Page 1 of 21 Next
Karl Marx’s final years of life are often overlooked as a period of intellectual and physical decline. But his thought remained vibrant to the end, as he addressed political questions that are still relevant to us today.
For nearly two centuries, Karl Marx’s ideas have had a significant impact on US politics and intellectual life. In turn, Marx’s close study of the US informed the development of his ideas about capitalism and human freedom.
In his new biography of Karl Marx, Bruno Leipold puts his subject in historical context. Marx, he tells Jacobin, was engaged in a political struggle against utopian communists and republicans unable to recognize the incompatibility of freedom and capitalism.
Karl Marx started out in a liberal milieu where the primary concern was abolishing religious authoritarianism. In time, he came to believe that abolishing capitalism was necessary for true freedom — and that only the working class could do it.
Although it’s been sitting on your shelf for years, your paperback copy of Capital has a tellingly uncreased spine. It’s time to change that — here's a guide to how.
The republican tradition is an oft-overlooked strain of 19th-century politics, at odds with liberalism and many currents of socialism. It was key to Karl Marx’s thinking — and he himself drove it forward.
Karl Marx gave us an extraordinarily rigorous study of capitalism — not out of idle academic interest but because he wanted to understand what structures would have to be overcome in order to win a world free of domination.
Through his relationship with the Chartist radical and labor poet Ernest Jones, Karl Marx came to realize the necessity of opposing slavery and colonialism in ending capitalism.
Fascists keep vandalizing Marx’s grave because they’re still afraid of his legacy, and the power of his ideas.
Critics of Marx have accused him of imposing a European model of historical development on the rest of the world. But the real Marx rejected Eurocentric thinking and developed a sophisticated view of world history in all its diversity and complexity.
Karl Marx wasn’t merely a great thinker who was also a glorious prose stylist. His brilliance as a writer was inseparable from his greatness as a thinker.
Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro stokes his base’s fears by warning of the “communist threat” posed by “cultural Marxism.” But if you don’t make a living off exploiting workers, there’s no reason to be afraid of Karl Marx and his friends.
Even among Marx-friendly economists, the labor theory of value has fallen out of favor. But its technical validity is less important than the core message: workers are exploited because the value they create is undemocratically taken by capitalists.
Karl Marx’s groundbreaking account of labor alienation forms an invaluable part of his thought. For Marx, alienation was fundamental to grasping capitalism and how to dismantle it.
Late in life, Karl Marx had a brief encounter with the Arab world. Though he was never able to study the region in detail, Marx’s writings confirm his support for Arab struggles against their colonial oppressors.
Scholar Kevin B. Anderson discusses Marx’s surprising conclusions on race and national oppression.
Centrist pundit Andrew Sullivan thinks Karl Marx was “one of the most repellent anti-Semites and racists of the 19th century.” That’s nonsense — Marx’s political project was all about expanding human freedom and fighting oppression in every form.
Today marks 150 years since the start of the Bloody Week, when the French army drowned the Paris Commune in blood. For Karl Marx, the Paris revolution was the greatest working-class uprising in his lifetime — and a model for what socialism might look like.
Conservative pundits are more likely to caricature Karl Marx’s writings and beliefs than offer serious rebuttals to his many ideas. Why? Because Marx’s trenchant insights expose deep inconsistencies in cherished right-wing doctrines.
Karl Marx is often thought of as a purely economic thinker. But the famed socialist was a committed democrat — and his writings offer potential remedies for democratizing our undemocratic political system.