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Related: About this forumKarl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life (Book Review)
I thought that this book review by Diana Siclovan of the University of Cambridge was fascinating. The book was written by Jonathan Sperber, and his response to the review is also featured:
Why should Marxs native land and early life merit such centrality? The answer lies in the subtitle of Sperbers book: a nineteenth-century life. The guiding theme and clear emphasis of Sperbers biography is the need to present Marx squarely in his historical context. The problem Sperber addresses is that the name of Karl Marx has become entwined with the experience of state socialism in the 20th century. Marx has been for over a decade alternately celebrated or condemned as the prophet of 20th-century communism. Even more than 20 years after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the end of the Cold War, the association of Marx with the Soviet experience remains strong. Some undergraduates, encountering the subject for the first time, are even surprised to hear that Marx did not actually live in the 20th century.
In the first part of the book we learn about the society of orders of Marxs childhood to which he was deeply opposed and that came to be dissolved in the course of his life. Sperber makes clear the impact that Prussian rule had on the Rhineland and he explains why Karls father, Heinrich Marx, converted from Judaism to Protestantism in the 1810s. In the second chapter, we learn why Marxs courtship of and engagement to Jenny von Westphalen was one of the most radical aspects of his life. The early engagement, long before Marx was in a position to have a secure income, to a woman four years his senior without a dowry, defied 19th-century conventions. Sperber convinces us that Marx and Jenny were connected by true love, and his description of Marxs relationship to his wife is one the highlights of the book. So much is clear: they really loved and were committed to each other. Despite their chaotic and unstable living situation and Marxs repeated failure to stabilize the familys finances, Jenny remained loyal to Marx. She took an active interest in his work, and defended him in even the pettiest of his many disputes with political and philosophical rivals.
Subsequent chapters address Marxs relation to the Young Hegelians and his journalistic activity for the Rheinland News. Sperber retells the more familiar aspects of Marxs life, such as the beginnings of his friendship with Engels, but also brings to light previously obscure issues. For instance, he rightly stresses the role of Karl Grün, a character who is only very briefly treated, if not completely absent from most existing Marx biographies. Grün is today virtually unknown, but he was one of Marxs most important rivals in the 1840s. Like Marx, he discovered socialist ideas in the early 1840s, and went on to promote them both within the German Confederation and, following his expulsion, among the German workers in Parisian exile. It was because of his influence among the Paris community that he increasingly came to be viewed as a rival by Marx and Engels in the second half of the 1840s. They began to consciously ostracise Grün, and translated personal antipathy into philosophical attacks, most notably in the German Ideology, where Grün was first denounced as a true German socialist, allegedly backward because of his emphasis on the humanistic content of socialism. Sperber comments on the relationship between Marx and Grün: The conflict between the two men arose precisely because they were so similar, because they were both seeking to occupy the same nice in the German socialist movement: that of the theorist who could provide the missing link between French ideas and German social conditions (p. 185).
Subsequent chapters address Marxs relation to the Young Hegelians and his journalistic activity for the Rheinland News. Sperber retells the more familiar aspects of Marxs life, such as the beginnings of his friendship with Engels, but also brings to light previously obscure issues. For instance, he rightly stresses the role of Karl Grün, a character who is only very briefly treated, if not completely absent from most existing Marx biographies. Grün is today virtually unknown, but he was one of Marxs most important rivals in the 1840s. Like Marx, he discovered socialist ideas in the early 1840s, and went on to promote them both within the German Confederation and, following his expulsion, among the German workers in Parisian exile. It was because of his influence among the Paris community that he increasingly came to be viewed as a rival by Marx and Engels in the second half of the 1840s. They began to consciously ostracise Grün, and translated personal antipathy into philosophical attacks, most notably in the German Ideology, where Grün was first denounced as a true German socialist, allegedly backward because of his emphasis on the humanistic content of socialism. Sperber comments on the relationship between Marx and Grün: The conflict between the two men arose precisely because they were so similar, because they were both seeking to occupy the same nice in the German socialist movement: that of the theorist who could provide the missing link between French ideas and German social conditions (p. 185).
http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1474
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Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life (Book Review) (Original Post)
YoungDemCA
Jan 2015
OP
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)1. I'm reading this book at the moment.
Slow read. But quite interesting.
Journeyman
(15,142 posts)2. Sperber was interviewed by Jon Stewart awhile back . . .
It sounded like an excellent book.
http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/bkqx47/jonathan-sperber