Marx: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) 2nd Edition by Peter Singer (PDF)

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Karl Marx is one of the most influential philosophers of all time, whose theories have shaped and directed political, economic, and social thought for 150 years. Considering Marx’s life and impact, renowned philosopher Peter Singer identifies the central vision that unifies Marx’s thought, enabling us to grasp Marx’s views as a whole. Presenting Marx as a philosopher primarily concerned with human freedom, rather than as an economist or a social scientist, Singerexplains Marx’s key ideas on alienation, historical materialism, and the economic theory of Capital, in plain English.In this new edition, Singer explores whether Marx remains relevant to the twenty first century, and if so, how. Does the fact that eight billionaires now own as much as the bottom half of the world’s population give support to Marxist thinking? Does the ease with which conservative politicians can win over working class voters by appealing to nationalism undermines Marx’s view of class struggle and the inevitability of victory for the proletariat? Singer ponders key questions such as these,and also discusses the place of the internet as a ‘productive force’ when analysed in Marxist theory. He concludes with an assessment of Marx’s legacy, asking if there is any realistic prospect of replacing capitalism with a better system of production and distribution in the twenty first century.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

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⭐Though what some called “Marxism” seems mostly wiped from the earth (with some notable exceptions), the eponymous system never completely disappeared from the popular conscious. Its specter has reappeared following the financial disasters of 2008-2009. In this catastrophe’s wake, some have asked whether capitalism has finally burst its dam. Though capitalism as an economic system won’t likely go away anytime soon, the abuses and corruption uncovered in the past few years have likely made some curious about its staunchest and most infamous critic: Karl Marx. At first glance, the current crisis seems to validate some of Marx’s criticisms, including the idea that capitalism will eventually self-destruct. However, upon further inspection some of his ideas break down and don’t seem to exactly fit today’s precarious situation. So what were Marx’s criticisms, theories and claims? And what about that whole thing called communism that spread throughout the world in the 20th century? Did Marx create that? And where did his ideas come from? Anyone teeming with such questions should pick up Peter Singer’s incredibly readable book “Marx.” This book has past lives. Originally published in 1980, it now sits alongside voluminous other topics in Oxford University Press’ “A Very Short Introduction” series. And yes, this is the same Peter Singer that wrote “Animal Liberation” and the recent “The Life You Can Save.” He also has a killer recipe for dal (available online).The book moves fast. Beginning with a short preface that equates Marx’s impact to Jesus and Muhammad, a short biography of Marx’s life follows, complete with sketches of his personal and professional lives. This brief narrative doesn’t dwell on the abject poverty often attributed to Marx (apparently from his pleading letters). It suggests that Marx lived decently, excepting a few rough years, and that financial mismanagement rather than lack of income may have plagued him. His lifelong partner and patron, Friedrich Engels, appears to have contributed generously even during good financial times. Marx of course faced exile more than once and following 1849 he never returned to his homeland. He died in England in 1883 where his grave still stands. The book then launches into his influences and development starting with Hegel, whose turgid and ominous “Phenomenology of Spirit” provided the “birthplace” of Marx’s philosophy. As a “Young Hegelian,” Marx absorbed and then ultimately revamped Hegel’s master/slave philosophy into one involving human struggle, economics and money. The inevitability of the slave “conquering” the master – a bane to later Marxists as it never seemed to happen despite its theoretical inevitability – derived from Hegel’s philosophy of “Mind.” From Hegel’s “alienated Mind” (which he, now almost comically, claimed his own philosophy resolved) and Ludwig Feuerbach’s notion of religion as humanity’s alienation, Marx posited money as “the alienated essence of man’s labor.” Most of his economic theories, culminating in the magnum opus “Capital,” begin here. After assigning the proletariat the Hegelian “slave” role Marx claimed the theoretically analogous overthrow of the capitalists by their “slaves.” This was all pure theory. The chapter entitled “The First Marxism” delineates the main points of this philosophical-economic-historical system. Marx, like Hegel, considered his system “scientific.” Within these sometimes confounding works arise the foundational ideas of Marxist theory. Things have “use-value” as utilitarian things, but when economics intervenes it assigns “exchange-values” to these things. Soon everything is seen in terms of exchange instead of use-value, including workers themselves. As such, they inevitably begin to focus on exchange-values, even for themselves, and become “alienated” from their own productive activity, which Marx considered humanity’s essence, and from others through competition. Capitalists exploit workers by making them work longer and extracting “surplus-value” and get rich. Communism, as Marx envisioned it, would abolish alienation “between men and their products.” It would also abolish surplus-value and apparently lead to a society where people simply meet their needs. The would thus attain true freedom, according to Marx, whereas under capitalism they only appear free, but are in fact enslaved by exchange-value and its ramifications. The obvious question follows: so what does Marx think the post-capitalist (or communist) world would look like? Singer defends Marx’s near silence on this point by claiming that Marx was simply building the groundwork for the inevitable future and that Marx intended his successors to provide the practical framework. But Marx did drop some hints, though they don’t collectively add up to much. For example, a “real human morality” would replace the current “class morality” and an earthly paradise would unfold. Led by the initial “dictatorship of the proletariat” war and conflict would eventually dissolve as people simply meet their needs. As many have pointed out, Marx would likely never have stopped throwing up at the sight of the Leninist and Stalinist regimes that claimed his influence. Paradises on earth they were not. Singer even suggests that Marx may have “disappeared” in the purges. Perhaps.The final chapter outlines Singer’s evaluation of Marx. He first finds nothing scientific in Marx’s theories. Second, he claims that most of Marx’s dire predictions of capitalism’s ominous future did not come true. So how should history regard Marx? Singer suggests thinking of Marx primarily as a philosopher and that he nonetheless secured a solid legacy, especially in two cases. First, Marx’s view that people should control capitalism rather than capitalism controlling people still stands. As economies spiral out of control many indeed do seem to sit by helplessly. The collapse of a currency or an industry sometimes seems utterly outside the control of governments or activism. Whether this is by design or coincidence remains another question. In any case, Marx’s call for us to take control of our own societies still has resonance today. Second, Marx suggested that human nature can fluctuate with societal and economic conditions. Many still agree with him. But Singer criticizes Marx’s Utopian post-capitalist society. It seems unlikely that communism would totally eliminate greed or corruption. He cites Mikhail Bakunin’s poignant criticisms on these points. Pure egalitarianism must deal with some nefarious truths about human nature. Some of the 20th century’s “communist” regimes bear this out, though some don’t consider China or the former USSR “communisms” in the sense Marx implied. So should we welcome Marx back as a contender? Yes and no. Though his critique of capitalism stands as one of the most detailed and complete critiques yet offered, it was also wrong in many respects. But it was also correct in some, especially in terms of its potential wastefulness and controlling aspects. On the other hand, a moratorium on new communist regimes seems in effect. Few new ones have cropped up. But anyone can find Marx’s works, once considered anathema, in nearly any bookstore. Even fancy coffee table editions of “The Communist Manifesto” have appeared. Has capitalism then defeated communism by absorbing and emasculating it as yet another “product?” Maybe. Nonetheless, Marx seems to live on in a seemingly incompatible world of increasing production and consumption. This may be his true lasting enigma. In any case, Marx, like capitalism, likely won’t disappear anytime soon. Peter Singer’s small book provides a great introduction to this weighty and controversial philosopher. Those who haven’t started down this road could definitely start here. Prepare for a long hike.

⭐This is a remarkably clear introduction to the thought of Karl Marx. I was a little dubious when I picked it up (I read 3 or 4 of the Very Short Introduction books each year), since most of my knowledge of Singer is through his work either on Animal Ethics, Utilitarianism, or his critique of George W. Bush. In fact, I became a vegetarian 25 years ago after reading Singer and Gandhi at the same time. Marx, though, is a horse of a different color. I was simply not confident that he would write as well on the founder of Marxism as well as he did on practical ethics. If anything, he turned out to write even more clearly on Marx than anything else I’ve read.The problem with Marx is that he wrote so much, much of it in advanced draft form, that one can extract several different Marx’s from his pages. It isn’t that he is inconsistent that his thinking is constantly in flux as he considers one or another aspect of the issues surrounding capitalism. There truly is no final version of Marx’s thought, but rather interim versions. The various books and manuscripts almost serve as commentaries on the other books and manuscripts. The trick is to extract the core of what Marx thought without unduly distorting his work as a whole and without reducing him to a caricature. Singer does a great job of highlighting major themes and trends in Marx’s thought while not losing the sense of the difficult of determining with finality precisely what Marx wrote.The importance of a book like this cannot be overstressed. Anyone who knows anything at all about Marx knows that he would have been appalled at the Communist revolutions of the twentieth century. As Singer rightly points out, Marx would unquestionably have been a victim of one of the purges. Whatever complicity Marx had with the excesses of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao is tenuous and debatable (though given that all three cited Marx as their inspiration means that Marx’s responsibility for what followed can be legitimately discussed, even if he is exonerated). Not everything he wrote about Capitalism (a term he invented) has proven to be true (though a great deal that he wrote remains shockingly relevant). Those who in 1989 delightedly proclaimed that history had refuted Marx got it all wrong. The fact is that all of us today, even political and economic conservatives, have had our consciousness completely altered by Marx. Nearly all history is done today with unexamined assumptions that we took from Marx. No one would undertake a study of any historical topic without a consideration of the socio-economic factors involved. Sociology, philosophy, political science, economics, and virtually every subject one can consider has been deeply informed by Marxist ideas. Those proclaiming Marx the loser in 1989 got it all wrong: he had won way before then. He has shaped the modern mind as fully as Freud, Martin Luther, Newton, or Darwin. We think through Marxist categories, even when we oppose him.This is just one reason why it is so important to understand what he was about. There are many other very good elementary intros to Marx’s thought. Robert Heilbroner’s book on Marx is a great one. Ernest Mandel has an excellent short introduction to Marx’s economic theory. But I would put Singer’s book up there with those. If you are looking for a clear first introduction to Marx, you can do far worse than this.

⭐I first picked up The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels when I was sixteen. Of course, I didn’t feel like a precocious sixteen-year-old then. I felt like a free-thinking young intellectual discovering poetry and politics, and exploring the vast literary landscape with a hunger and delight that, frankly, I wish I could maintain now. Like many significant works of literature this little book had its own killer line. Not quite the first line, but certainly as memorable as the best of them. It read: ‘The history of all societies is a history of class struggle.’ I read on eagerly. Thus The Communist Manifesto became my first conscious encounter with what I later learned was a ‘worldview’ and it was exhilarating to read something that claimed to know what was really going on in the world.My teenage romance with Marxism didn’t last too long and suffered numerous blows as I discovered not its power to transform but, disappointingly, its consistent failure. And when I later became president of the Students’ Union at a small college in Sussex I was appalled at the sanctimonious reverence Marx was paid. The primary example of this happened not at the National Conference but at an (ironically) exclusive and somewhat secretive gathering of three Students’ Union presidents at Sussex University. Our host, the Sussex Uni president, asked us to be seated. He then proceeded to unveil, by pulling down on a little fluffy cord, a red velvet curtain, behind which were revealed portraits first of Marx, then Lenin, and finally the then General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov. Once this ceremony was complete he opened the meeting. It was both strangely religious and hopelessly sad.But that kind of obsequious nonsense was the least of it. The philosophy itself was problematic. Apart from his impressive, often accurate view of the past, Marx’s vision for future revolution and collective ownership had already obviously failed in the terrifyingly authoritarian regimes that claimed him as their founder. Even George Orwell said – somewhere in Homage to Catalonia – that he only saw communism work once, and then only for about three weeks, after which the usual egotistical impulse for status reasserted itself. One set of status/power/money lovers had been replaced by another set who soon began to act like those they replaced.The Significance of MarxMarx and Engels felt they had discovered a scientific assessment of social progress akin to Darwin’s theory of evolution. The parallel is oddly appropriate for many Christians: we may agree with much of what both Darwin and Marx observed, but may also have considerable doubts about the projections they made based on the observation.And so to Peter Singer’s highly readable, Marx, A Very Short Introduction. He asks, ‘Can anyone now think about society without reference to Marx’s insights into the links between economic and intellectual life? Marx’s ideas brought about modern sociology, transformed the study of history, and profoundly affected philosophy, literature, and the arts. In this sense of the term – admittedly a very loose sense – we are all Marxists now.’ (3)Hegel, History, and GodThere were a number of points at which the thinking of others encouraged Marx to see religion as ultimately negative (for Marx this inevitably meant Christianity). In describing Hegel and the young Hegelians who influenced Marx Singer writes, ‘The goal of history became the liberation of humanity; but this could not be achieved until the religious illusion had been overcome.’ (22) Of course! Singer has unintentionally sent us back to a conversation in Eden in Genesis 3. And later, ‘theology is a kind of misdirected anthropology. What we believe of God is really true of ourselves. Thus humanity can regain its essence, which in religion it has lost.’ (23) And in an inevitable statement of absolute naturalism, ‘Thought does not precede existence, existence precedes thought.’ (24) Christians love the fact that in the beginning was thought and word, and all creation came into existence as a result of thought and word. But Marx only saw the way religion created compliance rather than progress.Economic Injustice and its CureWhen Marx came on to his views of economic injustice we find some of his arguments compelling but his solutions naive. When pointing out that driving wages down to as close as is necessary to merely keep workers alive, while keeping for themselves a significant amount of the value the workers create, Marx is highlighting a genuine manipulation of human resources. (33) Sure. We need just laws, and we ought to have them. But Marx asserted ‘the solution is the abolition of wages, alienated labour, and private property in one blow. In a word, communism.’ (36) and claimed, ‘Communism…is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man…It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as this solution.’ Singer adds, ‘One might expect that Marx would go on to explain in some detail what communism would be like. He does not – in fact nowhere in his writings does he give more than sketchy suggestions on this subject.’ (37)Marx and Engels consistently preached for a kind of millennial era of liberation, freedom from oppression, and peace among men. In one sense, the very best motivations of the communist vision are a kind of echo of genuine Christianity, but with man, not God, at the centre. In fact it’s difficult to imagine the birth of Marxist philosophy in any but a Christian cultural environment, and a muscular 19th century Christianity at that. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,’ could have been bellowed out by William Booth and the Salvation Army; could, in fact, have been written by Luke in the Book of Acts (see Acts 2.45 [i], and 4.34 [ii]).Marx was also echoing a widely held Christian sentiment when he asserted that history has a definite goal; that of humanity reaching its greatest potential in an era of liberation and freedom. He probably didn’t realise how much a view of God’s sovereignty, of providence, and the millennial hope he carried in his thinking about the future. Singer brings us up to post-Christian speed: ‘Few historians…now see any goal in history. They do not explain history as the necessary path to anywhere. They explain it by showing how one set of events brought about another.’ (57)Revolution and TransformationMarx believed that Capitalism would force its own failure as workers would realise their exploitation, rise up, and redistribute wealth on a fair and equal basis. Private property would be abolished. The State would draw the allegiance of all men and the common good would be the goal of all. Absolutely wishful thinking. Singer: ‘According to Marx’s view of history, as the economic basis of society alters, so all consciousness alters. Greed, egoism, and envy are not ingrained forever in the character of human beings. They would disappear in a society in which private property and private means of production were replaced with communal property and socially organized means of production. We would lose our preoccupation with our private interests. Citizens of the new society would find their own happiness in working for the good of all. (81) Surely only the most inexperienced revolutionary could believe that? ‘It has been said that later in life Marx developed a less Utopian view of communism, but it is difficult to find much evidence of this.’ (83)His view was so utopian in fact that he believed communism would become fully international in its reach, and therefore single nation-states would cease to exist, thus eradicating the impulse for war between nations. Armed forces would become a thing of the past. Cue not-the-only-dreamer, John Lennon. Actually though, while it’s certainly not imaginable now, it is nevertheless a hope that’s deeply embedded in the human psyche (we’re made in the image of God after all) and it echoes an idea worked out in Christian eschatology.How do we assess Marx’s philosophy?Singer: ‘More than a century after Marx made these predictions, most of them are so plainly mistaken that one can only wonder why anyone sympathetic to Marx would attempt to argue that his greatness lies in the scientific aspects of his work. Judged by the standards of Marx’s time, the gap between rich and poor has narrowed dramatically throughout the industrialized world…Real wages have risen. Factory workers today earn considerably more than they need in order to remain alive and reproducing…Capitalism has gone through several crises, but nowhere has it collapsed as a result of its alleged internal contradictions. Proletarian revolutions have broken out in the less developed nations [Marx predicted it would happen in the more developed ones]. (88) He supposed ‘that real wages would remain around subsistence level; in fact the increase in productivity has allowed real wages to rise.’ (91) The ‘conception of freedom Marx espoused contains within it a difficulty Marx never sufficiently appreciated, a difficulty which can be linked with the tragic mutation of Marx’s views into a prop for murderously authoritarian regimes. This is the problem of obtaining the co-operation of each individual in the joint endeavour of controlling our society.’ (92) ‘Marx never intended a communist society to force the individual to work against his or her own interests for the collective good.’ (97)Marx’s view of human nature was hopelessly optimistic. The economic injustices he identified were not simply the result of capitalist systems (though those systems enabled them) but of fallen human nature, sinful nature. And even though today we can see improvement to human rights and progress in many areas, enacted in many laws, the fundamental problem of human sin is still wildly underestimated. This doesn’t let capitalism off the hook of course, let alone individuals greedy for their own advancement at the expense of others. In fact, those Christian leaders and pastors living in countries with ever-widening gaps between rich and poor need to develop a healthy desire and determination to work for a more just society. Nevertheless, the communism that was experienced in the twentieth century was never the utopia Marx dreamt of; that dream of equality only ever appeared in propaganda films. Equally unconvincing are the arguments that true Marxism has never been properly tried. The reason it never lasts longer than a few weeks is because the philosophy radically over-estimates the goodness of human nature. What is needed is a philosophy that (goes beyond philosophy and) gets into the heart and changes human nature, that leads to repentance from sin and faith in Christ, and produces an unwavering resolve for social justice. To put it in the words of the most famous prayer, ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’

⭐Peter Singer has written a critical introduction to the principal points of Karl Marx’s thought, and although I did not like the hectoring tone of some of those criticisms, I nevertheless felt that the quality of Marx’s insight still shone through.It was from this book that I drew the idea of the economic imperatives acting upon the individual determining his day-to-day existence, pretty much from the cradle to the grave. The most obvious of these being the need to go to work, in order to earn the money to pay the rent, the utility bills, to pay for food and clothing, etc. This in itself goes some way towards confirming Marx’s idea that the economic relations of society determine all of the other relations – social, political, cultural and legal – where the law is really just the codification (or making explicit) of the existing economic relations. The class structure of society will also reflect this, where your position in the hierarchy is determined by how much land, property, money, capital and resources you own. The kind of clothes you buy, the kind of food you eat, the kind of people you mix with, the kind of place you live in and where it is located will all be decided by the economic determinants acting upon you. As a consequence of this, Marx thought that in order to change society, you had first to alter the economic foundations of society – to shift them into a pattern which produced greater equality and a fairer share in the wealth and resources of society for all of its members. And in order to do that, you had also to take the ownership of these things out of the hands of the few aggressively acquisitive capitalists who held them. Given, too, their ownership of the media and their massive funding of those politicians and parties which represent their interests, this is a task which is easier said than done – but one which can, nevertheless, be achieved. And I am of the view that it can be achieved within the overall context of a capitalist society.I found myself in agreement with Marx that human nature is a mutable thing. Human values are chameleon-like and change to accord with whatever the dominant values of society, in their time, happen to be. And in Marx, those values are determined by ‘the economic relations’ which characterize a given society, at a given time. Consciously alter ‘the economic relations’ and you change society itself, hopefully in the direction of greater economic equality, and then other forms of equality will follow. In Marx, there can be no true equality in any area of our lives without first establishing economic equality, precisely because it is ‘the economic relations’ which determine all of the other relations of society.Whilst always taking care to denounce him to their camp followers, it strikes me that nowhere have the ideas of Marx been more thoroughly introjected than on the right, where they are used for the achievement of ends opposite to those intended by Marx – most obviously, the deliberate widening of the chasm between rich and poor, and the recreation of the ugly attitudes and consequences which flow from it. In my view, this is very much a feature of our own time. The more ‘laissez-faire’ capitalism becomes, the more it drags the whole of society back to the model which Marx first criticised in the nineteenth century. And the nineteenth century was followed by the twentieth. It is sad to think that by way of its political representatives, capitalism may have us caught up in that kind of historical loop.In explaining Marx’s view of the state at the pre-communist stage of society, Singer writes that it is out of the ‘….contradiction between the interest of the individual and the community that the state develops as an independent entity.’I take those words to mean that it is the role of the state to establish an harmonious balance between capitalist greed and the needs of the people. Not only does this confirm the need for a strong state, but it also provides it with a role that has constantly to be performed.Personally, I feel that communism occupies the same place in Marx’s thought that ‘Pure Form’ does in Plato’s. It is an ideal of perfection which probably cannot be translated into material reality. And perhaps for this reason, I felt there was something of a correspondence between those two thinkers. In my view, Marx’s communist ideal in no way detracts from the analysis and criticism of laissez-faire capitalism which precedes it.According to Singer, one of Marx’s more troubling predictions for capitalism is that it would eventually implode, taking down ‘the bodies of the workers’ with it. I wonder how very far removed from our current situation that might be.Finally, if Marx did make errors then he is entitled to them. Show me the great thinker who did not make errors. It is up to you, the reader, with an additional two hundred years of historical experience to draw upon, to make good his errors and to further develop his thought by using it as a springboard for your own. Then, perhaps, you will be the one to coin a fresh post-Marxist solution to “the riddle of history”. But if you do, then I suspect that it will still owe a great deal to his work.

⭐I loved this, having begrudgingly missed out by a year on my 2002 A level Philosophy class choosing the Marx module and instead opting for Aristotle, i decided to pick up something to scratch a twenty year itch and this largely did the job. The only problem with these VSIs is that they are so short they can sometimes condense quite complicated concepts making them difficult to understand and remember, e.g. use Vs exchange values. A glossary would be welcomed but arguably beyond scope. Also, no spoilers, but I was satisfied with the balance, Singer’s ethical application to modern day scenarios and discussion of reality of history of C20th Marxist regimes. I might look to read another book about Marx to make sure I’ve got a broader opinion. Nice further reading section at the end. Grade: A-.

⭐Excellent in introduction to Marxism. Really gives a good overview (better than an overview actually). Chapters are small and it is easy to skip the complex bits (eg the chapter on Hegel) if they are not for you. Well laid out and good print and quality paper all contribute to this being an good read. I would definitely recommend it for students (A level) wanting to get a grip with Marxism and Marxist Literary Theory as it is very clear.

⭐For some reason a lot of introductions to Marx’s work seem to be trying to hard to be quirky and different; perhaps it’s a reaction against the dullness of some of his own prose. This book however plays it straight. There is a run through his ideas – grouped conceptually rather than chronologically – and some thoughts about what has had an influence and what hasn’t. The author doesn’t wear rose-tinted spectacles and isn’t afraid to point out the (many) flaws in Marx’s logic any more than he shys away from praising his insights. The final chapter is very readable.

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