seen for who he was then, not the author of his famous book, and now the democrat, Marx the svengalian. It seems hopeless to ever set any of this straight. This book presents a clear snapshot of the full sequence of events.
This reviewer has also reviewed "The Myth of the Proletariat". This commentary is a useful response to the thesis of that work.