First published over fifty years ago, Isaiah Berlin's compelling portrait of the father of socialism has long been considered a classic of modern scholarship and the best short account written of Marx's life and thought. It provides a penetrating, lucid, and comprehensive introduction to Marx as theorist of the socialist revolution, illuminating his personality and ideas, and concentrating on those which have historically formed the central core of Marxism as a theory and practice. Berlin goes on to present an account of Marx's life as one of the most influential and incendiary social philosophers of the twentieth century and depicts the social and political atmosphere in which Marx wrote.
This edition includes a new introduction by Alan Ryan which traces the place of Berlin's Marx from its pre-World War II publication to the present, and elucidates why Berlin's portrait, in the midst of voluminous writings about Marx, remains the classic account of the personal and political side of this monumental figure.
This classic exposition has been revised in the light of the latest Marxist studies.
This classic biography of Karl Marx, complete with Gareth Stedman Jones’ poignant introduction, is unlike any other account of its subject. Focusing as much on Marx’s private life as on his public persona and work, this classic biography looks in detail at his relationship with his mother and father, wife and friends, and includes generous quotations from a wide range of correspondence in addition to virtually every photograph in existence of Marx and his closest associates.
Blumenberg examines Marx’s early writing as a schoolboy and his romantic poetry whilst a student, as well as his exchanges with close friend and collaborator Frederick Engels. In these pages are moving accounts of the privations of Marx’s poverty-stricken life in London and the tragedies which struck his family, as well as discussions of his intellectual development and political activity.
Including virtually every photograph in existence of Marx and his closest associates, and focusing as much on his private life as on his public persona and work, Werner Blumenberg’s biography provides an intimate portrait of the making of a complex intellectual the New Yorker dubbed “the next most influential thinker.”
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