Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life Kindle Edition

The closer you look at a thinker, the harder it is to say what he thought. The simplifying of Marx, often inspired by those both pro and con, reduces him to class struggle, theory of surplus value, dialectical materialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the falling rate of profit, etc. Sperber's biography goes a good way towards showing that Marx's actual thinking is much more dynamic, more complex, and less consistent.

Sperber's intention is to treat Marx, as the subtitle indicates, as a nineteenth century figure, in the context of nineteenth century thought and events. And he does so admirably. He avoids the iconic Marx, created primarily by twentieth century thought and events, allowing us to see Marx as a thinker among thinkers and as a revolutionary among revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries of his own time.

I am not a Marx scholar by any means. I have not studied Marx as closely as other 19th century thinkers (Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche), and I don't have the background in the history of economics to pick up the subtleties of Capital or to criticize Marx's principal contentions there and elsewhere. But Sperber's book does give me the broader context and at least the rudiments of Marx's thinking to put together for myself an historical picture of Marx's intellectual development and something of the development of the culture of revolutionary thinking during the mid-nineteenth century.

Marx never had the leisure to be a "philosopher" in the traditional sense. He never held academic positions. Instead he pieced together a career as a journalist, surprisingly even a popular journalist at times, to help make ends meet for himself, his family, and his causes. He didn't always succeed, and, of course, he famously depended on the support of Engels to remain afloat financially.

But through the journals he founded or contributed to and through mostly unfinished manuscripts of a more theoretical nature, we can see something of the evolution of his thought, sometimes punctuated by issues of personality and struggles within the politics of revolutionary movements. Sperber is particular adamant in his portrayal of Marx as an Hegelian to the end, somewhat contrary to the portrait, encouraged by Engels, of Marx as a positivist economist, constructing theories from hard economic data. Underlying the theories is always the sense of historical development, a rationale, in Hegelian manner, to the progressions that Marx saw in the forms of labor and the organization of production.

The book is also a personal biography. Sperber presents a convincing account of Marx's troubled devotion to his family. In fact, he goes some way toward pointing out the apparent contradiction between the traditional attitudes Marx had toward family, the role of men as fathers and breadwinners, and bourgeois morals and respectability. The personal Marx was inescapably a man of his time.

It's no sanitizing account of Marx as a person, though. Marx could certainly be petty. Sperber follows a running theme of Marx's penchant for attacking those around him, both personally and publicly. Within the circles of revolutionaries, it was if Marx attempted to monopolize what was (and still is) a broad spectrum of what could be called "socialism" and even covered the tracks of his own intellectual development by harshly criticizing those who thought what he once thought but has changed his mind about.

It's hard to write a book about Marx. Everybody already knows who Marx is, or they think they do. For us, Marx is polarizing. Are you pro or con? It's a sucker's question, and a way to close, not open, thinking. Hopefully, Sperber's book will help a little bit to bring discussion of Marx back to the real Marx rather than that iconic Marx of twentieth-century making.

I found the book very interesting in the sense that the author describes the external influences of Marx's life rather than the theories and economics. Although there are some very basic elements of his economic positions the essence of the book is on the life of Marx. The book is well written and provides sufficient detail to provide a strong understanding of what influenced his views including Darwin and many others. I was not educated with a strong understanding of Marx but after having lived in Brasil and other countries where his influence is ingrained in the education system more than the american system I found the book to be very revealing and an interesting view of the man, Marx, rather than the math of Marx.

This is a useful book in covering Marx's life and, especially, his political activities, and situating them in their nineteenth century context. For this reason, it is a valuable corrective to many works on Marx, which treat him as a timeless intellectual giant. That being said, Marx is of continuing importance because of his theories, and Sperber does a remarkably poor job of explaining these. Marx's social theory is all but ignored, and the central core of his economic theory is poorly explained. To a certain extent, Marx's theory--"Marxism"-- is a construction of subsequent figures who read it back into his works. Engels was especially influential in this regard. But in a biography of Marx, one expects detailed treatment of Marx's major theoretical contributions. Unfortunately, this is sorely lacking in this book.

Rather than choosing as his emphasis Marx's impact on our times, Sperber, as suggested by his subtitle, focuses on the influence exerted upon Marx by his own times. Perhaps it would be too much to ask, but I'd like this book to have had a bit more of the former while retaining the latter. The effect of this is to somewhat diminish the relevance of Marx in the current context, a perilous undertaking to be sure.

Nevertheless, I can certainly recommend this volume for the interesting and oft-neglected perspective it presents. Sperber provides a most helpful service with his meticulous examination of the early influences on Marx such as the French Revolution and Hegelian and, later, positivist philosophy.