Sperber and Marx

[alanjjohnstone]

A thought provoking interview with Jonathan Sperber, author of "Karl Marx – A 19th Century Life"

 

Marx’s liberalism? An interview with Jonathan Sperber


[ALB]

Yes, it is an interesting interview. Sperber's new 600-page biography of Marx will be reviewed in next month's Socialist Standard.At the start of his book Sperber says his aim is to show that Marx was not "our contemporary", and of course in many ways he isn't as he was politically active in a period of history when the capitalist economic system and its political forms were neither widespread nor well established and so adopted positions which are not relevant today. Actually, we have recognised this, as for instance in this article from 1973:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1973/no-829-september-1973/marx-his-timeAt the end of the interview Sperber explains Marx's support  for Polish and Irish independence in the same way we do in this article.On the other hand, we'd say that Marx's theory of history and his analysis of capitalism are still relevant. It's the day-to-day political positions that he took up that are 19th century.

[alanjjohnstone]

Irish Left Review article on Sperber's book. http://www.irishleftreview.org/2013/08/19/marxist/ "Marx was not a prophet but his diagnosis of capitalism is more relevant today that any time since 1945. He belongs, of course, to  a past historical epoch and  many aspects of nineteenth-century capitalism have changed considerably in the interval but our economic system has not fundamentally shifted its foundations; the same predatory beast inhabits us today, benefiting some people at the cost of impoverishing many others. "

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