Marx: A Very Short Introduction

  Marx: A Very Short Introduction

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  Marx A Very Short Introduction

  Peter Singer

  Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp

  Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.

  It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in

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  Published in the United States

  by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

  © Peter Singer 1980

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

  First published 1980 as an Oxford University Press paperback

  Reissued 1996

  First published as a Very Short Introduction 2000

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,

  without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,

  or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate

  reprographic rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction

  outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,

  Oxford University Press, at the address above.

  You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover

  and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Data available

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Data available

  ISBN 13: 978–0–19–285405–6

  ISBN 10: 0–19–285405–4

  9 10

  Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

  Printed in Great Britain by

  TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall

  Contents

  Preface

  Abbreviations

  List of Illustrations

  1 A Life and its Impact

  2 The Young Hegelian

  3 From God to Money

  4 Enter the Proletariat

  5 The First Marxism

  6 Alienation as a Theory of History

  7 The Goal of History

  8 Economics

  9 Communism

  10 An Assessment

  Note on Sources

  Further Reading

  Index

  Preface

  There are many books on Marx, but a good brief introduction to his thought is still hard to find. Marx wrote at such enormous length, on so many different subjects, that it is not easy to see his ideas as a whole. I believe that there is a central idea, a vision of the world, which unifies all of Marx’s thought and explains what would otherwise be puzzling features of it. In this book I try to say, in terms comprehensible to those with little or no previous knowledge of Marx’s writings, what this central vision is. If I have succeeded, I need no further excuse for having added yet another book to the already abundant literature on Marx and Marxism.

  For biographical details of Marx’s life, I am especially indebted to David McLellan’s fine work, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (Macmillan, London, 1973). My view of Marx’s conception of history was affected by G.A. Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1979), although I do not accept all the conclusions of that challenging study. Gerald Cohen sent me detailed comments on the draft of this book, enabling me to correct several errors. Robert Heilbroner, Renata Singer, and Marilyn Weltz also made helpful comments on the draft, for which I am grateful.

  In the interest of clear prose I have occasionally made minor amendments to the translations of Marx’s works from which I have quoted.

  Finally, were it not for an invitation to take part in this series from Keith Thomas, the general editor of the series, and Henry Hardy, of Oxford University Press, I would never have attempted to write this book; and were it not for a period of leave granted me by Monash University, I would never have written it.

  Peter Singer

  Washington, DC, June 1979

  Abbreviations

  References in the text to Marx’s writings are generally given by an abbreviation of the title, followed by a page reference. Unless otherwise indicated below, these page references are to David McLellan (ed.), Karl Marx: Selected Writings (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977).

  B

  ‘On Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy’

  C I

  Capital, Volume I (Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1961)

  C III

  Capital, Volume III

  CM

  Communist Manifesto

  D

  Doctoral thesis

  EB

  The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

  EPM

  Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

  G

  Grundrisse (translated M. Nicolaus, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1973)

  GI

  The German Ideology

  GP

  ‘Critique of the Gotha Program’

  I

  ‘Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction’

  J

  ‘On the Jewish Question’

  M

  ‘On James Mill’ (notebook)

  MC

  Letters and miscellaneous writings cited in David McLellan, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (Macmillan, London, 1973)

  P

  Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

  PP

  The Poverty of Philosophy

  R

  Correspondence with Ruge of 1843

  T

  ‘Theses on Feuerbach’

  WLC

  Wage Labour and Capital

  WPP

  ‘Wages, Price and Profit’ (in K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected Works, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1951)

  List of Illustrations

  1 Karl Marx (1818–83) 2

  2 Lithograph showing the young Marx (1836) at a drinking club of Trier students at the University of Bonn

  Courtesy of the International

  Institute of Social History,

  Amsterdam

  3 The exterior of 41 Maitland Park Road, Haverstock Hill, London, where Marx spent the last fifteen years of his life

  Courtesy of Hulton Getty

  4 Marx with his eldest daughter, Jenny, in 1870

  Courtesy of Hulton Getty

  5 G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831)

  6 Marx in 1836, aged 18.

  Detail from the lithograph on p. 4

  Courtesy of the International

  Institute of Social History,

  Amsterdam

  7 Ludwig Feuerbach

  (1804–72)

  Courtesy of the Mary Evans Picture

  Library

  8 Friedrich Engels

  (1820–95) 45

  9 English factories in the mid-nineteenth century: men and women at work in the Patent Renewable Stocking Factory at Tewkesbury in 1860

  Courtesy of the Mary Evans Picture

  Library

  10 David Ricardo (1772–1823)

  Courtesy of Hulton Getty

  11 The round reading room of the old British Library, opened in 1842, where Marx worked on Das Kapital

  Courtesy of Hulton Getty

  12 Cover of the first German edition of Das Kapital, vol. 1

  Courtesy of AKG London

  13 Marx’s grave at Highgate Cemetery in London

  Courtesy of Hulton Getty

  14 Joseph Stalin (1879–1953)

  Courtesy of Hulton Getty

  15 Military tanks passing a mural of key communist figures in a 1974 parade in Havana, Cuba, marking the anniversary of the Revolution

  Courtesy of Miroslav Zaji/Corbis

  The publisher and the author apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list. If contacted they will be pleased to rectify these at the earliest opportunity.