Adventures in MarxismA new beginning for Marxism might just be on the horizon of a landscape despoiled by Soviet communism and a now wobbling world capitalism. The attention attracted by the 150th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto included laudatory references to Marx in venues as unexpected as The New York Times and The New Yorker. More predictably, the tributes in such publications focused on the strength of Marx as a critic of capital or a powerful wordsmith, rather than as an advocate of communism. But, if Marxism is to enjoy a rebirth in the coming century, appreciation needs to move beyond its value as a critical tool or a literary pleasure. The emancipatory potential of Marxism, its capacity to configure a world beyond the daily grind of selling one’s labor to stay alive, will have to be established anew. No one has made a better start to this task than the esteemed critic and writer Marshall Berman. Berman first read The Communist Manifesto in the same week as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman while at high school. A few years later, now a student at Columbia University, he was handing out copies of Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts, purchased for 50 cents each at the (Soviet) Four Continents Bookstore in New York, as holiday presents for friends and relatives. Here was the beginning of a lifelong engagement with Marxism that, as this volume demonstrates, has been both consistent and refreshing. In these pages are discussions of work on Marx and Marxism by Edmund Wilson, Jerrold Siegel, James Billington, Georg Lukcs, Irving Howe and Isaac Babel. They are brought together in a single embrace by Berman’s spirited appreciation of Marxism as expressive, playful, sometimes even a little vulgar, but always an adventure. |
Contents
Caught Up in the Mix Some Adventures in Marxism | 1 |
Marx The Dancer and the Dance | 19 |
Freedom and Fetishism | 37 |
Still Waiting at the Station | 57 |
Studs Terkel Living in the Mural | 65 |
The People in Capital | 79 |
All That Is Solid Melts into Air Marx Modernism and Modernization | 91 |
The Signs in the Street | 153 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
activity alive artists Babel become Benjamin Billington bourgeois bourgeois society bourgeoisie bring Brodersen Capital capitalist century Class Consciousness commodities communism Communist Manifesto contradictions Cossacks create creative criticism culture depth dialectical Dostoevsky dread energy essay father feel Finland Station forces free development freedom Freud Georg Lukács German halo heart History and Class hopes human ideal ideas imagine individual industry inner intellectual Isaac Babel Jews Karl Marx labor liberal lives look Lukács's Marx's Marxism Marxist humanism means Melts into Air Meyer Schapiro mind modern art modernist movement never Nietzsche nihilism political Popular Front production proletariat radical Red Cavalry repressed revolution revolutionary Schapiro seems Seigel sense sexual social Solid Melts spiritual story surplus-value tell Terkel things thought tion trans truth turn vision Walter Benjamin whole workers writing York young Marx