Customer Reviews

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

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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.