The Making Of Marx S Critical Theory Rle Marxism

Marx’s written output was massive. Much of it remained unpublished in his own lifetime and there is still no complete edition of the extant works, although most have been published in one form or another. This book, first published in 1983, provides an analytical guide to the complex chronological and evolving substantive structure of Marx’s main writings in critical theory. The format is concise and accessible, with each phase of Marx’s evolving critical theory of capitalist society being summarized in a diagram. An invaluable guide for students of Marx, it will lead them through the maze of his works to a potentially deeper understanding of his thought. Allen Oakley believes that, in order to fully comprehend Marx’s critical theory, it is essential to trace its complex evolution. Any serious study of Marx’s critique of capitalism must begin with an appreciation of the bibliographical framework within which his evolving ideas were manifested. Oakley is opposed to approaches to the study of Marx’s critique which take little account of its chronology; such approaches, he believes, are incomplete and potentially misleading with respect to the meaning and significance of the critique. The book includes bibliographical evidence about the unfinished state of Marx’s critical project and its ever-changing scope and organization. It argues, therefore, that the methodological and substantive status of Capital must be interpreted cautiously, for bibliographical evidence shows it to be an unfinished climax to an ambiguous critic-theoretical project of uncertain dimensions. To read it as in any sense a final and definitive statement of Marx’s critical theory is, the author believes, to be deluded.

This book, first published in 1991, demonstrates that Marx is the legitimate founder of what was to become the critical theory of society. It argues that in order to justify a new conception of humans as collective, cultural and historical beings, Marx undertook a radical critique of the theoretical/analytical method of his predecessors and his contemporaries in political economy, philosophy and the natural sciences. While elements of the methods of some of these thinkers – most conspicuously from the work of Aristotle, Kant and Hegel – were present in Marx’s thought, he achieved a new synthesis of procedural, epistemological and ontological methods.

Marx and Critical Theory examines Marx’s main philosophical, political and social theoretical ideas. Its purpose is twofold: making sense of the concepts and theses of Marx, and showing that they remain relevant for contemporary critical theory.

George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty Four that ‘If there is hope, it lies in the proles.’ A century earlier Marx was unequivocal: the future belonged to the proletariat. Today such confidence might seem misplaced. The proletariat has not yet fulfilled Marx’s expectations, and seems unlikely ever to do so. How could Marx have entertained the notion that the proletariat would emancipate humanity from capitalism and from class rule itself? This book, first published in 1988, attempts an explanation by examining the sources and development of Marx’s concept of the proletariat. It contends that this was not only a crucial element in Marx’s theory but a significant departure in socialist thought. By examining this concept in detail the book uncovers a major contradiction in Marxian thought: although the proletariat is assigned a momentous task it is chiefly depicted as the class of suffering which is why, historically, it has preferred security to enterprise.

This book, first published in 1961 and revised in 1964, is both a critical study of a body of thought and an historical account of how Marxist theory arose from the context of European history in the 19th century. It traces the development of socialist thought from the French to the Russian Revolutions and attempts to show in what manner the political and intellectual problems of Central Europe between 1848 and 1948 came to dominate the theory and practice of that Marxist movement which formed the crucial link between the two revolutions. The author takes the view that Marxism is a movement and a body of doctrine which belongs essentially to the 19th century, which came to an end with the First World War and the Russian Revolution, and that its impact as a doctrine has now been absorbed.

This book, first published in 1977, presents for the first time a serious and systematic assessment of Marx primarily as a philosopher. It considers all major aspects of Marx’s theory – its methodology, its ontological dimensions, its approaches to the descriptions of history and of societies and their economic structures, its alleged predictions and its vision of the future – as well as some of its intellectual antecedents and twentieth-century heirs. The presentation of Marx’s ideas attempts to be at once faithful to them, as distinguished from their reinterpretations by later ‘Marxists’, and yet novel in form and language. From this unique standpoint, the book aims to bring the student of philosophy and of political ideas to a closer understanding of the intellectual foundations of Marx’s Capital and his writings in collaboration with Engels.

Marx’s written output was massive. Much of it remained unpublished in his own lifetime and there is still no complete edition of the extant works, although most have been published in one form or another. This book, first published in 1983, provides an analytical guide to the complex chronological and evolving substantive structure of Marx’s main writings in critical theory. The format is concise and accessible, with each phase of Marx’s evolving critical theory of capitalist society being summarized in a diagram. An invaluable guide for students of Marx, it will lead them through the maze of his works to a potentially deeper understanding of his thought. Allen Oakley believes that, in order to fully comprehend Marx’s critical theory, it is essential to trace its complex evolution. Any serious study of Marx’s critique of capitalism must begin with an appreciation of the bibliographical framework within which his evolving ideas were manifested. Oakley is opposed to approaches to the study of Marx’s critique which take little account of its chronology; such approaches, he believes, are incomplete and potentially misleading with respect to the meaning and significance of the critique. The book includes bibliographical evidence about the unfinished state of Marx’s critical project and its ever-changing scope and organization. It argues, therefore, that the methodological and substantive status of Capital must be interpreted cautiously, for bibliographical evidence shows it to be an unfinished climax to an ambiguous critic-theoretical project of uncertain dimensions. To read it as in any sense a final and definitive statement of Marx’s critical theory is, the author believes, to be deluded.